tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78463001884601755062024-03-12T17:47:29.959-07:00You Will Move...PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-1270258644789047222018-01-14T12:25:00.001-08:002018-01-14T12:27:22.785-08:00Top Five Favorite Grind/Power Violence Albums Of 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>5. Fluoride - Fluoride</b></div>
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Fluoride meddle in the same muddy and savagely dissonant waters as Cloud Rat do - both their sound and style are unarguably similar. A bleeding, bottomless guitar tone leads an aural assault that feels desperate and hopeless, splintering fissures into the foundation of it's audio-being that beam with melodies and a futile shimmering of light behind sludgy breaks in short bursts of speed. Breathless, anaerobic, and distorted vocals feel as though they've been sprayed over the totality of the record like a corrosive toxin. <i>Fluoride</i> seers through the skin like enduring a ceremonial chemical burn and is over before the cauterization of nerve endings offers you a bitter relief. Better yet, maybe just reference the album art as a dead-on balls accurate portrayal of the listening experience. <a href="https://fluoridenj.bandcamp.com/"> https://fluoridenj.bandcamp.com/</a><br />
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<b>4. Antigama - Depressant</b><br />
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Antigama are calling this record a 'mini-album', but fuck all that; there are too many Grind albums that over-stay their welcome in the same amount of time that this album absolutely doesn't. The opposite of the effort that comes before it on this list, <i>Depressant</i> is remarkably clean in it's production value and that takes away from nothing, as on all Antigama releases, it's a necessity to the creative and technical cacaphony the band has always towed the line with without falling into pretentious self-awareness - and does anybody do drum-fills better than this guy? Though vocalist, Lucasz Myszkowski's vocals seem ever-so-slightly pushed a bit too far up front in the mix here, the rabid dog channeling of Barney Greenway on <i>Depressant</i> offers a bit of savagery to the clinical sonic teeth machine going bonanza behind it. Strategically punching in more groove oriented tracks here as well as some noise experimentation not only adds longevity and dynamics to the album, but feels like a conscious evolutionary step into something even more progressive than the fearless, genre-defying material that's come before it. Maybe the whole reason this 'mini-album' exists in the first place is to offer fans a smaller leap to whatever is to come next. <a href="https://selfmadegod.bandcamp.com/album/depressant"> https://selfmadegod.bandcamp.com/album/depressant</a><br />
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<b>3. Chepang - Dadhelo: A Tale Of Wildfire</b><br />
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Brandishing two drummers (and not in a Slipknot guy hitting a garbage can with a bat kind of way, but two full-on drum kits) playing simultaneously, Nepalese Grindcore swarm Chepang come barreling forth on their second full length, <i>Dadhelo - A Tale of Wildfire</i>, discharging a torrent of frenzied surges of blurring aggression that overwhelm and exorcise. The impression of 10,000 fists battering only ceases for an occasional - what I can only assume is - Nepalese serenade that can either slow the momentum of the album down or allow your senses to heal long enough for the beating to feel brand new again when the noise cascade persists moments later, that's all on perspective. Though I wasn't able to hear the aid of both drummers on the recording as obviously as one might think (I didn't know about it until I'd already known the album proper), I do believe that that specific endowment adds a subtle but not so subtle asphyxiation to the already speeding vacuum, allowing the ever-so-non-chromatic binaural bleeding of two beats happening at almost the same time to suck whatever semblance of microscopic quiet may be struggling to the forefront between notes. This record reminded me alot of last year's personal favorite Grindcore album <i>Unit 1</i> by Gendo Ikari, in both it's writing style and over-all sonic delivery; in a musical genre with as much turnover as female pornstars, that gives me hope. <a href="https://chepang.bandcamp.com/album/dadhelo-a-tale-of-wildfire">https://chepang.bandcamp.com/album/dadhelo-a-tale-of-wildfire</a><br />
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<b>2. Corrupt Moral Altar - Eunoia</b><br />
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At just over 42 minutes Corrupt Moral Altar's <i>Eunoia</i> is a marathon, but one of those really rewarding marathons where the scenery seems to cut the distance in half. And like any endurance trial, crossing the metaphorical finish line is well worth the resolve. <i>Eunoia</i> is a rather enjoyable gauntlet of human emotion, incorporating sludge laden breakdowns, crusty d-beat, clean vocals, violins and climactic crescendos to a straight forward grind attack. For me, it's got all of the catharsis of a great Converge record, with a shit-ton more blasting. The fulcrum of the album lies in the three song stretch of 'The All Consuming Self', 'The Rat King', and 'Body Horror' - a charismatic stepping away of everything that came before it to really give the record double the sense of purpose and an indefatigable quality rare to a collection as intense as this. 'Five Years' serves as the cherry on top offering one of the most satisfying finale's to a Grind record of this length since Dr.Doom's 'Apollo's Death' on the<i> Everyone Is Guilty </i>album. Good stuff here. <a href="https://corruptmoralaltar.bandcamp.com/album/eunoia">https://corruptmoralaltar.bandcamp.com/album/eunoia</a><br />
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<b>1. Full Of Hell - Trumpeting Ecstasy</b><br />
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<i>Trumpeting Ecstasy</i> makes me wish Full Of Hell would stop screwing around with exceptionally good collaborative noise efforts with The Body and just double the fuck down on their full on Grindcore releases. This album burns with so much anathema it feels as though it could be the very incantation of a curse. There is a fullness and depth to their sound here, the wholeness of everything happening comes across so much less compressed than what their contemporaries seem to be doing - some of that may have something to do with that little bit of reverb I hear behind the incredibly clean and in-your-face final mix. Adding in some killer songwriting chops, the ride through hell with the windows down that is the title track 'Trumpeting Ecstasy', and the adrenaline pumping, tribal, war-like percussion to close the album out, and the final by product is a sonic brand that leaves me almost blue-balled and salivating for more when the whole thing is over. A fantastic result of a fantastic record no matter what the genre. <a href="https://fullofhell.bandcamp.com/album/trumpeting-ecstasy">https://fullofhell.bandcamp.com/album/trumpeting-ecstasy</a>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-51195587891067648142018-01-05T11:12:00.000-08:002018-01-05T13:30:26.689-08:00Album Review: Death Toll 80K - 'Step Down'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Troll 2 is one of those movies that often gets put on a pedestal when discussing the worst movies ever made, and while no doubt it can justifiably be considered a shit-can fire of a cinematic experience, I'd argue it as far from the bottom of the barrel. Here's why: you see, the cards were stacked against it from the beginning. No budget, a lack of talented actors/actresses, language barriers throughout the entirety of the script, time constraints, the foundation of the original content, etc. It's a typical low budget horror film only atypical in the cult following it's garnered for being so awkward to watch in it's pitiable presentation.<br />
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It's the major-motion picture misfires that have potentially everything going for them that I'd platter forth as far more reprehensible than the aforementioned underdog productions like Troll 2. Remember Spawn? Aliens vs. Predator? Each with source material in graphic novel form that was far more dark, violent and interesting than the watered-down, marketed bullshit that was released in cinema to the masses. Death Toll 80k's <i>Step Down </i>is akin to those movies with every opportunity going for them to be amazing. And while the album is not at all watered down per se, it does have the talent, the skill, the writing, and the production to be amazing, and instead delivers - what is to me - a Grind-accessible mediocrity that does more harm to the genre than good.<br />
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It's all - all of it - on the vocals. Now, granted I have niche' taste within the niche' of the genre. I find I typically lean towards an incorporation of intermittent highs and lows in a song to help offer both a variance in delivery as well as some depth in emotive impact, which <i>Step Down </i>has in spades, but the inane and banal one syllable at a time conveyance over what is some really good Grindcore and Power Violence music just feels wickedly lazy and slightly imbecilic. Added to which - and I really tried here - the syllables don't match up with the lyrics they're passing forth. As if they totally and completely phoned the vocals in over the top of what was already done as a complete after-thought, without any preconceived notion of lyrics or a message. Then afterwards, it feels as if they penned some lyrics which, while I admit are rather decent, don't seem to fit at all with anything in the incomprehensible monosyllabic grunts and screams that are finalized in the mix.<br />
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There is a lot of Grindcore out there like this I get it, and I also GET it. For a lot of folks this is exactly their bag, but with all the recognition I see Death Toll 80K getting in the underground scene through the likes of under-the-radar websites way more legit than here, and various comments sections dealing with posts within the genre I personally expected a whole lot more. I hear the writing chops and production values of bands like Wormrot, and maybe even more-so Insect Warfare with the high-highs and low-lows with no in between on the vocal front, but with almost the same kind of sonic presentation look at how much more Insect Warfare or a band like Coffin Birth stand out in terms of dynamics and variation. I'd be embarrassed to put this forward to someone on the fence about the genre as something to represent an already very discredited kind of music that I think is unique and deserving of more respect. I really don't mean to be so harsh, but I think it's because I can feel the goddamn potential there beaming like a hot flare locked away in a cellar. There's already an incalculable myriad of less-than mediocre, lazy garbage out there in Grindcore, these dudes have every bit of talent, creativeness and accessibility to raise the bar more than a few notches. Right now this just isn't my cup of tea I guess. Listen <a href="https://deathtoll80k.bandcamp.com/">here</a> and then berate me about how I listen to false Grindcore. No matter how I feel, I hope you dig it - and good on them for even doing it in the first place.PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-10834220360879471622016-11-29T20:53:00.001-08:002018-01-06T12:38:20.994-08:00Top Five Favorite Grind/Power Violence Albums Of 2016I didn't contribute a whole lot here this year, for those of you paying attention I do apologize - life has gotten in the way a bit, but that doesn't mean I wasn't listening! I'm beginning to decipher my code and realize that I may be a tad more picky than I'd like to admit about the Grindcore genre, as for the second year in a row I just couldn't stand behind a solid ten picks to be released this year. As the five albums I've listed below easily stood out for me as the best, a latter half of this list would be forced passables that honestly didn't provoke a bulk of subsequent listens for one reason or another. Anywho, let me stress before you continue - just to clarify; I don't think these are the best of 2016, just some of my favorites; the best to me:<br />
<strong><br /></strong><strong>5. Venomous Concept - <em>Kick Me Silly - VC III</em></strong><br />
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I've often theorized and bullshitted about just how much I believe Grindcore is truly the not-so-new Punk music - extreme demands require extreme responses, and with internet and media outlets precipitating a systematic anesthetization to all things violent and depraved, we need a genre that martyrs it's very being as music by succumbing to it's own frenzied passion. While most Grindcore bands syncopate punk rhythms around the prioritized blast beats, Venomous Concept flips that equation, coming across more as a modern day punk band that occasionally leans on the very essence of it's members' collective roots in the Grindcore genre to punctuate it's sound. It works as both an anti-numbing agent to the beat down, as well as a possible gateway for those on the edge of the Punk tier who may in fact be intimidated by something even more extreme than that with which they are passionate about. <br />
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On <em>Kick Me Silly - VC III</em> the "supergroup" sounds like the perfect amalgam of it's parts. Herrera, Embury and Cooke (who has been playing live with ND for the past two years in Harris' unexplained absence) bring the latter day Napalm Death sound while the now defunct Brutal Truth-half utilize Lilker's feral bass and Sharp's incomparably recognizable roar to round out the band's d-beat focused punk fueled attack. While I'd still love to hear this troop get as batshit as they possibly can, it's the restrained doses of the full possibility of VC's frenzied vitriol that keep this thing coiled and popping from start to finish.<br />
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<strong>4. Wake - <em>Sowing The Seeds Of A Worthless Tomorrow</em></strong><br />
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On <em>Sowing The Seeds Of A Worthless Tomorrow</em> Wake don't give a hoot about dynamics, the stop and go strike, or anything that constitutes a casual listener's grasp of rhythm. It's all one constant, blasting dirge into dark hopelessness. The sound here throughout these eight tracks feels almost hypnotically monochromatic, which only adds to the feeling of being piled onto. It's as if somebody nasally force-fed Gaza with a half-ton of PCP (referencing one limited exposure band with another - nice). The infrequent lighter chords that are struck throughout the belligerent stampeding of blasts that provide a limited bubble for which to gasp for air in add such a depth to the music without sacrificing any of it's claustrophobic characteristics. One second longer and it would have felt like too much, one second shorter wouldn't have been enough - this tester of souls is just right.<br />
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<strong>3. Wormrot - <em>Voices</em></strong><br />
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<em> </em></strong>It took two full lengths and an EP for Wormrot to really turn my ear. With time and exposure I've gained an appreciation for the raw straightforwardness of their delivery, and though that is an easy quality for to which find yourself blending in with the rest, Wormrot continue to surprise me with sporadic surges of brief experimentation in their sound. Their influences can be easily identified, but the fact that there are so many songs on <em>Voices</em> that dedicate their entire being to said influences and in turn different aspects of the genre, stepping away from the finality of the record deposes a dynamic and versatility in writing that really makes <em>Voices</em> a fun experience. The production is the best they've had yet, and I think that's a big cog to really making each instrument stand out on it's own here, giving it a very organic, plug-in-and-play feel without sounding too raw or muddled. I always thought the hype of Wormrot in the scene was focused on the wrong things, more the geographical origin of the band than anything else - the <em>Noise </em>EP made my dumb ass pay closer attention, but <em>Voices</em> has me proclaiming that the threat is real.<br />
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<strong><em><br /></em></strong><strong>2. Nails - <em>You Will Never Be One Of Us</em></strong><br />
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Nails continue to astonish me in how they can produce music so tonally fucking heavy that moves so incredibly fast, I think Kurt Ballou may have had something to do with it. <em>You Will Never Be One Of Us</em> is a fitting third offering from the band, upping their own game in fact. Careening consciousness with sledgehammering power-violence and dizzying, Venturi-effect like blasts that succumb only to thick, slabs of crawling rhythms where strategically appropriate. Considering they're wisely sticking to the short-but-sweet M.O. of final running times under roughly 12 - 13 minutes (contractual obligations be damned), you'd think that those aforementioned qualities would make <em>You Will Never Be One Of Us</em> a forced, possibly contrived, convoluted mess. Instead however, the bombardments of sound are so well composed that the songs in fact seem longer than they are, and gratifyingly complete. Even the eight minute-plus closer doesn't feel out of place. Oh, and it's catchy as hell too!<br />
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<strong>1. Gendo Ikari - <em>Unit 1</em></strong><br />
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What the? Who the? Huh? Yes, I stumbled onto these guys whilst prowling the seedy underbelly of Bandcamp some time in early October, and in the time since - to my delight (thru no influence of my own) - have seen other blogs and social media sites begin to sing their praises. Hailing from Glasgow, UK, Gendo Ikari's 7-track debut does everything right for me. It's got the jagged, unpredictable blasting that isn't too above itself to break into wonderfully brief, groovy strides - all along maintaining a singular aural onslaught. The tones are sharp but still weighty, with a shitload of jarring, sudden brake application before projectile-like surges of straight up Grind come violently tumbling forth. It's awesome, and maybe it's because they seem so off the radar right now, or the production standard comes across as somewhat DIY (I do wish it was louder), but there is an antagonistic virulence driving behind it that feels just slightly more palpable and genuine than most right now to me, and I just can't ignore that. They ain't the first to do it, and admittedly it's not breaking any new ground, but Gendo Ikari have taken almost all of my favorite aspects of the genre and managed to put them together comprehensively into a short and caustic exhibition of appreciation for the fundamentals of the millennium's new wave of Grindcore.<br />
