A Bastard Noise: Power Violence Lives on in a New Generation

“No Comment! Manpig! Capitalist Casualties! Man is the Bastard! West Coast Power Violence! Let’s fucking go! Kick ass!”
And with that, the term power violence entered the hardcore lexicon. The loose confederation of California bands had little in common stylistically beyond a penchant for brevity. They certainly didn’t set out to spark a musical revolution. But 20 years after Man is the Bastard shouted the term into existence, a host of up and coming bands are taking what was once an inside joke to brand outcasts in the California hardcore scene and turning it into an ongoing and constantly evolving musical movement of its own.
Though the term power violence has been “commodified and bastardized” in the two decades since its introduction, Robby Komen of Sea of Shit still sees the spirit of that first run of bands in the wave of contemporary practitioners.
“It was definitely a time/era specific thing in its original incarnation (just like anything, it has to start somewhere), but I do believe there are contemporaries that earnestly share the same ethos and ideologies that unified these bands in the past,” Komen said.
Attracted by power violence’s aggression and malleability, a modern wave of neoviolence bands are taking short shocks of hardcore festooned with prominent bass and exploring all of the possible permutations, keeping it from going stale and extinct. Sprawling across the globe and adapting to fit new musical ecosystems, power violence is more vibrant and fertile than Man is the Bastard and their cohorts ever could have imagined.

Opposites Attract

Oh, MC Skat Kat, a weary nation desperately needs your wisdom.

A man cannot live on blastbeats alone, though merciful Kali knows I’ve damn well tried. But even I need the occasional break, and when I do I usually swing to the opposite extreme and dive into my sludge library. If grindcore is death metal’s punkier young cousin, the same can be said of sludge, which thumbs its nose at its more refined kin doom metal. I’ve pointed out the easy commerce between the two poles before, but it’s time to give the low and slow its due.
Both grind and sludge place a premium on extremity without belaboring the songwriting with a ton of wanking. Instead, the goal is to flatten you with brute force, an object lesson in victory through superior firepower. More than that, grind and sludge also share a jaundiced sensibility. Both trade in cynical broadsides against all that’s venal and corrupt, cataloging a litany of misery, mayhem and misanthropy.
If you haven’t taken the sludge plunge yet, here are a handful of bands and their up tempo counterparts that will get you stumbling your way through the fractured pavement of modern sludge’s moral and physical decay.

G&P Review: Squash Bowels

Squash Bowels
Grindcoholism
Selfmadegod
Hello, my name is Andrew and I’m a grindcoholic.
It’s been about 15 minutes since my last Squash Bowels marathon. It’s hard, you know? I try to take it one day at a time, but that dive bombing guitar that slashes through “Tastelessness” is just such an awesome album opener. Just thinking about it gives me the jitters and shakes. I thought maybe I could manage my grindcoholism. Take a small taste here and there and move on. But it’s not like that. By the time “Trap” hits, the grisly Jeff Walker bass is rumbling through my brain and I know I’ve lost control again. I’ll be spinning Squash Bowels on endless repeat for most of the afternoon, bobbing along to head-nodder “Surrender,” an excellent early album respite. I won’t be able to control it. The live-in-the-room reverberation of the cymbals and the stuttering blasts just get inside me and I lose all sense of time and place.
I thought I’d hit rock bottom the day some random woman on the Metro was staring at me as I was clutching invisible citrus and making screaming faces during the morning commute. But recovery has been a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’ve come to understand my grindcoholism is not something I can cure. It can only be managed. I’m in a program and I’m working the steps. I hope to one day be able to manage my disease. I’m trying to stay strong and just take it each day as it comes. When I think I can’t manage any more, I call my sponsor for help. But the last time I tried all I could hear over the phone was the stomping tread of “Steering.” Somebody else may have fallen off the wagon.

[Full disclosure: Selfmadegod sent me a download.]

Glass Half Empty: Pessimiser's Legacy Lives Miserably Ever After

 

In retrospect, Pessimiser/Theologian Records was probably doomed to an early grave by virtue of the collective weight of addiction and bad choices embodied by its roster of toe-stubbing glumsters. While most famous for the incredibly awesome collection of Cry Now, Cry Later compilations, owner Chris Elder, also of Despise You, collected a cross-genre stable of uniquely miserable fucks who bled out their sins for our audio pleasure. Unlike a label like Willowtip, which traces its origin to a small cadre of like minded tech-death/grinders, Pessimiser was all over the genre map. Its constituents were united less by sonic similarities than they were by dismal outlook. Whether you cried now or cried later, the goal was to burrow deep into those shadowed recesses where the worst aspects of your soul rot, a polluted parade of junkie odes, misanthropic memories and downer days.