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<br />PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-83493186199282914512016-02-18T17:54:00.000-08:002018-01-06T12:38:44.376-08:00Top Five Favorite Grind/Power Violence Albums of 2015I wasn't all that impressed with a lot of what 2015 had to offer. I could have probably extended this list to a top 10, as I initially planned to, but I feel like the latter half would have really just been passable releases that I enjoyed but wasn't really blown away by. Maruta's <em>Remain Dystopian</em>, Fulgora's debut <em>Stratagem</em>, Agents Of Abhorrence's <em>Relief</em>, and Antigama's <em>Insolent</em> all most likely would have helped round it out; but there would have been that thick line of demarcation between the records released this year which I thought were really good, and some other stuff that I just listened to a couple of times and was never really moved by; So here are the top 5 albums that I thought deserved specific attention:<br />
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<strong>5. Beaten II Death - <em>Unplugged</em></strong><br />
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I haven't looked too much into what the consensus is on this album or this band; but I have this weird feeling that it has the potential to act as a bit of a gateway to those who don't regularly tread in extreme waters all that often. Heard of Deafheaven? For those that haven't they're a band who take the cold, swarming and often dissonant sounds of Black Metal and shape it into something warm, groovy and almost uplifting - thusly pissing off legions of narrow-minded Black Metal elitist fans who just can't accept the attention it seems to be drawing from crowds who have never bought a Marduk CD or debated the merits of influence Emperor had on the new wave of BM forged outside of Norway. Beaten II Death's <em>Unplugged</em> could be that same black sheep within the Grindcore genre (perhaps the track title "Death To False Grindcore" - in quotes - is another giveaway). What that means to me is that it's a band that's actually doing something different, and kind of daring, and I like that. Everything on<em> Unplugged</em> is something I could easily slip into a playlist for anyone of my friends that would consider a band as lame as Lamb Of God as borderline "too heavy" and maybe even win them over with it (though still doubtful). It's accessible, and doesn't take itself too seriously either - both in it's content (based mostly on the song titles) as well as some of the over-the-top porngrindish guttural wretches that carry themselves on too long - possibly a downside to the overall experience. But never-the-less, <em>Unplugged</em> is a welcome breath of fresh air, and damn enjoyable.<br />
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<strong>4. Evisorax - <em>Goodbye To The Feast...Welcome To The Famine</em></strong><br />
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Teetering the line somewhere between the thin treble-heavy veil of Blood I Bleed and the jagged technicality of Discordance Axis, Evisorax's third full length <em>Goodbye To The Feast...Welcome To The Famine</em> floats like a butterfly and rips open throats like a roided up Cujo. With zero breathing room and flash-in-the-pan running time, Evisorax harness the perfect Grind concoction whose nitrous-like high feels like an audio vaporization of your essence happening right between the ears. A thicker, lower production on previously Scott Hull mastered releases is abandoned for a razor like sharpness that bleeds itself into riff changes keeping the over-all sound raw and almost garage-like; the songs bulk up enough to get the point across on more rhythmic breakdowns here and there without ever really killing the over-all momentum. This is fast swarm-of-insects type grind done very right.<br />
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<strong>3. Cloud Rat - <em>Qliphoth</em></strong><br />
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It's place as a Grind album is questionable, but fuck all that, Cloud Rat are on a roll. 2014's <em>Blind River</em> was a dark, grinding and emotional experience - palpably visceral and desperate. 2015's <em>Qliphoth</em> enhances every aspect of it's predecessor, including upping the melody and beauty that seem to gestate beneath the punky hardcore riffs that break up the blasts, and sometimes even holding it up high for all to gaze upon (i.e. the wonderful opening of a fist that is 'Thin Vein', or ambient 'The Killing Horizon'). Things slow down a lot within the crippling journey that is <em>Qliphoth</em>, but it never takes away from the album's momentum, as that momentum isn't based on speed or even aggressiveness, but a longing desperation for a breathable atmosphere above a surface that is just out of reach. Cloud Rat dangles hope in front of the listener like a loaded syringe, which <em>Qliphoth</em>'s experience has us violently jonesing for.<br />
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<strong>2. Napalm Death - <em>Apex Predator</em></strong> </div>
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I didn't want to do it but I have to be honest with myself, I love Napalm Death; and quite honestly I really love what they've done with the second half of their existence thus far since <em>Enemy Of The Music Business </em>- sorry Jon Chang. I know that putting a Napalm Death album even in the number two spot of top Grindcore albums of the year is to most elitists the equivalent of talking about Metallica anywhere, anytime, to anyone whose delved deeper into more honest/intense bands within the heavy metal genre, but we shouldn't let their flagship status take away from their uncompromising tenure, and their earned position as veterans and/or poster boys for the Grind genre (and I should learn to heed my own advice). Considering their style in the grand scheme of anything played with distortion, ND still eviscerate without an agenda. <em>Apex Predator</em> is yet another evolutionary step towards an unknown destination within the band's impressive catalogue; how the fuck do you manage to remain so vital, invigorated, and fresh sounding in such an infested space? Especially when one of the biggest adversaries to overcome is your own discography? Dissonant chords, goth-like reverberating vocals, industrial percussion, all added to a familiar formula of rabid barking over blurring riffs that toy with comprehensive song structures and - hooks! I can always argue that 90% of every song on every album in the second half of this band's career has parts that could be cut out to bring each piece's over all running time to a more handicapping punch to the gut; but given that that glaring issue is easily ignored because of the quality of the song itself speaks volumes to this band's talent. The fact that <em>Apex Predator</em> arguably out does every album that's outdone every album they've done before it in the last 20 years is impressive and awesome. And that last riff...that closing stomp of 'Copulating Snakes'...c'mon.<br />
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<strong>1. The Kill - <em>Kill Them...All</em></strong><em> </em></div>
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<em>Kill Them...All</em>, The Kill's second full length effort amongst an ass-ton of EP's, splits, and demos is - and forgive the redundancy here - a beefed up wad of really pissed off Grind. The sound of the production, writing style, over-all instrumentation, as well as the Richard Johnson-like vocals are very much akin to Agoraphobic Nosebleed's 2009 straight-shooter<em> Agorapocalypse </em>(though maybe not as loud), fronting seriously strong structures whose power feels all the more amplified by the heavy bombardment of bass drum in-the-red sonics that add that pulse-rifle-like throbbing to the already pummeling tracks here. There is many a spot on the album where it even seems to suck the riffs happening in front of it into it's sound like a temporary Venturi Effect, thus creating a dizzying yet satisfying synchronization of chaos that feels like it's sucking the oxygen out of your living space and is over just a few milliseconds after you realize it's even happening at all. With strategic slow downs that never drag on too long and sudden singled-out guitar riff changes to reset the berserk, The Kill's sound on this record never get's tired nor hypnotic. It's characteristics like that which make this record truly top notch. Punk riffs propelled by constantly recharging blast beats brings forth a bit of a likeness to fellow Aussie's Extortion, though it all just seems twice as grindy and powerful than anything they've spat forth (to take NOTHING away from Extortion). <em>Kill Them...All</em> is chalk full of jagged right, left and diagonal turns that go places beyond where you expect them to go, sometimes even just taking the option of barreling through and knocking you back further than you'd thought they would.</div>
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PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-65374122930602610922016-01-29T13:31:00.002-08:002016-01-29T13:31:41.781-08:00Album Review: Coffin Birth - 'Necrotic Liquefacation'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Following in the arterial spray of way awesome Australian powerviolence/grind peers like Extortion, Agents of Abhorrence, Manhunt and (less awesome) Captain Cleanoff, comes the next great export Coffin Birth. Though they share a paragraph and continent with good company, their sound is more akin to the aural battering of Insect Warfare, with the striding hooks and groove of <em>Abuse/Noise</em>-era Wormrot surgically stitched in. Goddamn that's a lot of name dropping. Their 2014 nine track / nine minute collection of vitriol titled <em>Necrotic Liquefacation</em> is as fucking enjoyable a pummeling as a pummeling could be. The production is dense and impellent, never really allowing itself to indulge in the cliche' ulterior of the genre which would be taking full advantage of their thickness and slowing things down to doomy crawls - by NOT doing that they really keep things interesting and make every minute count. Not to mention the fantastic catchiness of actual rhythm breaks used sparingly enough to make the whole record stand out from what could otherwise be misconstrued as another almost mediocre gore-grind act at first and second listens (in sound not visual format) . One could eeeeasily lose their shit half-way through either or both 'Pixelated Beyond Recognition' and '101 Ways Not To Become A Martyr'... There's even a triumphant battering of riffage in the middle of closer 'Avian Anthrax Terror Attack'. <em>Necrotic Liquefacation </em>is belligerent, driving and playful all at the same time; like being sexually assaulted by a Grizzly Bear - so I've heard. If I'd had known about it and was making best of lists at the time this fucker would have wound up somewhere at the top of the heap back in 2014 (somewhere between Gridlink's <em>Longhena</em> and Cloud Rat's <em>Blind River </em>- more name dropping!!!). It's really good, and I'm not even all that huge an Insect Warfare fan (gulp)! No new ground being broken or boundaries being pushed, but a good execution and revitalizing of a sound that some of us may be growing numb to. Check it out hither: <a href="https://coffinbirthgrind.bandcamp.com/album/necrotic-liquefaction">https://coffinbirthgrind.bandcamp.com/album/necrotic-liquefaction</a>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-69299714602600739652016-01-25T12:08:00.000-08:002016-01-25T12:08:58.167-08:00Concert Experience: Fuck The Facts with Nequient and The Ox King @ The LiveWire Lounge - 09.03.15<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sorry for the delay here, I've had this one in my queue for some time just never got around to the proof reading. Fuck The Facts; I've wanted to really be into Fuck The Facts for a long time, but there was always something in the way. I totally dig their approach, their sound, their diversity and experimentation, but they've never come out with something I've been able to sink my teeth into from start to finish. As with most Grind bands I think they shine brightest in an EP format; but that's not to say that their full lengths aren't wickedly entertaining to indulge in. Yet - to be annoyingly vague - while I think their songs are well crafted and propulsive, I think there is a lack of punch to their music. Fuck The Facts take their songs to unpredictable boundaries of the Grindcore blueprint and often beyond, but there is never that moment where the whirlwind synchronizes into a solid impact. Perhaps it's there and I'm just not hearing it in the production, which often highlights other aspects of their sound amazingly like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7geuW4keDV0">this</a>. Their latest (respectable) DIY effort <em>Desire Will Rot</em> is a fantastic and furious journey into all of the aforementioned characteristics that Fuck The Facts toy with successfully, the only negative to it is that the album just isn't loud enough - or I'm just going deaf, which is also a legit possibility.<br />
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This theory was personally justified when they brought their A-game to the LiveWire lounge last week. FTF sounded twice as thick and 'punchy' than they do digitally or on wax - as is no surprise, but music this technically precise and layered is often a troubling feat to duplicate live. Fuck The Facts sounded amazing - and presented as a foursome rather than the five articled to have recorded their latest LP - not that the fifth member's absence (Johnny Ibay) was noticeable audibly - because they treaded forth like touring veterans who truly enjoy the experience they've been able to grant themselves all these years and every song purged forth was a roided up rendering of it's original studio form - which in turn changed my perspective on their discography - live show = success. Fuck The Facts came across as a band unconcerned with the size of the room or number of people that they play in front of - the performance felt as though it would have been the same being televised nationally as opposed to playing second fiddle to a man named Gobbo whose birthday seemed to be the reason for the season that night (the entire evening was billed as such). I didn't look behind me all that often during the show, but there seemed to be more people buying shots for the birthday boy back at the bar than there were paying appropriate attention to the catharsis happening on stage - their loss.<br />
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When the set was over the group cleaned up and ran on back to the front to unpack and man their merch booth - road dog style. I hadn't picked up the new album yet as I was waiting for the show so my money could go directly to them, and when I offered them the $30 for their $10 CD and told them to keep the change for gas, lead vocalist Melanie Mongeon was cool enough to throw a whole bunch of other shit my way to make sure I got my monies worth. I walked out that night finally converted to a Fuck The Facts fan; as my brain now seems to be able to fill the gaps of what was previously lacking on their LP's with memories of their live performance sound. It's all the more awesome because being a fan of FTF is a rewarding reap; as they're a band that truly enjoys making new music, and making it often and making it accessible - with ten full lengths and nine EP's and compilations I'm going to enjoy catching up on what I don't already have.<br />
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Openers The Ox King sounded huge and major label with their mix of Early Graves meets Converge hardcore/crust, and Nequient - who treated the evening as their record release party - leaned a bit heavy on Death Metal stylings for my taste - though their sound tracked on the actual <em>Infinite Regress</em> album is way more Weekend Nachos-esque than it came across live, so - my bad. Check out their bandcamp sites below:<br />
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<a href="https://the-ox-king.bandcamp.com/">https://the-ox-king.bandcamp.com/</a><br />
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<a href="http://nequient.bandcamp.com/">http://nequient.bandcamp.com/</a><br />
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<a href="https://fuckthefacts.bandcamp.com/">https://fuckthefacts.bandcamp.com/</a><br />
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And this is bad ass: <br />
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PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-15010903385596712352015-03-23T14:32:00.001-07:002015-03-23T14:42:33.166-07:00Album Review: Hivesmasher - 'Gutter Choir'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I get nervous about investing myself in new bands. There is many a genre out there where I've followed the formula of having merely a handful of groups I feel connect with me and represent that piece of the pie of what they do very well that I end up putting those self-stamped elite high upon a pedestal, and don't necessarily bother getting to know the other foot soldiers of that genre nor give them a fair shot. It's not that I'm trying to be snobbish about it, I've just been burned in the past with burnout... You find a band that does something so well that instead of just sticking with said band and accepting their sound as theirs and unique to them you dive headfirst into a pool of lackluster imitators to get that same fix that either don't do it as well or you just don't connect with for whatever reason. By the time you realize the mistake you've made by spreading yourself a bit too thin you've already watered down the sound of the original band that sent you down this path. I know I'm kind of a minority in this philosophy, but I still get the desired emotional results any of those genres are designed to deliver when I keep my cache elite. I often question if the guy blasting Gridlink in the car next to me (never happened by the way) on his way to lunch gets the same impact from it that I do when I selectively listen to said band whilst in the gym or punching a wall... Or the dude cleaning his garage on a summer afternoon while Pallbearer meanders in the background, is it moving him the way it moves me as I engage from the top of a wooded hill in the cold of late November? Or am I just an incredible snob plagued with tunnel vision? I just don't want to lose the rush that Grindcore delivers so well.<br />
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That being said, you have to take that risk when you want to find something new, because it's very rare that something is served your way in such an underrated genre - even with the internet's many degrees of bolstering. More than a few of my Grindcore elite have burned out, leaving me with fantastic back catalogues that will never be built upon, gaps in the future where I long to relive the experience of hearing one of my favorite bands deliver a beating I get to indulge in for a first time. I've found that the only fair way to sample something new from a band dabbling in the blasts and blur is to open my ears to an entire album from start to finish, an opportunity I'm able to revel in more easily thanks to Smart Phones and a recent subscription to Spotify. You have to accept the entire ass kicking before you can judge it's merit. Hivesmasher delivers...And the gap they fill? Bodies In The Gears Of The Apparatus.<br />
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For the six of us out there that really enjoyed BITGOTA it's a ballsy statement, but there is a familiarity to Hivesmasher's brand of technical clusterfuck-grind that I couldn't shake after the first full listen. <em>Gutter Choir</em> is body-chalk full of unpredictable palm-muted gallops collapsing beneath blasting grind surges that bridge brief driving hooks. The tracks barrel at you so quickly with barely a space to take a breath in between. The viscosity of the noise is rivaled by a sense of humor buried in the varying RPMs, as is obvious with track titles like 'Can of Awesometism' and 'Enroute to Meatland' - not to mention the same penchant for un-needed movie samples that potentially suck from the albums belligerence (the only true downfall I have these days with the aforementioned BITGOTA's <em>Symian Hybrid Prototype</em>). The production is better than most debuts in this genre, and the band even displays the same sort of 'do whatever the fuck we want' kind of disposition with a thirty minute brain-dump of samples and noise in the last track 'Send Me To Satan' that serve as a precursor to a tech-grind cover of Foo Fighters' 'Everlong'.<br />
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Whilst opener 'Bye Bye Baby' lulls you into an almost melodic ending after a powerviolent opening attack, it's follow-up 'Vomitouch' actually sounds like the swarming of insects likened to the band's moniker, with a similar vibe to serve as a trifecta in 'Strangled Beings and Vice Versa' that you won't even realize you've gotten through until it's over and you check the numbers. The entire album works as a collective fist here, and while the tracks are jaggedly stop and go, hold and release, there is a flow beneath it all that keeps you from tensing down until the break in the last song. A definite standout for me is 'And They Thought We'd Forget', which brazens an almost epic feel within it's chaos, the kind of the thing that feels like a bloodstained flag being hoisted amongst ongoing carnage.<br />
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I've listened to both Hivesmasher's <em>Gutter Choir</em> and BITGOTA's <em>Symian Hybrid Prototype </em>back to back after the lightbulb went off and feel pretty strongly about the similarities in sound. I don't feel like anyone is getting ripped off because Hivesmasher puts forth a really solid album here that I enjoyed right away, most likely because I'm still choking on the trail of smoke BITGOTA left when they up and fuckin' stopped being. I'd definitely be curious to see if anybody else ever felt/feels that way about the record and identifies a similarity. Because desperation can really fuck with the sense and senses. I dig the hell out of <em>Gutter Choir</em>, and am so glad I gave it a shot, because as far as I'm concerned I'm adding them to the elite.<br />
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Bandcamp page:<br />
<a href="http://hivesmasher.bandcamp.com/">http://hivesmasher.bandcamp.com/</a><br />
<br />PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-38377532994155300472015-03-03T20:20:00.000-08:002015-03-03T20:29:36.065-08:00Album Review: Fiend - 'Derailed'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Fresno outfit's debut 9 song E.P. is like a six minute slow motion punch in the stomach sped-up - if that makes any sense. Sonically these brahs have it going ON, I dig the heavy-on-the-low-end Nails/Kill The Client power here with the old school high-and-tight snare to kind of counter it. The tracks rumble and burst through in gloriously monochromatic fashion, leaving the listener wondering if they're still hearing the same song they have been for the last 26 seconds or Fiend has bulldozed them further down the tracklist, and I always enjoy that quality in a Grind EP - when the whole thing is over before you know it by only the sound of the suffocating silence they've turn-tabled onto your cochlears. The vocals do leave a bit to be desired on a personal level, they teeter 50/50 on the extreme pursed-lip guttural bottom, and the high pitched scream at the top of the spectrum with no in between. Both ranges are completely indecipherable and the low vox almost kind of slow down the dark and beautiful shit-bonanza happening behind them with their dragged out Cannibal Corpsey brooootality. I just found myself wanting them to sing faster as the album progressed and it never happened. It's unfortunately almost somewhat comedic at some points. When Fiend do consciously slow down into a groove, as on the beginning of "Display of Insecurity', and 'Suffer In Silence' it works just fine (and what a groove it is). They cover the gamut here and don't paint outside the lines but the pummeling is still delivered. 'Derailed' sounds like grade-A professional quality grind, and while you could argue that it is a more than a bit run-of-the-mill it's always nice to have a band like this in your back pocket given the brief life-spans of so many other outfits out there and the ocean of mediocre nonsense that doesn't have the sonic anvil to the spine that these nine tracks bolster. I'll be keeping my eye on you, Fiend.<br />
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Here's their bandcamp page you sons of bitches: <a href="http://fiendgrind.bandcamp.com/album/derailed-ep">http://fiendgrind.bandcamp.com/album/derailed-ep</a>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-31928342302651392902015-02-15T20:34:00.001-08:002015-02-15T20:34:59.786-08:00Concert Review: Napalm Death / Voivod / Exhumed / Iron Reagan / Ringworm - "Of Space and Grind Tour" @ Reggie's Rock Club - 02/10/2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<strong>Ringworm:</strong><br />
Didn't get there in time....stupid traffic.<br />
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<strong>Iron Reagan:</strong><br />
These guys were a blast - not that kind of blast. I only knew of their reputation as being a bit of a hardcore/thrash throwback band consisting of a couple of members from Municipal Waste - and that was enough to make me not interested in buying any of their albums, because I have this ridiculous notion that people who love that 80's thrash are stuck there - and wind up being ridiculously close minded about everything else, ummmm - hypocrite much? Their sound was great, and their riffs were catchy in all the right places (just like 80's thrash!), and when they sped it up and knocked out five tunes in under four minutes in the middle of their set I couldn't help but liken their more punk-rooted songs to 'Sick'-era Extortion, and that's really, really alright. They didn't take themselves too seriously, and seemed to be having a genuinely good time on stage. I'd be interested in checking out more of these blokes.<br />
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<strong>Exhumed:</strong><br />
I own a couple of Exhumed albums but the phase of my life where I was actually listening to them was really short. It kind of happened as I was teetering on the edge there just before totally falling into the indulgence of Grindcore. I always dug their chaotic sound but the gore-theme was something I could just never relate to. I don't mind it, I'm not turned off by it - I mean, I sat through the uncut version of 'A Serbian Film' (I'm not even going to link that) and work with that kind of shit all the time. I just don't relate to it in real life, and that relation to something emotive in the music is what really makes the purge for me, and that's the same reason I never got into (prepare to gasp) Carcass. I guess I just missed my window with it. Exhumed's live set was a bit muffled in comparison to Iron Reagan, but like a snuff film - it worked for them. Pretty impressive how both the bassist and rhythm guitarist share lead vocals whilst canoodling all over the guitar neck like it was the finger olympics, there is no doubt that these guys are talented songwriters and performers. Halfway through their performance some dude came aping onto the stage in full-on blood spattered surgical scrubs wielding a chainsaw and dove into the crowd, loved seeing that - I always dig when a band like this shows that they ain't takin' the whole thing too seriously and are just having fun with it, not to mention that smell of exhaust and gasoline that came lofting in over the audience only added to the ambiance. I can't take anything away from Exhumed here, as their performance seemed pretty flawless. I'm sure if my neck beard was in full bloom and I had all of the Guinea Pig movies at home on VHS I would have really enjoyed them a bit more, I keed, I keed.<br />
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<strong>Voivod:</strong><br />
I admit... Initially this was another band that was just in the way of seeing Napalm Death, shame on me. I know about Voivod, but I know very little. There are two bands that I've kind of always wanted to really sink my teeth into, that I think if I gave it a real chance and dove in I'd really get a lot out of it - I've just been intimidated by their discographies, and that's Neurosis and Voivod...It's like, where do you begin? The beginning? The best? How do you even know? Voivod was wickedly impressive live. I'm very rarely won over by a band I've never heard first on a record like I was with Voivod. Their sound was hard and clear, and their stage presence was a lot of fun. Proggy in spots, thrashy in others, other-worldly all around - I'm sure to all the salty Voivod dogs out there I've just described every album they've ever done. The band performed their new single <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz7l9M5V5Ds">'We Are Connected'</a>, and for me it was one of the more memorable songs of their set. This performance definitely gave me the kick in the arse I needed to stop making excuses and start digging in.<br />
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<strong>Napalm Death:</strong><br />
I'm a tad biased here because I think Napalm Death fuckin' kill, but guess what? Napalm Death fuckin' killed. ND took the stage beneath 'Utopia Banished''s sample-driven 'Vision Conquest' and in good form opened with 'I Abstain'. They then jumped forward without missing a beat romping into 'Time Waits For No Slave's 'Brink Of Extinction' and 'Smash A Single Digit', the "single" off of their latest release 'Apex Predator: Easy Meat'. They did a great job of covering the gamut here jumping all over their discography; all the while still fronting tracks from their latest release, which seemingly had the least crowd response - indicating either people just hadn't gotten around to digesting the new album yet, or the majority of the crowd was rooted in the earlier phase of their writing. Judging by the variety of age in the audience I'd wager it was a combination of both. I'd say there was about a 50 - 60% turnover in the crowd after Voivod left the stage, altering the ratio of guys to girls from 20:1 to 450:1. <br />
Unfortunately guitarist Mitch Harris was not on tour with the band this time around due to an illness in the family - but fortunately ex-Brutal Truth axeman Erik Burke was taking his place and not missing a beat (and there were a lot of them - grind humor). The set list, however, was noticeably steered away from the songs that feature heavily on Harris' trademark shriek. Totally understandable, but I would have loved to hear the likes of 'Sink Fast, Let Go', 'Beyond The Pale', 'The Silence Is Deafening' and etc. Frontman Barney Greenway took a few of the high notes here and there, and sounded as ferocious if not more so than he does on the wax everywhere else. Which left me pondering how the frack that brummie doesn't just eviscerate his voice box every night. While bassist Shane Embury's hand became a blur over the strings, Greenway jogged and spastically jerked all over the stage, keeping the stagehand busy untying the knots in his mic wire on more than one occasion - to which the English gentlemen gratefully apologized for. How old are these guys again? And what a pleasure it was to hear tracks like 'Scum', 'M.A.D.', and 'Suffer The Children' with the modern day punch of sound vibrating behind your ribs. Even 'A Plague Rages' packed more of a bunch than it's bass-grinding original. The band ended with 'Adversarial/Copulating Snakes', the closing track on the new album and I couldn't have been happier with that. What a ridiculously powerful riff to wrap things up with. Good show, good sound, good songs - I was impressed. <br />
On a personal note, I'd love to see Burke maybe added to the line-up as a second guitarist; not that I think they need it - because the anvil is destroying with the weight it's at just fine. But given the fact that ND's line up is already completely different than the one that started the band, and they've gone through so many changes throughout the years before really riding steady with where they're at - I'd dig it if Napalm Death became a sort-of musical force, or entity more than a mortal band with an expiration date. I'd love to see the torch slowly handed off over the next twenty years or so to another group of musicians who would be capable of carrying on the carnage and evolutionizing the sound. I know I'm probably the only one out there that feels this way, and nobody wants to have somebody else either take credit for, or tarnish the legacy that they built - but after damn near thirty years and fifteen albums - plus EP's, live records, and cover discs - Napalm Death, at least in my eyes, has become a symbol for the extreme, and I'd love to see them become immortal (not <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wcaYJrn8Wo">Immortal</a>). They've already got the record for the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ansBui-_w80">shortest song</a>, how about they out-live the Stones.... Just throwing that out there. Here was the headlining set list:<br />
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Vision Conquest<br />
I Abstain<br />
Brink Of Extinction<br />
Smash A Single Digit<br />
Walls Of Confinement<br />
Scum<br />
M.A.D.<br />
The Kill<br />
Control<br />
Cesspits<br />
Nazi Punks Fuck Off<br />
Everyday Pox<br />
How The Years Condemn<br />
Dead<br />
Timeless Flogging<br />
Suffer The Children<br />
Plague Rages<br />
Unchallenged Hate<br />
You Suffer<br />
Adversarial / Copulating Snakes<br />
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<br />PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-55759433044109640332014-05-19T13:31:00.000-07:002014-05-22T13:10:45.017-07:00Concert Review: Pig Destroyer / Weekend Nachos / Plague Bringer / The Lion's Daughter @ Reggie's Rock Club - 05.17.14<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmcobzxKu4Db-9fUcvI6Y88OCMLtTcJvtD9ue0Uk2PUycW8v7VD9OIClZxqQ_jtqkVmaW365zbBkt8TpmlIfNLVDeB-MREHk4NgMss1uO3o20CSXFiRjXoNbPkQsXuP56zSPdLvHrdtI8/s1600/pigdestroyerreggies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmcobzxKu4Db-9fUcvI6Y88OCMLtTcJvtD9ue0Uk2PUycW8v7VD9OIClZxqQ_jtqkVmaW365zbBkt8TpmlIfNLVDeB-MREHk4NgMss1uO3o20CSXFiRjXoNbPkQsXuP56zSPdLvHrdtI8/s1600/pigdestroyerreggies.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
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<strong>The Lion's Daughter</strong>:<br />
Opening band The Lion's Daughter is a sonically impressive St. Louis group whose sound staggers somewhere between the dense, straightforward, neanderthalic anger of Early Graves and the black metal framed extreme accessibility of Deafheaven. I was actually pretty impressed with their set, more so obviously not having any preconceived notion or expectations. Bottom heavy Converge-like hardcore riffs de-evolve into anvil-dragging sludge doom, the whole thing stitched together with bursts of dissonant black metal riffing and percussion. I don't know that much more about these gents, whether they're signed or unsigned or whathaveyou, but I know that their live sound was big and very professional, and also that it was well received given the rest of the more grind-pure bands on the bill. Kudos. <br />
<strong>Plague Bringer</strong>:<br />
The second act of the evening was Chicago-local Plague Bringer, an industrial/grind band established in 2002 that consists of one lead vocalist, two guitarists, and a drum machine that stands monolithically centered in the foreground like an ominous Mother Brain to it's prominent drones. Once my ears adjusted to the sharp guitar sound driven by the high-treble digital beats behind it (a severe contrast to the low-tone heavy Lion's Daughter before them) I thought to liken them to a much more conservative The Locust. While I admit to never hearing anything they've done in an album format, I'd say that the cuts they served up live on this fine evening painted very much between the lines of most other grind bands that function with a flesh and blood organism behind the kit. In other words there were no 10,000 beats per minute berserker-blasts that would best utilize the advantageousness of a machine helping you to do things with your music that you couldn't do with an aforementioned humanoid pummeling the skins, thus maybe allowing you to paint a bit outside the lines and offer something maybe a bit more edgy - kind of like The Locust! But again, I only experienced a very small amount of Plague Bringer, maybe a bit less than half of their library based on their two album discography, so what do I know really? I'll say god bless to anyone that perseveres in the sound they do for as long as they have and continue to enjoy doing it knowing there will be little to no fame, recognition, or monetary reward to their blood, sweat and tears. And while one member of the band seemed genuinely and refreshingly appreciative and really positive about being there in his between song ramblings and thank you's, I could have done without the lead singer telling the crowd to stop standing around like a bunch of "old ladies". Not that I'm pretentious or offended by any of that kind of shit, because hey - you're a front man I get it - you want to elicit the response in others that the music does in your head, but the crowd will move if your music moves them, plain and simple. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine I suppose. You want ape shit? Play a show whose headliner has a smaller fan base or start writing different shit. But I hope you get there Plague Bringer for those haven't gotten it yet.<br />
<strong>A moment of gratuitous bitching</strong>:<br />