G&P Review: Dead Church/Suffering Mind

Dead Church/Suffering  Mind
Split
7 Degrees
So I says to myself, "Self, bands like Dead Church are the reason you keep getting out of bed in the morning. The song 'I Want Nothing" has everything you ask from a gloriously grisly grind tune. This Michigan trio quartet sounds like somebody royally pissed off the G'mork from The Neverending Story and if you come any closer he'll rip you to shreds. Self," I said, "Dead Church pack an insane amount of aggression into a miserly 56 seconds of minigun guitars and skull thumping drums that crash and careen like a room of ADHD toddlers on a Red Bull binge. For as short as the song is, Dead Church manage to cram in several distinct movements, stuffing less than a minute full of variety that never slacks off on the attitude. Self," I said, "'I Want Nothing' is a practically perfect grind song. What more could I possibly ask from?"
"Flip the fucking record over, asshole," Self said.
"Holy fucking shit, Self, Suffering Mind are at the absolute apex of their powers. 'War Street/Wall Street' is like the very essence of the Polish band distilled down to concentrated hatred. Dead Church are fan-fucking-tastic, but Suffering Mind probably turned in the sharpest 54 seconds of their keenly honed career. You hear that, Self? That is the sound of inevitability crashing down on your dimpled dome. It's the concerted evil of the world being barfed back on society, a putrid bile melange of everything venal, corrupt and compromised. It's the hatred slime from Ghostbusters 2 turned into weaponized audio.
"My only complaint, Self," I said, "is what the fuck is up with just a single song from each band on this 5-inch EP. Because this blue ball tingler demands a full release."
For once, myself and I agreed.

[Full disclosure: the label sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Spewtilator

Spewtilator
Inhale Awaits
Boris Records
Inhale Awaits is like walking through a party and guzzling, snorting and popping every pharmaceutical shoved into your greedy drug hole and letting the kaleidoscope of highs crash through your CNS. Spewtilator brew up Metal Blade-era Slayer thrash (as if the parody cover weren't enough of a tip off), crossover intensity and grindcore's patented high/low vocal tradeoffs over three songs that revel in everything fast and pilled up.
Spewtilator start their gonzo trip through the realms of recreational pharmacopeia with an attack of "Xanax Fury." Clearly the anti-anxiety drug, obviously being taken without a qualified prescription, is not doing its job because the song is a rager that runs like a blower and eats like a grinder as it goes all epic mid-80s thrash up in your grill. It perfectly slides into the most Slayerish of the batch, "Burn in Hell," complete with multiple atonal Hanneman/King solos. Vocals aside, you could probably slap the song on to Hell Awaits as a long lost demo track that didn't quite make the final cut without too much of a pause. Flipping the wax, Spewtilator spelunk their way through an extra sepulchral tour "Into the Crypts of Rays" just to round out their obvious influences.
I know retro thrash was the king of the kegger about four years ago and has pretty much partied itself out at this point, but Spewtilator drag knuckledragging metal far enough into the 21st Century that nothing sounds dated or stale or derivative. Inhale Awaits is an EP that takes nothing seriously, particularly itself. It's just a damn good time. Take a deep puff because hell is just going to have to wait for the party to end first.

[Full disclosure: the band sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Gowl

Gowl
BuzzBox
Self Released
Gowl is either derogatory Irish slang for the vajayjay or a disused synonym for a long, harrowing howl. I think this Connecticut trio is open to either interpretation as they dash off a solid seven inches of songs that should set a-thumpin' the hearts of Backslider aficionados. Trafficking in bondage and dominance imagery ( and a song all about Mick Harris!), Gowl turn the rhetorical tables on every sadistic bully, asshole boss, rule-bound cop, and fickle girlfriend that ever fucked the band over with tight-wound grindcore tales intended to raise welts.
Gowl grind through wave after glorious wave of feedback, searing and spitting and snarling through a wall of wondrous noise. Underneath all that keening, drummer Kyle Clements powers through the songs by alternating snare rolls with his blasts, adding a different texture to Gowl's otherwise traditional breed of grind. Everything is noisy and scabbed, open wounds and loose sutures. Second song, "Escalate This...," lives up to its name by pushing Gowl's grind to a dervish pace. The trio even play rope-a-dope with the mid-side slow down of "Can't Scream With Your Mouth Full," a vertiginous freefall moment in between  whipsaw grind. And all of that's just side fucking A. Flip the wax and do it all over again.
The whole EP sounds likes the screeching car brakes before an inevitably fatal wreck. This isn't the band you look to if variety or innovation are your thing. Instead, Gowl deliver just what they promise on the package: music for "grinders, freaks and weirdos."

[Full disclosure: the band sent me a review copy.]