By this time in the evening I was beginning to ponder a whole bunch of shit. Am I getting too old for these kinds of shows? Did I want to stay on the floor front and center where I was or not? Is that dude over there really a chick? Is the guy in the electric wheelchair ten feet away from me next to the stage going to be okay when Weekend Nachos starts their set? Most of all, I was thinking about how emotionally and physically draining it is to sit through three opening sets of heavy doom and grind, and how difficult it is not to let it take away from the catharsis that should be in the adrenaline rush of when that headlining act that you came to see blasts into their first song. I get the idea of opening bands, everyone needs that exposure - that chance to play - that chance to allow people who have never heard their music before maybe get a chance in it's truest form - the live setting. But at this point I kind of wished it wouldn't be a whole bunch of more of the same at these shows. Give me some weird fucked up experimental noise bullshit, or a real somber drone thing going on, like the slowest parts of Earth or something. Because three heavy ass doom and grind band sets with grindcore and thrash played in between over the speakers during take down and set up really dulled my senses to what this kind of music is supposed to do in the short controlled burst of time it's supposed to do it. Maybe me and my vagina should have just come a bit later in the evening right? I just think there are a lot of people out there who miss the point, or maybe just don't get out of what this music can give by saturating themselves with it. I guess if everybody in the room thinks you're the asshole except for you it kind of makes you wonder. Or were there others? Never-the-less, despite all of that, getting lost in my own contemplations amongst the growing pungency of the Pig Destroyer signature beer 'Permanent Funeral' and the collective moistness of the crowd surrounding me, when Weekend Nachos hit the stage it all went away and I began to have fun.<br />
<strong>Weekend Nachos</strong>:<br />
Weekend Nachos took to the stage like a breath of fresh air through the carnage of a battlefield. Their energy, and more importantly, the vibe that they themselves seemed just as happy to be there as every flailing body in the pit pumped life back into my shitty and pretentious self. With an almost sardonic grin seemingly tattooed on his face, lead singer John Hoffman playfully stomped, bounded and jumped to the band's bass-heavy brand of sludge and hardcore between whole-body locked muscle spasms of spitting vocals during freight-train heavy blasts of grind. They were a blast.<br />
<strong>Pig Destroyer</strong>:<br />
Just before the headlining set a short 10 minute independent film based on the soliloquized ravings of a love-lorned man gone bent originally penned in the inlet of the Prowler In The Yard album by Pig Destroyer vocalist J.R. Hayes was premiered. It was a well done film and definitely a cool little addition to the evening, but like any movie you've seen that was inferior to the book, you tend to want to forget it after you've seen it, because the version in your own deranged little head is always better. When the flick ended Pig Destroyer took the stage. The impact of their presence was unfortunately slightly diminished by some brief audio hiccups during their first two tracks "Scarlett Hourglass" and "Thumbsucker" by a severely dialed down guitar tone. By the time they got to "Sheet Metal Girl" everything sounded just the way it was supposed to - better in fact with the addition of their new bassist to add to the bottom end. Between songs a visibly frustrated and pained Hayes confessed to the crowd that he had blown his voice out the night before, but it only added to the palpable strain each one of the songs spat forth, making each shriek, yell and bark make Hayes look like a rabid dog trying to barf up it's own lungs. Songs of three or four were bundled into quick buckshots between eerie audio interludes, mostly lifted from the interludes present on the albums themselves - allowing the band (and the crowd) a much needed opportunity to catch their breath as well as multiple build- ups-to-smash-downs through out the show. A live grind multiple orgasm if you will. Pig Destroyer covered the gamut in their onstage onslaught, pulling primarily from their last four releases. 'Cheerleader Corpses', 'Trojan Whore', 'Piss Angel', 'Terrifyer', 'Pretty In Casts', 'Rotten Yellow', 'Heathen Temple', 'Sis', 'The American's Head', 'Baltimore Strangler', 'Eve', and 'The Bug' all made their appearances and then some. The crowd went noticeably bananas for 'Hyper Violet' and 'Starbelly'. 'The Diplomat' was the one song encore - and the inhabitants of Reggie's reacted appropriately as though this was going to be the one last big hoo rah for a very long time, after all it's been a good eight years since the last time Pig Destroyer rolled through the Midwest, who knows when the next time will be. I can knock this one off of my bucketlist. While I would have loved to hear some reworked cuts off of '38 Counts of Battery' with a bassist, and definitely would have maybe shat myself a bit to 'Octagonal Stairway', the night was no less satisfying in their absence. Kudos to Hayes for soldiering through ripped chords, and the rest of the members for taking the time away from their real jobs and families to make their way out this far and giving us all a good dose of it. See you in 2022.<br />
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p.s.: The dude in the wheelchair survived just fine.PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-49561078357654795062014-03-17T13:54:00.000-07:002014-03-17T21:04:21.936-07:00Album Review: Wormrot - Noise<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I tried and I tried and I tried but I just never saw the potential greatness for Wormrot that a lot of other genre aficionado's were spouting when the band released there mid-level label debut 'Abuse'. I take that back - I felt the potential, but I didn't feel that album, or the one that followed it. For me it meandered a bit too much in the traditionalism of late-80's grindcore and lacked a certain unpredictability and off-the-wall intensity to it, and from what I have found in parallel worlds on the internet I'm the only one that felt that way (though admit to thoroughly enjoying the track 'Fuck...I'm Drunk). I think a lot of that had to do with the potential that I felt there. This band was sonically threatening, it was a perfectly designed killing machine, with all it's parts in the right place and a clip full of deadly ammunition locked and loaded, it was just aimed in the wrong direction and being used as a coat rack on a parade float locked away in a garage someone had forgotten about. In all honesty I probably wouldn't have given this new material a listen had it been a full album, but I thought I'd give the corpse one last forced breath....I'm sure glad I did.<br />
Opener 'Loathsome Delusions' violently evolves from a single line of feedback into a bottom heavy hardcore stand-on-two-legs Weekend Nacho-esque chest thumper and then quickly into a frenzied tear-yourself-apart grindcore berserker attack before it all locks into itself and gallops off and through the drywall. It's like watching Cronenberg's 'The Fly' at warp speed. And before you collect your brain cells back together from the jarring they've just surprisingly endured and have a chance to soliloquy "what the fuck?!" 'False Assumptions' comes careening off the tracks, pummels you into the floor and rolls you into ground beef with industrial sized freight train cars in the form of blast beats. 'Outburst Of Annoyance' stands out in the middle of this EP with it's striding rhythms that finally break free from the rest of the album's sonic agoraphobia and violently dances in a perception of vast openness, feeling the rays of natural overcast light and breathing real air all too briefly before being snapped back into the gears of the complex teeth machine that is devouring everything in it's path. 'Breed To Breed' 's stop and go grind finds it's groove a third of the way through it's track and morphs into a trademark Nasum kill-bonanza, and 'Perpetual Extinction' is a schizophrenic aural assault that compresses several sub-styles of the genre into a final <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlAsSyDAWR8">Death Blossum</a> attack before the barrage of crazy-fists in the beginning of the album closer 'Many Funerals' churns into an almost valiant stride of desperation that fades out at the end. The production is top-notch, dare I say that it's perfect for the sound it's suiting. Low fist-to-brick bass drums and tight snares pepper distorted guttural bass lines and multiple vocal styles that morph more times than John Carpenter's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqVbOSEsJNo">The Thing</a> on PCP (is there an underlying Sci-fi thing happening here?). It's essentially the same sound Wormrot have always had but finally put against a worthy opponent. Force this down my gullet with no label and I'd have never guessed it was them, but I'm sooooo glad to hear them do it, and soooo glad to experience potential met. Adding to the awesomeness is the short EP format which allows this batch o' tracks to do exactly what it - and it's entire genre - is meant to do and that's cattle-prod itself into your skull and scramble your brains, leaving you face down on the slaughterhouse floor catatonic and saturated with your own piss before you ever even knew where you were. To me, personally - I'll go out on a limb and say that these five tracks in this short format is damn near my idea of Grindcore perfection. I don't know, it just hit me that way - blame a recent lack of impressive new sounds in my catalogue or a vulnerability to the audio chaos from a long winter of listening to drone music - I'm just glad it's sites have been readjusted and it's out of the garage. I'm drained yet longing for more pummeling. A +++.PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-90558877468371730012014-02-24T12:57:00.001-08:002014-02-24T13:06:36.478-08:00Album Review: Blood I Bleed - Split w/ Lycanthropy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ8WKSvVilRYGaLFkt4shwiM9yHlsXODVu71TaK4q-1VEOKozfnbTz4-RkR2K9uCc8_xtzrvGfW8hk8GwioW55PZvDGyTVJK2HmEFbo99FA_JHrKO6uhw6V9KRlfU3gelNfT5mzW6iUhY/s1600/biblycanthropy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ8WKSvVilRYGaLFkt4shwiM9yHlsXODVu71TaK4q-1VEOKozfnbTz4-RkR2K9uCc8_xtzrvGfW8hk8GwioW55PZvDGyTVJK2HmEFbo99FA_JHrKO6uhw6V9KRlfU3gelNfT5mzW6iUhY/s1600/biblycanthropy.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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Spoiler alert, I really dig Blood I Bleed - I mean not to the point where I'm hunting down information on the internet about their whereabouts between albums or desperately trying to compile a fund to get them overseas to play live, but more of an elevated heart rate/mini-boner kind of thing when I find out they have new material out. I don't know why - I mean I know what it's going to sound like, I don't necessarily need new songs to get my fix of their style, but I think I just really dig their approach to things. It's that high tone, high screech, high treble kind of grind that honestly feels more like the latest evolutionary form of punk music to me than what is passing for it in the mainstream. And dig the low, grindy bass my friends, it's the only thing that keeps this little berserker from pitch-tearing your eardrums into bicycle streamers. Light on the production and scrappy feeling, it's more the vibe of being skeletonized in seconds by a thousand little piranha than the thick and layered over-produced mainline heavy pummeling of fast pneumatic machines that similar genre bands with a bit more of a budget end up sounding like. <br />
The 11 songs in under 10 minute set on this split with Lycanthropy are vicious and approachable, the trade of shriek to foaming bark aesthetic liken this batch of tracks to a gang of rabid badgers chained to a bike rack in Times Square. From the back and forth bag of wolverines-snarling on 'Octane Twisted' and 'Closer To His Grace', to the slow down and bounce of 'Bound Loose' - the songs are fast and grindy but sheened beneath the driving rhythm of powerviolence and injected with just enough skater-punk sounding playfulness to really give the music room to not only breathe, but also swing, spit and kick. There is an overabundance of musicians in extreme music who have spent so many years studying and honing in on their musical abilities that they try to lay their talents down in the studio only to have the end result sound feigned and off-the-mark in it's emotive catharsis because they never focused on the human side of the art, which is flaw and instinctiveness. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are too many musicians trying to be angry and not enough angry people trying to make music - Blood I Bleed sounds like the latter. As though it would be easier to drive to the pawn shop and get a new guitar than to figure out how to change that broken fucking string, and god bless 'em for it. It hits the mark just right that I still haven't listened Lycanthrope's half of the split, but I'll get to it gents. PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-57174711823333779762013-08-27T11:03:00.002-07:002013-08-27T11:03:38.943-07:00Incomprehensible Grumblings: 08/27/2013Gridlink have announced that they'll be entering the studio to begin recording their third LP (long player - Gridlink - irony) 'Longhena'. Chang posted on the band's Facebook page that they demoed 15 tracks timing in at around 23 minutes. A late 2013/early 2014 release date has been penned. In the meantime the band also announced their final live show on September 15th in Tokyo with Melt Banana, Endon, Black Ganion and Sex Virgin Killer - opting to focus on strictly studio recordings only. Gridlink also confirmed the departure of short-time bassist Ted Patterson, who left the band on amicable terms and will be tracking the final mix of 'Longhena' in NJ.<br />
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Cartoon Network's 'Adult Swim' have tapped Pig Destroyer to release a brand new track through their website in a one-at-a-time online posting soundtrack to the program of sorts. The track is scheduled to be released on September 9th <a href="http://video.adultswim.com/music/singles-2013/">here</a>. In the meantime, here's a cool little guerilla clip of the band's most recent performance in VA at the GWAR-BQ:<br />
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Wormrot have shit-canned plans for a live DVD for unknown reasons, but the full set has been posted on Youtube and includes three songs from their forthcoming as-of-yet untitled third album. Check it out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaXN4HVteaA">here</a>.<br />
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And I put this here just because it's awesome:<br />
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PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-59789264003167988642013-08-20T08:56:00.001-07:002013-08-20T08:57:33.993-07:00Album Review: Philip H. Anselmo & The Illegals - Walk Through Exits Only<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: white;">I put off writing anything about this album because I tried to give it a 6<sup>th</sup>, 7<sup>th</sup>, and 18<sup>th</sup><span style="font-size: small;"> listen in an effort to try and put my finger on just what it was that was missing. Anselmo forewarned listeners in interviews emphasizing the album’s lack of categorization and all-around ‘catchiness’. He advised that it would be a hard listen, a slow grower. In my experience those kinds of records tend to become staples in a collection, as they don’t lose their shine as quickly. Someone once said that being beautiful is like being born rich and getting poorer every day, I think the same can be said for an album that asks for no effort from the listener. And I’m no stranger to giving that effort, in fact I embrace it. I assume now that Anselmo and his warnings were primarily addressed to those that are still losing their shit to A Vulgar Display of Power. The same kind of people that went to a Superjoint show and called out for ‘Walk’ between songs. The same folks that really think a Pantera reunion would be feasible and awesome with Zakk Wylde filling in for the role of Dimebag. Knock it off. Anselmo has always been respected within the world of real heavy metal because even at the pinnacle of his flirtatious stomp through the mainstream with Pantera, he continued to fly the flag for underground extreme music. Not only did he invite off-the-map bands like Neurosis and Morbid Angel (on an arena tour no less!) to open for Pantera, but when Far Beyond Driven went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts Anselmo was involved in several other underground black metal projects including Christ Inversion, Viking Crown, and Eibon – a black metal supergroup of sorts with Satyr (Satyricon), Fenriz (Darkthrone) and Maniac (Mayhem), who released one track on a label compilation before being put on indefinite hiatus. He even contributed guest vocals to the Anal Cunt masterpiece ’40 More Reasons To Hate Us’ in 1996 (and vice versa invited Mr. Putnam to do the same on ‘The Great Southern Trendkill’), amongst a slew of other projects where he went either uncredited or under an alias. Needless to say, there was a passion for something darker and heavier festering there that couldn’t be explored in his primary spotlighted gig. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Phil’s exploration into these darker corners of the realm became a preface and set up for the gruesome dismemberment of Pantera. After which all projects became sidelined due to the one-two-three punch of addiction, Mother Nature, and medical consequence, and if you don’t know the specifics of any of that then stop reading and keep desperately writing Mr. Wylde. To say that a decent (non-black metal) solo effort from the old man is a project long overdue would be an understatement. While both Superjoint Ritual and Arson Anthem showcased Phil’s songwriting abilities beyond just his vocals and lyrics, ‘Walk Through Exits Only’ is 100% written by Phil Anselmo. Anselmo’s pestilent touch to every project he’s been a part of was very influential to me in my formative years. My fanaticism with Pantera led me to grumblings in the black and white pages of Metal Maniacs about Down and Superjoint Ritual as far back as 1992. I could even probably develop the theory that a lot of what he did outside of Pantera and Down opened gateways for me into other more extreme and experimental ventures of sound. So I’ve always paid attention to the man’s career, and I owed it to myself to spin a record 100% Phil Anselmo, despite the fact that I wasn’t impressed with the two tracks released on the ‘War Of The Gargantuas’ split EP with War Beast. </span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Sonically the album is pummeling, the bass drum is massive and pushed up in the mix, even drowning out the snare and hardware at times, and though the guitar tone is low and drilling it feels like it’s all at the same volume as the other instruments. So instead of a more organic in and out you’re getting a sonic cast iron frying pan to the face – which actually works with the music in it’s stop and go roller coasting riffage. But sometimes the lack of depth in the mix takes away from what are supposed to be some of the most brutal blast points on the record, like the first minute or so of the title track. It can be as monochrome sounding as the album artwork itself. The low guitar tones stay low and the only time any foreign instrumentation is introduced is in short between song interludes, it causes the album to congeal together and make initial digestion a bit more difficult – but it still works as a collective fist to the gizzard. Anselmo is the only one that feels a bit pushed up in the mix, and he sounds as ferocious as ever – but as much as it’s his album it’s also his vocals that act as the chain to the bumper of the truck in my opinion. His rabid bark and bellow just can’t be spit out fast enough without losing it’s punch, so he kind of drags his syllables through the songs, extracting a bit of the over-all ferocity in the music by superficially holding it back. Had he channeled the motherfucker that wiped his broken glass laden vocal chords all over ‘The Great Southern Trendkill’ for these sessions I think I’d be singing a much different tune, but the lack of range here feels to me like a lack of emotion. Phil’s vocals on Superjoint Ritual by comparison to his latest effort sound tired and loose, even sort of ugly – but they worked so well with the formula of that music. I can’t help but feel that the man was at the top of his game in heavy music when he was at rock bottom ironically enough. Superjoint Ritual had a personality to it because if you knew what was going on you knew that it was this dark, ugly, drug addled purging of hardcore and old school punk. The music sounded like an 8mm satanic ritual, covered in the kind of heroine induced dirt film that you could almost smell on the album’s insert. Slurred vocals, and blacked out hatred – it was something ugly that needed to happen, and because of that it became it’s own entity. It’s own personality, flawed and staggering. Most importantly however the music gave the man room to ramble, gasp and sputter – even when the vocal lines were right on top of each other and obviously recorded in separate takes – and that’s where he shines brightest, when he doesn’t sound constrained, but natural, as though there is no effort behind the acrid bile spilling out of his mouth. The new album lacks that personality to me, and in comparison almost sounds mechanical in a way.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Anselmo admitted he wanted to put out something different that couldn’t be generalized and spanned multiple categories of extreme music, but unfortunately that road has already been tread upon by specialists in that field, especially his buddies in Soilent Green. Shit, I even hear bits of Glass Casket and Norma Jean in it’s sound (sorry). My biggest problem with this album however is its length. It clocks in at around 40 minutes, but at least 10 minutes of that running time is melodic feedback or industrial-tinged creepy interludes – which brings us to about a half an hour of some pretty heavy ass shit in only 8 tracks. But in my opinion there is still a lot of fat that could have been trimmed (kind of like my reviews!). The intro track ‘Music Media Is My Whore’ over stays its welcome by about a minute, as it doesn’t go anywhere and harbors a pretty cool riff that gets tired without any variation for that long. I actually got annoyed hearing “Hands up Hands down!” a third of the way through ‘Batallion of Zero’ on the first listen that I knew I’d be fine never hearing it again, and the same for the chorus of “Betrayed” on subsequent listens. The title track ‘Walk Through Exits Only’ is the second longest track on the album and most epic within it’s own sledgehammer to cinderblock parameters, harboring arguably one of the sickest riffs on the record as well as an open space halfway through the song to allow for a quick little (and always welcome) Phil-sermon, but it’s still a track that could have been cut in half to amplify it’s intensity.. ‘Ursuper’s Bastard Rant’ coils and strikes in the creativeness of it’s riff, it even showcases Phil straining to hit the high screams, but wears out it’s welcome in it’s 4 minute glory. ‘Bedroom Destroyer’ and ‘Bedridden’ are album standouts because they harbor some of that aforementioned looseness in the vocals to me. They also have a bit of a punk metal undertone to them which injects the inevitable familiarity of past projects and that warm fuzzy feeling of Phil falling back into the niche that powers him with poison. ‘Betrayed’ feels the same way but the Grindcore-fanatic attention span I’ve Darwined through the years kind of causes me to be cautious of bridge-to-chorus repetition over and over in a song disguising itself as something other than filler, and that’s where my problem with this album’s love handles stem from. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: white;">If ‘Walk Through Exits Only’ leaned itself out it would eeeeeasily be one of those records that bounces around your brain like a 22 gauge bullet before finding it’s exit and leaving you incapacitated and rattled. It would be an exhausting mind fuck that would leave your mouth agape wondering what it was you just heard and wanting to hear it again, like the first time I heard Meshuggah’s ‘Future Breed Machine’ in 1995 or Brutal Truth’s ‘Sound’s of the Animal Kingdom’. It’s a sonic anvil with a seasoned black smith hammering away at it – but the songs are all just a minute or two longer than they need to be for this kind of music. I’d be fine with a 40 minute album like this if it were 20 tracks long. If it wasn’t Phil Anselmo this record would be another mediocre effort in the bins. But the man has a history, the man has a story, and most importantly the man has respect. And I respect the shit out of him now more than ever for doing a sort-of near hookless record like this at his stature, even if in my opinion I can get a fix of it from other bands I think do it better. When you’ve walked through 999 miles of hard road you earn yourself the chance to do whatever you want and not give a fuck. Like start your own label, or put out the kind of music you feel like and not give a shit what anyone else thinks. There’s more of a fanbase for the black metal Christ Inversion than there is this – and hopefully it guides some more folks through the gates who may not have ever perused that path prior to.</span> </span></span></span></div>
PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-29433183860102086112013-08-19T12:10:00.000-07:002013-08-19T13:20:13.863-07:00Album Review: Punch - Push Pull<br />
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Mike Bode - Mike Bode was that scrawny kid in Junior High that remained scrawny through his High School years and into College. Always covered in bruises and scrapes, stitch scars, knotted hair and fat lips - the kid was a fuckin' Pit Bull. A wiry little sonofabitch that could be knocked down but never kept there. He's the dude in football that came gunnin' up from the defensive backfield to concuss the big 200lb-something fathead as soon as he crossed the line of scrimmage. Not arrogant, not antagonistic, just there and quick to snap at the first whiff of confrontation. Punch remind me of Mike Bode. Thin, sloppy and fast enough to still be sharp - they teeter back and forth heavy on the hardcore and punk, bonded all together with bits of grind. Kind of like the negative image of Extortion's formula if you will. Imagine a very diluted Blood I Bleed, with all of the same effect. Sandblasted high-screech vocals over high tune power-chords and occasional blast-beats; it's honestly nothing you haven't heard before, but the quick one-two-three-four-five jabs one after another after another of quick bursts of less-than-a-minute-long songs serve the beating quite effectively. It's not a cattle-gun to the temporal lobe, but a barrage of quick crazy fists leaving you disorientated and fatigued. With the exception of 'Let Me Forget' and 'Positively God Free' the formula to the songs on Push Pull is pretty predictable by the half-way point, blasting instruments slow to bits of hardcore breakdowns (not <em>those</em> kind of breakdowns), but the album is short enough (13 songs in 17 minutes) to keep it all still in the zone. There has been a come-uppance of bands like this, with hardcore foundations tinkering in old-school punk and grind - Trash Talk comes to mind - but Punch deliver with an honest, not-too-produced sound that helps give it the foam in the corners of the mouth. My niche for this kind of sound is a pretty small space to fill, and I've only listened to the album a couple of times, but I'd make space on my Ipod for this little bag of razorblades. If you've got 15 minutes to spare give it a listen.<br />
<br />PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-65958996974841825142013-06-10T17:57:00.001-07:002013-06-12T11:40:35.883-07:00Album Review: Kiss The Cynic - Self Titled EP<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Luddite Clone rattled cages and turned heads in their 365 day career. With swirling guitars, stop-and-go blasts of percussion, and a knack for injecting unpredictable spins on riffs, they stretched their vein-poppingly mapped out necks above most of their peers - enough so as to label them in the same category as bands like King Generator and Botch, who hit the scene in a frenzied gallop lopping off heads left and right through springs of pressurized arterial spray only to disappear over the ridge and never be heard from again, leaving fans of the band and the genre salivating for just...one...more...release - just to hear what it sounds like goddammit! And if you've heard Luddite Clone then you can't deny that a key ingredient to their being one-off stars in the grimey lime light and somewhat of a post-mortem cult phenomenon was vocalist Andrew Cummings' truly pissed off transference of abhorrence in his vocals - as though you could almost feel the spittle and taste the venom execrating from his most-likely-from-the-sound-of-it disease ridden mouth. Years ago, amidst a musically stagnant couple of months - I found myself on a bit of a ghost hunt within the murky depths of internet music sites, one link led me to another, and to another and so forth - each becoming more minimalist in it's cosmetics; until I stumbled upon the arc of information I'd been hoping to find - that two of Luddite Clone's ex-members were breathing life into a new animal; and one of them was Andy Cummings. Thus Kiss The Cynic became a blip on my radar.<br />
Kiss the Cynic formed from the ashes of both Luddite Clone and As Darkness falls. To my knowledge the self-titled 6 track EP has only become available through Itunes within the last year or so. As information and demos stopped appearing from the band's social networking sites and the disc wasn't available anywhere to buy online I had assumed for half a decade that the project got scrapped, only to stumble upon it available for purchase and download in yet another fit of internet-lurking boredom (I have a lot of free time). Turns out this crafty little bitch came out over ten years ago and then I'm assuming went out of print - and here I thought it was just the longest and most fucked up promotional campaign I'd ever been a victim of. If I was that guy who had to compare this album to Luddite Clone's all-too-small body of work simply because it shares two of it's members, I'd tell you that The Arsonist and the Architect was like one of those E-ticket theme park roller coaster rides in middle America. It loops and corkscrews and drops when you least expect it, wooden and rickety the whole thing could come apart at any second, but that's part of the rush - then it's over before you want it to be. Kiss The Cynic sounds like Luddite Clone in it's sonics and production value, but musically it's just one steep downhill plunge in a plastic sled, no twists or turns here. In fact, hand me an unlabled disc and tell me it's the new Luddite Clone and I'd believe you - but wonder why they decided to go so traditional in their structures. The musicianship and writing is still top notch for what it is. At about a minute and ten seconds into the first track, 'Supercharger', either guitarist Kevin Walsh or Andrew Lynch (not sure which one, they don't have dedicated speaker assignments - yet) plays an almost orchestral and elegant riff that wouldn't be alien to a John Williams score - juxtaposed against the barrage of drums and the still venemous-as-ever vocals of Mr. Cummings it definitely ups the cool factor of the EP. Many of the riffs are pretty creative but it's pretty predictable when he's going to change things up - after he plays it four times, but it's still good enough to make you look forward to what you're going to hear next. The vocal patterns add to the groove of the music and keep things just bouncy enough, especially 'Chicago Hotplate' and 'Bring Out Your Dead', where the decipherable bridge turns into an incoherrent growl in the same stanza. The fact that Kevin Hannan isn't just playing along with the guitars the whole time but doing his own thing that you can actually occasionally hear when the riffs switch gears adds a bit of a layer of complexity to it.<br />
It's definitely a good EP, but while the whole thing drives and grooves and walks the line somewhere between hardcore, thrash, and punk it just doesn't have the emotive blast that I really dig in my music. It's an angry guy flipping over tables at a house party, instead of a rabid gorilla ripping the arms off of another rabid gorilla. But that's just me and my warped tastes (and stupid analogys). God I hate to say it, but the style reminded me a bit of a not-so-over produced Devildriver, and it's hard for me to come out and say that I know what that would sound like. Maybe a little Superjoint Ritual? Here, it's like what would happen if Burnt By The Sun got rid of all their grindy-bits. Maybe you get the idea. But I can't criticize it because it's not as extreme a record as I was expecting, and who the fuck am I to compare it to Luddite Clone? That's gotta be totally old to them already. They aren't claiming to be anything other than heavy metal or hardcore (or circus music - it says so on their <a href="https://www.facebook.com/kissthecynic">facebook</a> page). Truth is - I have this feeling that had Luddite Clone stuck around and kept doing what they were doing their fanbase would have consisted of people who are <em>still</em> waiting for another Calculating Infinity, because whether you like it or not there was a wake there left by their fellow New Jersey noise merchants that LC may have unwittingly been riding during their short tenure in music, before the real clones jumped on that bandwagon. Kiss The Cynic is a good EP - I do recommend it for fans of any of the bands I mentioned in the paragraphs above; as far as heavy metal or hardcore goes it's excellent, and feels real - not contrived in any way. It's $6 on Itunes - stay off the tollway for a couple of days and buy it. P.S. the sixth and final track is a recorded call to a phone sex operator, not a musical track - so in reality it's a 5 track EP. Just FYI.<br />
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PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-32351411117384260422013-06-01T13:20:00.000-07:002015-03-03T20:38:45.744-08:00Album Review: Bodies In The Gears Of The Apparatus - Simian Hybrid Prototype<br />
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Bodies In The Gears Of The Apparatus sound like a band whose
harness is breaking away from the musically translated hate they spew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harboring the second coolest name in Grind,
(Maruta being the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731">first</a>) and hailing from Clearwater, Florida the group
cuts you into a thousand pieces using an arsenal of chaotic and technical
grindcore, with the perfect amount of recorded-in-one-take slop/vibe to really
make it feel like something guerilla. To me it sounds like an evolutionary step
from the new direction Discordance Axis sonically took the genre years ago with
their amazing catalogue. Adding a bassist and a second guitarist to the DA
formula, at breakneck speeds it sometimes sounds like 8 people caterwauling
their instruments into a whirlwind of spittle and spite that wrings and twists
a riff into ten different variations of the hybrid before it finally morphs
into something musically legible and locked in. And just when your brain
catches up with the rhythm long enough to start nodding your head BITGOTA take
a sharp 90 degree turn and begin pulverizing something new.</div>
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I’d been spinning the three songs the group released after
this album on a split with Despised Icon on and off for years because at the
time it was the only thing I could track down of theirs. To be honest I didn’t
even realize the group had a full EP (isn't an 11 track grindcore record considered a full length LP these days? If it’s good enough for Gridlink it’s good
enough for me) until about a year and a half ago. Shame on me for shuffling
them to the back of the pack, but in my defense, this album showcases a sound
and songwriting that much more interesting than what the band released on the
split. </div>
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Simian Hybrid Prototype opens with “A Lubricated Rubber
Glove And Pornographic Photos Of A Decapitated Chinese Hooker”, one of the
longer tracks on the record at almost 3 minutes it both pummels and blisters
during it’s entirety, introducing the listener to the sound that is. The second
track, “Of Things To Come”, is a three minute sample of what sounds like a bit
from a 1940’s <st1:place>Hollywood</st1:place> war propaganda movie. I must
admit that at first listen I fell into the commonplace and got a bit annoyed at
the fact that they would pull the chute after such a cathartic opening free
fall. I kept waiting for the sample to end and the cacophony to start back up
but it just kept going. In Anal Cunt time units three minutes feels like the
second half of Dark Side Of The Moon. But upon further detailed contemplation
I’ve concurred that I agree with the move and find it appropriate in that it
makes you realize that the band it going to do whatever they damn well please,
and though it’s still a grindcore record it’s unpredictable within it’s own
sound. Take for example “Fuck Her Like You Paid For It”, it follows suit with
what you’d expect to hear from the bulk of the album but at the 44 second mark
it breaks into an almost jazz-ambient sort of interlude, complete with random
piano key strikes – all the while still somehow coiling in it’s intensity. Like
breaking a window and then piecing it back together just to break it again.
“Seventeen Reasons To Die Wearing Black” harbors the album’s sickest riff at
thirty seconds in (the first nineteen being another sample) when the off/on
blast-beat ridden build up breaks into a swaggering and bouncy riff for just
the briefest of moments. That’s where BITGOTA thrives in their sound – by
lulling it’s prey into the technically formulated and complex bursts of noise
that go on and on shifting gears and then occasionally throwing in a 10 second
stretch of a groove-laden Pantera riff that in any ordinary
pierced-ear-heavy-metal nonsense may sound mediocre, while here it stands as
not only a highlight and checkpoint within the carnage, but a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>break from it without it losing it’s momentum,
which strategically gives the music it’s legibility when you step back from it
– otherwise our ears wouldn’t have a basis of comparison and we’d simply tune
in and tune out.</div>
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Sonically it sounds like Simian Hybrid Prototype was
recorded in two sessions, because the sound of the instruments occasionally
changes back and forth from song to song. While “A Lubricated Rubber Glove And
Pornographic Photos Of A Decapitated Chinese Hooker” harbors a clearer, tuned
up production, the non-sample track to follow it “Love Affair With A Mannequin”
is lower in tone and ever-so-slightly murkier. The snare sounds tighter and
more high-pitched and even the vocals on the lower tracks are a bit different,
incorporating a more guttural approach on the low end. And then it returns back
to the original sound for the next track “Big, Bad, Mean and Nasty”, only to
return yet again to the “murkier” tone for “Hoist The Black Flag (And Begin
Slitting Throats)". For me however, it does not effect the listening
experience and isn’t all that noticeable unless you happen to be a jag-off
like myself, in fact if anything it gives the album a variation within itself
that by the end of the record seems to flow pretty well and doesn’t feel like
it was patched together the way something like Pig Destroyer’s ’38 Counts Of
Battery’ was (which was admittedly a patchwork of earlier releases, nobody’s
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Simian Hybrid Prototype is a get in, shred the bowels and
get out kind of album. It doesn’t over-stay it’s welcome and doesn’t leave you
aching for more (because it satisfies not because it sucks). It’s got some
goof-ball track titles but it’s always nice to see a band this visceral
sounding not taking themselves too seriously (I’m talking to you GAZA – actually
keep doing what you’re doing because it’s awesome, oh wait you broke up) just
so long as that’s the motive and it’s not a silly ploy to get zit-faced teen
shut-ins giving you hits on You Tube. It’s also a bit heavy on the samples, but
that can often be a strategy for bands like this to help break up the monotony
for not-so-seasoned listeners of the genre. “Of Things To Come” and “The
Ugliest Smile In Rock and Roll” are basically all sample, and “Fuck The Middle
East” is a 23 second cover of S.O.D., which only leaves eight original
compositions on this album, and then another three on the Despised Icon split.
An all too short discography but appropriate sort of self-destruction for a
group this at-the-throat. Both guitarists of this group - Ian Sturgill and
Aaron Haines – went on to form Success Will Write Apocalypse Across The Sky,
this album actually makes me want to check out what they went on to do with that.</div>
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PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-78377022009355354832013-05-27T15:12:00.001-07:002015-03-03T20:37:54.742-08:00Concert Review: The Dillinger Escape Plan @ Reggie's Rock Club - 05.08.13<br />
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When somebody begins to talk to me about how amazingly
intense whomever was at last nights concert, or how so-and-so absolutely “destroyed”
said venue and it was the best show they’d ever seen, I usually tend to shine
them off because they’ve never seen the Dillinger Escape Plan live. If they had
they wouldn’t be talking such nonsense. Because that’s the problem with a
Dillinger Escape Plan show, they set the bar so goddamn high that it sucks the
energy out of every other band you saw and will ever see that you thought/would
think was awesome. I’ve been out and about checking out live rock and metal
shows and what-have-you since 1991. Though I’ve been listening to them since
1999, I’ve only seen Dillinger 5 times in that tenure – it should have been a
lot more but for awhile there I was starting to think greater powers that be
were preventing me from immersing myself in such chaos. Shows were canceled,
family members died, trucks jack-knifed on highways blocking all four lanes of
traffic, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of all the concerts I’ve
been to and all the bands I’ve seen, four of the top 5 all-time best are
occupied by The Dillinger Escape Plan, the show last night at Reggie’s Rock
Club in <st1:city><st1:place>Chicago</st1:place></st1:city> lands at #1. I know the math doesn’t add up – chill out…The only show to
not make the list was when I saw them open for Deftones at the Riviera Theatre.
Though still an amazing performance, the bands intensity was stifled from the
large size of the venue as well as a lackluster crowd of confused looks who
didn’t know what to make of them. Watching TDEP perform anywhere that puts the
stage further than an arms reach away from their audience is like watching
sharks try to have a feeding frenzy in the woods – still amazing to see, but
just seems a bit unnatural.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later on
that evening they shot across town over to the Bottom Lounge to do a full set
that would become legendary amongst fans of the band as well as the band
themselves. There’s even a Facebook page specifically dedicated to it,<a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/I-survived-the-Dillinger-Escape-Plan-show-at-the-Bottom-Lounge-on-4-30-11/172271389494448?fref=ts"> seriously</a>. I fucking
stuck around to watch the fucking Deftones play because I really fucking like
the Deftones and never fucking saw them before and fucking missed it. Fuck. </div>
I listen to music for the emotion behind it or the emotion
it stirs. As a fan of music I’m generally in the minority as I believe the live
show should represent the songs on the record, only played – well, live. Others
believe, that a studio recording should capture<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>what a live song sounds like only played in the studio. You follow?
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Being able to convey the emotion that
fuels a band’s sound live is something that’s very important to me in a
performance. Arguably, anger and/or aggressiveness, translates a whole lot easier
than other states of the human emotional spectrum, and can also be triggered a
whole lot easier when you believe with conviction in what you’re performing
night after night. Nobody does this better than The Dillinger Escape Plan, and
if they did you’d have heard about it. Dillinger thrives on playing in small
places and they know it. With each release and each subsequent touring cycle
the band is naturally inching it’s way up the popularity platform. They’ve
played the Conan O’Brien Show, got invited to The Revolver Golden Gods gig, are
headlining this years Summer Slaughter tour, and lead singer Greg Puciato was
recently placed number one on a list of top <span id="goog_87751999"></span><a href="http://www.metalsucks.net/2013/04/08/1-greg-puciato-the-dillinger-escape-plan/">25 current metal frontmen<span id="goog_87752000"></span></a>. Last
nights show was sold out, and both of last years shows at Reggie’s were sold
out. At current status they could easily play a place like The Metro but still
stick to the smaller joints because they get off on their own intensity as much
as their fans do. You’ve gotta love a band that’s at where they’re at and still
take the time to play an occasional <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyE5mOOW11c">basement show</a>. Sure I’m a fan of Dillinger,
but 50% of that reason (maybe 43% ha!) is because of their live show. It’s
become what they’re known for and rightfully so. Lately it seems like half the
crowd at these shows are fans and the other half were either dragged their by
their friend to see the spectacle or were simply curious about what the
word-of-mouth-big-deal was, both halves can usually be seen walking out of the
show with mouths gaped open.<br />
Reggie’s Rock Club is a small venue with a floor and a bit
of balcony space. On either side of the stage about 15 feet up are VIP booths
with chain-link fence running across them. The only thing between the floor
crowd and the band is a welded pipe bar that runs across the length of the
stage. Last night’s security planted himself at stage-right and simply bounced
people back who were close to falling onstage. Drink every time I say stage.
Backed with spastic strobes, and launching themselves off of steel box ramps
planted strategically around the stage, the band kicked things off with the
song “Prancer”, a track from the new album “One Of Us Is The Killer” that gets
released next week. In all of about one note the air gets sucked out of the
room and the crowed gets vacuum sealed against the stage, packed like pissed
off sardines fighting off the urge to traumatically asphyxiate. “Farewell Mona
Lisa” followed allowing for only a moments breath during the opening riff
before the purge continued. “Sugar Coated Sour” started just like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-lxwlgyhhA">this</a>, and
“Room Full Of Eyes” only loosened it’s grip half-way through so bassist Liam Wilson could
work out his continuous bass pedal issues before the song breaks down into
total sonic catharsis.<br />
By the time they finished blazing through the song "Milk Lizard", it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say the band was spending more time in the audience than they were on the actual stage. Halfway through "Sunshine The Werewolf", during the dark little jazzy interlude - Puciato acknowledged how stubborn security was being, "They won't let you up here, I'll just come down there". He then proceeded to part the crowd like Moses did the Red Sea, and gallop to the middle of the pit where he bellowed out the leviathan of an ending to that song before the audience picked him up and spat him back onto the stage. "Calculating Infinity" was a surprising little highlight for me, an instrumental number from the group's debut that on this evening acted like an almost halftime show, instead of focusing on the audience for a song they played a bit off of each other in a sort of technical-punk-thrash jam, bassist Liam Wilson seemed absolutely absorbed with the music, doing his demented little crab bounce to the off-kilter beat. The energy was symbiotic that evening, and the band seemed to be having a genuine blast, smiles on their faces as they dove into the crowd, laughing and vibing off of each other. What has become the band's signature closer, '43% Burnt', took whatever fun was being had and turned it into one last violent burst. While the audience were mustering up the last remaining fumes in the tank, Puciato scaled across the chainlink fence at the top of the aforemetioned VIP section and from there gibboned his way onto one of the venue's main speaker systems that was suspended from the ceiling. He then crawled across an I-beam and dropped into the crowd, all the while the stomp continued on stage without missing a beat, and then they were through - no bullshit chanting and cheering to get an encore, no fucking with the audience, no time off for a breather. The Dillinger Escape Plan encapsulate a modern day punk rock energy from a band flirting with mainstream success in the Heavy Metal genre, and they don't let that balance on the cusp push them into losing the vision of who they are or the force their band has become. They've never lost sight of the intimate energy that they create through their music and especially through their live show that's both brought them to where they are and at the same time kept them one of the best kept secrets in extreme music. Here's to hoping no necks get broken in at least the next 20 years.<br />
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PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-57012651252355389882013-05-02T17:52:00.000-07:002015-03-03T20:35:52.603-08:00"Ahhhh, Pig Killer!!!!" Fanning The Flames That Pig Destroyer's 'Book Burner' Has Caused.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Pig Destroyer has returned! Like heroes triumphant from battle they've come back to the streets from a long hiatus, the masses of Grind fans aligned on either side of the homecoming parade waving enthusiastically and throwing handfuls of confetti! But what's this? The crowd disperses? Our bewildered heroes twist their heads in confusion from atop their float as the cheers dissipate and the buckets of rice and confetti are left half-spilled and rolling in the curb. There are doubters amongst us, with great big megaphones telling you that they aren't the heroes you've thought them to be. They carry big colorful signs that say that the war has changed them, that there are bigger heroes a block over with bigger floats who have fought in better battles. I'm sorry you feel that way. <br />
I know this bunch of bullshit is coming at you a bit after the fact, and it's all been a bucket of chum I've laid out in other various comments boxes along the way, but bare with me please - I'd be remiss if I didn't say it all in one place on my own page. I was actually surprised to see the bulk of negative reactions to the new Pig Destroyer album 'Book Burner' in the weeks/months following it's release. More so because they were all coming from individual fans of the grindcore genre, putting it out there in blogs and Youtube videos and individual CD reviews on sites selling the album. Major magazines and websites seemed to praise the record for the most part - and while I do take a little bit of stock in that I'm alot more interested to hear what the grunts on the frontline have to say about it. After all, they don't have to cater to and/or worry about bad-mouthing the same band that they have coming in for an interview next week or put on the cover of the latest issue.<br />
In hindsight however, I'm glad to see a lack of blind love for a band as highly respected and heavy hitting as Pig Destroyer are in their genre - kudos to not just liking the album because of who it came from and lying to yourself, there's too much of that in the art world, and as a result too many artists resting on their laurels. Which is NOT, mind you, what I think Pig Destroyer did on 'Book Burner'. I understand that there is the potential to not like alot of things on this album, and I'm not trying to change your mind - just hoping to throw another perspective out there I guess. Here are a few of the universal negatives that I've picked up on from the bulk of complaints: 1) (the big one) The production: It sounds polished, this album comes off cleaner than a nun's cooch. I think a big part of that is the drum sound. Mind you this was the first album they did in Hull's new studio - and the drums were already programmed for each song prior to Adam Jarvis even joining the ranks. From my understanding he just played over the already programmed drums to the Tee (T?), not leaving room for freestyle rolls and fills, and who's going to walk into their first Pig Destroyer rehearsal and tell Hull "fuck off I'm doing it my way"? - maybe Dave Witte. That's what happens when you write an album without a drummer. While triggers potentially add to the problem, the whole thing comes off (in comparison to Brian Harvey's style) as sounding a bit mechanical and lifeless. The drums are in your face, and still sound programmed - as opposed to the organic almost analog feel to them on previous records. When Richard Johnson or Kat Katz step in as guest vocalists this album sounds like Agoraphobic Nosebleed's 'Agorapocolypse', because basically - well, it is Agoraphobic Nosebleed - especially considering the live drums on 'Book Burner' sound exactly like the programmed ones on 'Agorapocolypse'. It makes me wish that ANB would go back to their PCP-tinged 5000 bpm blur grind and not slow things down and suckle from the potential creative teet of future Pig Destroyer albums - but that's just being selfish.<br />
This was also the first time that the guitars weren't screwed with. In a recent interview Hull revealed that on previous albums the guitar tone was digitally dropped an octave or two in the final mix, to help give it a bit of a bottom end bass tone. Anybody whose done any kind of recording can tell you that this causes the overall tone of the guitar on the recording to sound a bit more muddy and muffled. The end result worked well for Pig Destroyer on past records because it only adds to the suffocating atmosphere of sounds and blends in with the ambient noises creeping around beneath the layers of sonic cacaphony. In my opinion the best example of this is on the Terrifyer album: that lower tone causes the guitar to digitally bleed into the other instruments, and on that album particularly (probably because of the riffs its married to) it's dizzying and violent, which is what that record is all about. 'Book Burner' is so much clearer and less feedback laden because it's untampered with and what you get at face value, and what you get at face value probably put through more emphasis on the audio interface and not the amp. It's fuckin' crispy. With all this clarity and in-your-faceness I will admit I was hoping to hear a bit more of Blake Harrison's noise production in the mix, but it's nowhere near the head of the twister as much as everything else is when it's all churning at once. For me the production is fine, and I think for the band it's fine. If anything I'd like to think Hull is taking the negative feedback about it as a big ol' handjob to the work he did creating his own studio from the bottom up, it could be quite the compliment to an audiogeek who enjoys piecing together 5.0 surround sound ambient audio landscapes in his off/off/off/off time. I think people may be a bit less peeved about the overall sound of the record if it had a bit less negative space throughout it, space that could be easily filled by some creepy undertones from Harrison when the music stops and it's just hull introducing another riff before it all starts up again. And if you don't think so then simply think of it like this: For as narrow a genre as grindcore is, Pig Destroyer have done a tremendous job of not putting out the same record twice. 30 Counts Of Battery is a compilation piece plain and simple, you could easily argue it's value in a discography. That puts Prowler In The Yard as their blueprint album, Terrifyer as their artsy album, Phantom Limb as their thrash album, and Book Burner is simply their clean album, from there you've just got to deal with it... Wait, there's more:<br />
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Second biggest complaint: Both the lyrics and delivery from JR Hayes. People seemed a bit disappointed with both. I admit there is a bit of a lack of desperation in his vocals on this album, and instead of sounding like a jaded psychopath wrestling with his own potential lack of morality and guilt, he comes off a bit more monochromed as a snarling dog throughout all 19 tracks. Well, delivery mirrors content - and lyrically this album is radically different than past ventures. It's less introverted and poetic and more graphic and surfaced. Artists don't want to do the same thing over and over again, and real artists won't if they aren't convicted to what they're writing. It's been 5 years since PD put out an album, probably damn near 15 since their inception. Nobody should be trying to passionately deliver from a place that they're not living in anymore. It's an evolution of content and I for one welcome it. If you've been listening to the band for that long then whether you know it or not you are becoming numb to the previous aesthetic his lyrics have been trademarked as. It's not shocking anymore to hear about his character strangling a woman and then masturbating in her closet, no matter how poetic and subjective he makes it sound. This record is a huge step away from previous ones along those lines, it's a skeleton crew of short stories opposed to another sonic novel of that blurred line between love and justifiable homicide. Sure he dabbles in familair waters with songs like 'Boston Strangler' and 'Dirty Knife', but I honestly wonder if those were written partly to bate the appetites of Pig Destroyer fans and not leave them feeling ostricized by what has become such a critical component of the songs and a watermark for the band that allows them to rise above others in the genre either still waxing about how shitty politics are or those those that simply just use a medical dictionary as their thesaurus. I'm glad the palette is expanding - drug use, religious conformity, war, and a big violent drunk guy getting into a fight... The crayons are coloring outside of the lines and it leaves tons of potential for future musings.<br />
3.) An overall lack of signature riffs/hooks. I don't know what to throw your way on this one. Either you dig what's there or you don't. I hear the underlying Slayer worship that's always occasionally reared it's head in past albums in songs like 'Permanent Funeral'. I hear the aforementioned dizzying violence in 'Iron Drunk' and 'Valley Of The Geysers', and even the balls out blur ala the beginning of 'Heathen Temple' in 'The Bug'. It's all there for me. In my opinion this record appropriately falls into the fifth album template of the sound of their entire career congealed into one album, and it works. 'Sis' sounds like a cut that could have been pulled from the era of '30 Counts Of Battery' as much as 'The Baltimore Strangler' could've easily slid in anywhere on 'Phantom Limb'. A sort of greatest hits album without it actually being a greatest hits album. <br />
Here's what I think, the reason it would seem alot of folks are disappointed with this disc is because A: It's been a long time coming, and despite being "open minded" or self-proclaimed music snobs, people built this album up whether they realized it or not. B: This band has made a serious mark in the scene - and everyone is going to compare every release after 2001 to 'Prowler In the Yard', and that's damn unfortunate, because if this were their first album these people would be putting it on a pedestal. C: Because they've made such a mark in the scene they suffer from the countless legions of mediocre bands trying to sound like them severely watering down the genre. Step away from it for five years and some change and all of a sudden you find yourself facing a decision musically: Either just get in there and do what it is you do best, hoping it will still stand above the second generation sound you've helped inspire, or possibly step out of your comfort zone and do something different in an effort to raise the bar yet again, but with that risk alienating your fans. I'm glad they chose the former, at least this time around. I think with what they went through we're all lucky to even have a new Pig Destroyer record, and all really lucky they didn't continue down the path of critic's boners for 'Phantom Limb' and lean even more heavily on boring thrash stylings. They did what they needed to do and made an all encompassing album of their sound just to get their feet back on the ground. At the risk of sounding like a COMPLETE asshole, I think we all need to comb thru our Grind collections at home and throw away anything that isn't elite. I'd love to litter this page with shit-tons of under-the-radar type groups, but the fact of the matter is, when I try to do that and listen to alot of this kind of music, it takes away from the volatility of the stuff that I know is already really good in the grindcore field, and recognized as such with good reason. To put it simply, a genre with this narrow of boundaries shouldn't be diluted with second rate garbage, listening to a band like Noisear to tame that Discordance Axis fix is the same as listening to Godsmack for the nostalgia of Alice In Chains. Throw that shit away and only fix when it's quality shit to fix with, in my ridiculous opinion you'll spot and appreciate the good stuff easier that way.<br />
Book Burner is another appropriate chapter in the discography - I enjoy it. It's arguably the angriest of their records and thematically the most different. I can totally comprehend the naysayers and their arguments, I get it and I hear it - I'm not arguing that. I also understand that there are bands you want to see change and evolve and bands you don't. Pig Destroyer has flaunted all kinds of abilities in their albums and more-so their one off's like 'Natasha' and the 'Mass & Volume' EP. I'd love to see these guys get to a point in their career where they could release a noise album and have it be understood and accepted as a Pig Destroyer album. They're too good at getting under the skin to base their existence on riffs, speed, and shocking dialogue. I'd love to see what extremes they can twist the dark side of the human experience into through other channels of sound and hope they explore those dimensions. I'd love this band - and more importantly this band's fans - to embrace the idea of being able to do whatever they want and trust that they will deliver with tapping into a new perspective of something primal someday. Because extreme music can punish and heal no matter what instrument it comes from at any bpm. Yeah, and maybe there's a little bit of that blind love there too.PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-38456618848320561842013-04-05T19:04:00.000-07:002013-08-20T09:00:06.249-07:00Under The Radar: Vog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Deep in the thick foliage of the Virginia woods, some crazy/genius bastard fertilized an Acid Bath egg with 'Dopethrone' - era Electric Wizard. The seed germinated, spawned and only lived for a short time as Vog. These guys truly are a hidden gem, ritualistically dancing within the realms of Stoner/Sludge-Jam-band-<wbr></wbr>satanic-voodoo thrash ( what? is that already a genre? dammit.) I seriously cannot describe their music any better than that first sentence. They wear the Acid Bath influence heavily on their sleeve in both their writing as well as the vocal stylings of crooner Steven Kerchner, who at times sounds almost exactly like a less distorted Dax Riggs. </div>
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I stumbled onto these guys a few years ago deep within the trenches of Myspace before it became the Detroit of social networking sites. Even a google search brings up sparse results which in turn need to be even further refined and combed through to weed out the half dozen Japanese Ambient-Electronic acts that share the same name. I was finally able to track down some of their discography on the <a href="http://shiftyrecords.com/">Shifty</a> Records site. From there I ordered the 'Colors Of Infinity' EP which consists of one 23 minute track (which was sent to me in DIY packaging burnt onto a Spykids CD-Rom - fuckin' awesome.), it's good but kind of sounds more like a bunch of ideas jammed into one song and isn't as cohesive as I might have hoped, from what I can gather it was probably a demo the band sent to the label before they were even on it (but then again, what the hell do I know?).</div>
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The real bread and butter from Vog comes in their one and only self-titled full length. 7 tracks (and not a one of them under 6 minutes) of dirty-ass, slightly underproduced Stoner/Sludge/Thrash dynamics, high on the treble and heavy on the Sabbath swagger. Seriously, if Dax Riggs and the boys in Acid Bath took some bad shrooms in the NOLA swamps and then decided to record a jam session pre- "When The Kite String Pops" I can't help but imagine it would sound alot like this. Yeah I'm an Acid Bath fan, but what I am not is one of those people that tries to find another band in the same realm to latch onto when they're favorite one goes defunct. While Vog does offer a sliver to help fill the void that AB left when they went tits up, they also infuse enough of their other influences into the music to actually make the end result sound original. And honestly, the more you listen to it the more it begins to sound like it's own thing. So I guess this recommendation goes out to those people who have reverted to settling on exhausting the Buzzoven dicography as an unsuccessful means to get their caustic-stoner thrash fix since AB called it a day some dozen-or-so years ago (you're doing it wrong - sludge!). Does it offer a certain average-looking-girl-becomes- all the more - hot-because-she's-a-libarian kind of aesthetic because it's so off the map? Sure there's a little bit of charm there, but it's honestly cool shit, and when you think it's going to zig where it should zag it does neither, it zogs (clever). In fact, whilst doing a bit of research for this bunch of inane babble I discovered that Vog's self-titled has been remastered (possibly even re-recorded in spots) and made available on Itunes, I didn't see that coming. The remaster has an additional track smack dab in the middle called 'Sad Girl', which was originally released as a single and was, up till now, the only thing available from them on Itunes. Important note here: If you do decide to buy the album via that route I'd strongly recommend also buying the 'Sad Girl' single that's available also, as they include an acoustic version of the track that's not available on the remaster and is definitely worth having. Listening to the acoustic 'Sad Girl' into the original version can be an awesomely intense experience ala Pantera's Suicide Note parts 1 & 2. </div>
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So come and dance within the remains that once was Vog, and long for what once was and what could have been, for such a small, unlabeled and thankfully mostly untreaded genre. Check out the video below for a brief showcase of the Vog's sound:</div>
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PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-22448815466564368092013-03-07T12:08:00.002-08:002015-03-03T20:34:22.028-08:00Album Review: Pig Destroyer - Mass & Volume<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There are a few reasons why people shouldn't shit all over this thing - which is what I think some may want to do with it when they hear it for the first time, because I have a feeling it's going to go under alot of people's heads. Yes, <em>under</em> people's heads. Like the 20 ton prehistoric worm that it sounds like, burrowing through hard mantle and hollowing out a once vibrant and functioning planet. This is not the ultra-violent thrash tinged grindcore we are used to experiencing from Pig Destroyer. This is potentially the most aptly named EP ever, 'Mass & Volume'. Two tracks in doom vein that plunge you into a throbbing void of amp worship and blown bass cabinets. <br />
The first reason to accept this for what it is, even if it isn't what you want to hear from these guys is that it's Pig Destroyer, more impressively it's Pig Destroyer festering out of their usual comfort zone and experimenting in slowing the fuck down, God bless 'em. Second is that it's a gift. Nobody knew that this slow piston through the gizzard was even going to be released until the moment they decided to do it. Yeah it costs the listener ten clams but it's cool-ass new experimental material that prior to this was collecting dust on a shelf next to a jar of fremented baby heads and most likely would have never been heard, so it's a gift to the fans. And more importantly, ALL of the proceeds made for this album go towards the college fund of the daughter of the recently deceased Pat Egan - the long time director of retail sales for Relapse Records. So not only is it for a good cause, but one of the best one's out there, the child of a friend.<br />
Shortly after the release of Phantom Limb the band occasionally talked about these two tracks in various interviews and whatforth as a couple of long dirge ridden songs they knocked out with extra studio time during the Phantom Limb sessions. They never spoke of what their intentions were to do with them or if they ever would be released. Per the group: "This EP was written and recorded during the final day of the Phantom Limb sessions with unexpected extra studio time and resources. In the following years, with <em>Natasha</em> being released on its own and Brian no longer being in the band, our intentions of releasing <em>Mass & Volume</em> basically evaporated. However, looking back now, <em>Mass & Volume</em> serves as a great epilogue to that particular era of the band."<br />
The first track, 'Mass & Volume', is an epic slab of monolithic guitars trodding along with the velocity of a slug, weaving in and out of Hull's feedback. Beneath it a subtle layer of ominous keyboards fluxes frequencies and effects which can only be heard occasionally when the tree trunk bass strings stop their throbbing vibrations from each slow strike. The 19+ minute song feels more like a drone track most times than anything more doom laden. The song never really goes anywhere, so if you're not into either of those aforementioned genres and like your stuff more superficial than chances are you already don't like this band and/or you probably just won't get it. I'm into alot of weird shit (musically - ahem), and my album collection ain't exactly over-saturated with any kind of Doom Metal, in fact it's pretty much the opposite of that. Off the top of my head the only other three bands that match the RPM's of this first track that I indulge in are Lycia, Gnaw Their Tongues, and strict selections of Type O Negative.<br />
So while the Evoken afficianado may turn his nose up at this for someone like me it bates the appetite. Is it all the more cool being a fan of the band and hearing them do something in a different realm sans Natasha? Absolutely. I'd say the best way to experience Mass & Volume is to crank your stereo to 13 in a blacked out room, with speakers powerful enough to rattle the frames off your wall....naked. As simple as it is it creates a world around you if you let it, and by the time Hayes comes in with his indicipherable effects-laden vocals it will sound like there is something there in the dark with you, trying to tell you something you don't want to hear.<br />
The second song on the EP, 'Red Tar' - though sonically the same - is a bit more doom-traditional and riff oriented, opening up in the end with an ever so subtle and enlightening riff that only comes together to be heard when the song is over. I enjoyed the EP, a bit more stripped down than 'Natasha', which was the last time the group did something like this during the 'Terrifyer' sessions, but I'd reckon to say that if you enjoyed that you would enjoy this. To the hardcore Doom Metal fans, who have a huge cache' of bands to compare this thing to, it may be less than mediocre. But to a guy like me, who loves seeing bands normally confined to narrow genres step out and do what they want and then just put it out there, it helps fill that niche of slow, disturbing, heavy and ambient that my collection sometimes lacks. Stream and buy the album <a href="http://patlapse.bandcamp.com/album/mass-volume">here</a>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-66272340561651426182013-01-09T15:24:00.000-08:002013-01-09T15:24:33.885-08:00Album Review: Early Graves - 'Red Horse'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's interesting to me how much of a band's identity lies within their vocalist. I suppose alot of it has to do with it being the most versatile of instruments amongst the typical heavy metal arsenal. It paints with the largest brush strokes and gives the sound of a band's music most of it's character. And while most grindcore and powerviolence vocalists generally follow the same dynamic when it comes to delivery and range, I suppose one could argue that no two vocalists, even within the narrow confines of the aforementioned styles of extreme music, are the same. Some groups that were forced to change vocalists for whatever reason at some point in their career are even categorized into eras based on it.<br />
There are only a handful of bands that walk within their lines that I'd never want to see wander into a different direction or "progress", but most of those exist outside the world of extreme music. Within the genre I always welcome a change or experimentation, and I always find it interesting when a band is forced to change their sound and adapt due to whatever circumstances may have transgressed. Those circumstances could not be more tragic than what transgressed with Early Graves, and the adaption could not be more poetic or fitting.<br />
I got into Early Graves through their second album 'Goner'. It was smack dab in the middle of winter, one of those cold, biting days where the sun is out and twice as blinding because of all the dried up snow, everything is covered in that layer of salt and the air is dry. I was going through a bit of a lull, there was nothing new out there that interested me but I was longing to hear something. I'd heard of Early Graves and ended up buying their album on a couple of 30 second samples I'd heard on Amazon, I guess I was feeling desperate and thought what the hell - sounded alright, and Kurt Ballou was involved so why not? I tossed the thing into my Ipod and sulked off to the gym. I guess the best analogy to equate that experience to would be picking a fight with the wrong person, because by the second track that album had spun my head around. The production was muddy and chaotic, a swirl of raw noise adhesed together with layer upon layer of feedback, there were times where the whole thing sounded like it was just going to completely fall apart and not be able to salvage itself, but it always held together strong and that aspect simply added to the charisma of the record. That first listen was a cathartic experience to say the least. I soon backtracked to the first album 'We: The Guillotine' - which is sonically almost the same album, just loaded with fat. Goner <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZfUu-W8wnw">got in, scrambled your brains and got out</a>, probably couldn't even walk through the cutting room floor on that one. It was a strategic move to trim the fat for that second album because it's short running time helped make the record a clenched fist ready to be thrown. <br />
On the subsequent tour following the release, lead vocalist Makh Daniels was killed in a tragic van accident. When wounds started to mend and the band made the decision to soldier forth, long time friend of the group John Strachan stepped up to fill in as vocalist. John also sang for tourmates Funeral Pyre, his move into the vocalist position for Early Graves would be both admittedly comfortable for the rest of the band, and fitting as the album - with it's occasional quiet instrumental interlude and possible lyrical interpretation - can at times come off as an homage to Daniels, and nobody wants a stranger leading that charge. Had Makh's life never been tragically cut short, say he left the band on his own merit and EG still wrote the exact same record I may not be feeling that homage, I'd just call it a step in a different direction, so that vibe, to me, is based on the events I've known to take place - the end result is up to any listeners own subjective interpretation as there are no blatantly obvious nods here, tastefully done I must say.<br />
Now let's get to the album, 'Red Horse'. It is not better than 'Goner'. It is much more controlled, reigned in....Dare I say it? Mature. The band has admitted to wanting to evolve, to move forward. I welcome the change, but it was not forced or molded around the new vocalist, as the clear acoustic passages and pleasant inspirational outros that are scattered about this record don't have any singing over them. In fact, the vocals, while very different than the dry throated monotone barking of Daniels - still function in the same dynamic. The range varies little and the message of desperation and aggravation is still there, but the softer parts do offer a pleasant contrast to the muddy chaos of sound the band has stuck with since their debut - this contrast offers uplift in a world that rains anvils, and it works. After listening to Early Graves' first two albums I kind of thought them to be one of those bands that does what they do and that's it, 8 albums in and the formula hasn't changed - so it was nice to be proved wrong in such a pleasant way. The first track 'Skinwalker' opens with a quiet intro that builds up into a bouncy little cliffhanger riff, whose feedback pulls us into trademark Early Graves punk-grind-power riffage. My only complaint here being that the sound actually seems to get quieter when the song gets faster, something that happens I understand, as things aren't being hit as hard when they're moving quicker, but it's something I would have liked to see a producer catch and prevent, unless of course they were just going for that real-live feel - which is always a viable excuse I suppose. The next two tracks, 'Misery' and 'Days Grow Cold' honestly kind of come and go, the latter stepping out a little more because of the acoustic outro - which leads us to the title track 'Red Horse', a bouncy yet driving little number that achieves exactly what it's supposed to as the whole thing sounds like galloping through a field littered with people off-ing each other in record numbers <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJVsS-vIDdc">Braveheart</a> style. 'Pure Hell' is Early Graves doing what they do best, especially when the thing ups gears about a minute and a half in from fast to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP6DXoNKITc">Plaid</a> and the floor just gives way from beneath the music as it turns into a cacaphony of grindcore fighting black metal in Tokyo. The final track 'Quietus', is arguably the best track on the album, clocking in at just over 6 minutes the song careens in with that same tempo the rest of the album likes to coast in and then downshifts for a fist throwing cadence during the chorus. 'Quietus' sounds like everything else on the album until those strings slow their vibration halfway through and an inspiring yet desperate instrumental outro carries the album to it's close.<br />
Now, this could be good or bad depending on how you look at it, but with the band's raw, sonic density and writing style - they've always at times kind of sounded like Converge, no shit considering Kurt Ballou has been involved with the band, the influence is obvious. However, with the addition of the new singer, it sounds at times on this record almost exactly like Converge, especially on 'Death Obsessed' and a couple of other places scattered about. There are worse groups to emulate noooooo doubt, as I love Converge and all, but I don't need another Converge, I don't want another Coverge, and I don't believe they were setting out to do that, but that's just the way it turned out, at least to my cochlear implants.<br />
Early Graves went through some serious shit and with that in mind this album is a winner. It's enjoyable - but for me it lingers a bit in mediocre waters. I had zero expectations for it, didn't expect it to suck and I didn't expect it to blow me away either, as I kind of went into it with the same mentality as when I first bought 'Goner' on a complete whim. "oh look, Early Graves came out with a new album a couple of months ago" kind of thing. It's good, it would be awesome as maybe a four song EP or something (Skinwalker, Apocalyptic Nights, Pure Hell, Quietus), but it's still only 8 tracks and a damn short album for the most part. It lacked something for me, but that doesn't mean I'd dissuade another from wanting to hear it, as I can see where for some it may move mountains. I'm going to work on making these reviews a whole lot shorter.PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-38003864702460819282012-04-29T12:28:00.002-07:002012-04-29T12:28:46.991-07:00Album Review: Napalm Death - 'Utilitarian'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Anybody interested enough to read this shitty review probably knows the story already, having heard it from every critic and fan in cyberspace everytime these guys release something. Band invents the genre and coins the term 'Grindcore', band supposedly loses it's way four albums into their career in an exploration of influences and sound, and then band is rebirthed...Well I wouldn't call it so much a rebirth as it was more like a violent bursting forth from the womb, eviscerating it's host on the way out and never looking back. Napalm Death took the "slower", industrialized sonic density of their sound from the mid-nineties (often referred to as the "Facepalm" years by elitist naysayers) and infused it into the speed and raw brutality of the bands early career noise in a stride that began with 2000's 'Enemy Of The Music Business'. Utilitarian is the group's 7th record since the so-called 'rebirth' and 14th over-all not including cover albums, and it is the sonic equivalent of an 800 Horse Power Steamroller barelling down on you at 80 MPH in a dead-end alleyway. The album is loud, suffocating, and magnanimous. The production on Utilitarian is clean but the guitars still have enough of that reverb layer to make that trademark tone instantly recognizable as Napalm Death even before Barney starts barking all over the madness. And he sounds more pissed off than ever, and more comfortable than ever, to the point where you start to wonder if this is just how the brummie talks these days. 2009's 'Time Waits For No Slave' was a good album, but my biggest complaint is it's length. It feels like a majority of the songs on that disc could have been cut in half, and probably should have been as it clocks in at over 50 minutes. I also wonder if that's why the amazingly thrashtastic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9kOWGYN0OQ">'De-Evolution Ad Nauseum'</a> is strategically placed as the album's closer to suck you back in. If you're one of those people who can maintain through 50 minutes of that kind of intensity without a problem then that's just the dulled down state you live in all the time and you're being robbed of the kind of release this music can give you when dosed correctly. 'Utilitarian' is a shorter album, and it's peppered with the kind of subtle experimentation that helps create checkpoints between the blasting and forces songs to stand out even on first listen. The album opens with an instrumental intro, which works because it's not something Napalm Death over-use on every album, and it does exactly what it's supposed to do: help prepare your central nervous system to adjust to the kind of sounds you are going to be hearing at a much faster pace. Then 'Error In Signals' lunges into an all-out grind assault, Greenway's rabid bark exchanging lines with Mitch Harris' wet shriek - a formula that never gets tired throughout the duration of the record. The utilization of instruments and guest vocals that would normally be alien to grindcore always helps to keep the sound fresh, as was the case on both 2005's 'The Code Is Red' and 2006's 'Smear Campaign'. On 'Everyday Pox' there is the shriek of a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y94UWKLrzSo">berzerking saxophone</a> weaving in and out of the cacaphony of churning riffs and savage percussion. Almost sounds like a goose getting pummeled by Herrera's double bass. It only adds to the intensity. One of the few times the band let their boot off your throat happens in the grandiose middle of 'Fall On Their Swords', where Greenway seems to channel the congealed gay love child of Peter Steele and Burton C. Bell in a goth baritone verberating over tribal toms and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBs-cZs9m8U&feature=relmfu">Jesu</a>-esque shoegaze string plucking. 'Quarintined' is arguably the catchiest track on the record, where the cadence like yell of 'Quarantined' changes it's pattern over striding guitars during the chorus before stomping itself back into d-beat grindcore, and 'Nom de Guerre' is a relentless blast-beat ridden destroyer that burns itself out in a little over a minute, in remastered classic Napalm Death style. As with the aforementioned 'De-Evolution Ad Nauseum', ND save one of the best for last in 'A Gag Reflex', a sonically bad-assed swaggering riff opens and closes the track leaving you hungry for more - and then you get it in the bonus song 'Everything In Mono' - one of those "bonus" tracks that they must have thrown in there because they knew it was too good to leave off but had to put it as a bonus after so many arm chair quarterback losers such as myself bitched about Time Waits For No Slave being too damn long - because a bonus track doesn't count, right? Anywho, the track is a sonic anvil falling on you over and over again like John Madden running a Looney Toons cartoon, especially the (Metallica) 'One' -esque middle tirade. God forgive me for that reference.<br />
And those are just the checkpoints! The rest is a filler-free pummeling of the ears. Forget all that phase bullshit, this collosus stands as possibly one of their best albums. I guess to put it short (toooooo late), if you dug Smear Campaign, with it's speed, heaviness, and sonic clarity - this is the closest thing to it in sound, only the writing and variety within the album surpasses it. Here's to another 14 albums please.PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-787837282034243482012-04-16T08:51:00.001-07:002012-04-16T08:56:05.798-07:00Album Review: Beaten To Death - Xes and Strokes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.invisibleoranges.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="317" src="http://www.invisibleoranges.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<span id="goog_1475498841"></span><span id="goog_1475498842"></span>I stumbled across a video from these guys for the title track off of their debut album Xes and Strokes. It's basically the five of them rocking out in what is probably a rented out rehearsal space. The song held my attention long enough to win me over at the one minute mark when the melody-tinged drop chord grind does a sudden shift of gears and turns into a palm-muted stompfest that makes you want to boogie the fuck out, complete with bass and drum breakdown. The band separates themselves from the pack by utilizing a lot of high end melody within their sound, riffs that wouldn't be alien to an Arch Enemy song if you tore away the blastbeats pushing it forward from behind- it works for them, and even more so because of it's juxtaposition to the big ugly fat guitars and guttered out bass that keep the band's sound down and dirty, think of that first Korn album on trucker speed (two for two on the bad metal references). For me personally, some of the best moments in Grindcore happen when a band's disfigured and violent sound breaks away from it's own grip for just a brief moment, and opens up the wound enough to show a glimpse of something almost beautiful within the carnage. The almost majestic riffage towards the end of Brutal Truth's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT3lZNZMUFU">'Dead Smart'</a>, or the desperate vulnerability that's exposed both musically and vocally in the second half of Pig Destroyer's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fs-1xWMS8I">'Towering Flesh'</a> are good examples. BTD accomplish this at the end of 'A Souless Alarm', when the grind halts to an eerie harmonic that is built upon with orchestrally choreographed volume knobbery (think Metallica's To Live Is To Die -HAT TRICK!!!), and then rolls forward into a percussively driven jam-out moment at the end. While I do compliment the band on messing around with melody and still keeping it grind, the formula just isn't strong enough to keep my attention throughout the entire album, as some tracks just fall into the mediocre after the half-way point once I got used to hearing it and I may as well be listening to the monotony that is Leng Tche'. But at the same time there are moments when the music makes you want to move, and sometimes the simplicity of the punk formula just fuckin' works the best, as evidenced in their opener "Pointless Testament", the actual music lasts less than a minute and the track beats you down with really just one main riff. "On Running" is another bad ass tune that works well mainly because it's still fresh early in the album and teeters back and forth between a happy little blast-tainted melody and stuttering breakdown power-chording (I know it ain't a word). The vocals are pretty straightforward and typical for the genre, low to high, with little variance at both ranges, but the emotion is there. The tracks on the album vary from just over a minute to just under three, so with only nine tracks the band does a great job of not wearing out their welcome and wrapping it up in 18 minutes and some change. Production is top notch, and the drums sound clean and powerful against the downtuned guitars and dirty bass. I get the feeling that Beaten To Death got the final product to sound exactly the way they wanted it to. I wonder how many groups hit the studio unable to match the sounds in their head and end up resting on their laurels or embracing it and changing a bit of the writing to fit into the sound better. The band also must have some good pals that majored in film editing because they've got three high quality straight-up cool videos available for your perusing on youtube where it's them just grinding their shit, including the aforementioned "Pointless Testament". I always dig when a group puts so much work into a video for a song that short. These dudes aren't anything I'd rave about in line at the next Weekend Nachos show but they are still good at what they do and aren't weighing down the scene with run-of-the-mill mediocrity, I'd definitely recommend them to anyone looking for something decent and new. I think Beaten To Death is one of those bands that will either win me over or lose me on their next release, and as of now I'm looking forward to hear where they go. Check out the video for 'Xes and Strokes' below, and then follow the links to watch 'Pointless Testimony' and 'Winston Churchill': It's a fun lil' watch.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/AcQG056dmFU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846300188460175506.post-12013298388422153682012-04-14T08:35:00.001-07:002012-04-14T11:43:57.190-07:00'Why You Do This' - a documentary of life on the road as an extreme musician.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguBoaEE07lhvHA3qFKcbJxsLaGwlTyvNjJk90XjBViwgbKshr6A8wXwFXgSbx8eI2NZkSWs86Fz7AGVsVA7pLi7HVXeGl7wxnxJPFAaWlzHCUIUIJC3sN23Mu8bYkcwaa3QD4cYUr8Q-M/s1600/whyyoudothis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguBoaEE07lhvHA3qFKcbJxsLaGwlTyvNjJk90XjBViwgbKshr6A8wXwFXgSbx8eI2NZkSWs86Fz7AGVsVA7pLi7HVXeGl7wxnxJPFAaWlzHCUIUIJC3sN23Mu8bYkcwaa3QD4cYUr8Q-M/s320/whyyoudothis.jpg" width="220" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.myspace.com/carbomb">Car Bomb</a>. For those of you unprevy to this one-albumed loogie of hate, know that they are a musical force to be reckoned with. Spawned in the wake of the emergence of the ridiculously pigeon-holed genre-term "Math Metal", this four piece created an albums worth of controlled yet spasmatic ferocity the likes of which raises them above the visionless 'Calculating Infinity' Clones pissing all over the creative original sound. Sure the influence can be heard, but Car Bomb abandons anything even close to resembling a hook or rhythm and instead comes off as a very jagged, very large pill to swallow, arguably more difficult to absorb then even some of the most unhinged Grindcore - arguably. The sound is so sharp, and so combustible, that instead of resembling 11 different tracks it's almost just one long compilation of fits and seizures. A soundtrack to the spewing forth of schizophrenic hate.<br />
How does a band like this survive? Well, seeing as how they hadn't released anything in over 5 years I wasn't sure that they had, until I stumbled upon a documentary titled 'Why You Do This'. Just over an hour long, this short little film (put together by Car Bomb vocalist Michael Dafferner) follows the band on the road as they tread on and continue playing their undigestible brand of music despite what seems to be only a continuing series of disenchanting pit-falls and realizations. It's the usual run-of-the-mill kind of things any underground band has to deal with - playing to crowds of three or four people, automotive difficulties, being ripped off by club owners, continuously losing more money than you make - but for those who've never had the experience it makes for an interesting watch. The narraration throughout the film is mostly pessimistic, as though the whole project itself came to fruition as a result of half a decades worth of being jaded. If you don't take it as tongue-in-cheek halfway thru the doc you may find yourself telling your monitor to "just fuckin' quit then", but by the end you'll see it's not the answer that you're sticking around for but really the search for the answer. The film also uses Lamb of God and Gojira as examples of two groups who were able to claw their way 'tooth and nail' out of the underground to headline their own tour and earn an opening slot playing for Metallica. Poor examples in my opinion as both those bands earn their living on the other side of extreme music's line in the sand due to their sound being so accessible in comparison to a group like Carbomb. Lamb Of God is par for the course with a band like Slipknot, damn good at what they do, but still just a rehash of riffs and ideas that worked years before when Meshuggah, Sepultura and Slayer carved their paths (Phil Anselmo called and said he wants his tough-mumblings-over-tougher-riffs act back Mr. Blythe), but I digress. They were probably the only ones willing or available to contribute interviews and without them there would be an air of hoplessness throughout the film. The doc also includes interviews with members of Bella Morte, The Chariot, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47kcWvvF5jo">Soilent Green</a>, not to mention a spot-on 'why I do this' summarization about playing extreme music from ex-Death/current Charred Walls of the Damned drummer Richard Christy. The film is an eye opener for anybody that hasn't tried traveling across the country in a shit-box van w/trailer, and makes you thankful that groups like this don't toss their gear into the Ol' Miss while driving over it and call it a day. Can you imagine a world without<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0kxQ-1cppM&feature=related"> violent basement shows where the fuse blows every song</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gayvjq7ND3k">Hepatitis C</a> creeps like grave moss through bloody knuckes and abrased skin in mock-jungle temperatures? As I type this from the comfort of the home I own and live in comfortably I tell you that I cannot. So god bless those cursed with the passion for playing extreme music, and sacrificing their own comfort to tread across this country and scrape by with no expectations of ever seeing a light at the end of a tunnel or a multi-million dollar record contract not to mention even a mere 2 minutes on the radio. The film doesn't break any new ground, nor does it necessarily draw you in - but much like the Discordance Axis novella 'Compiling Autumn', the fact that it exists is a bonus. Fans of the scene and the band should consider themselves fortunate that someone was passionate enough about what they do to compile the resources and take the time needed to create it and make it available without profiting. So you should take the time to watch the doc if you're into the scene at all. Check it out below and order yourself a copy <a href="http://www.whyyoudothis.com/">here</a>.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/wJSp-yRMrsY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16889366076365506821noreply@blogger.com0