Concert Review: The Dillinger Escape Plan @ Reggie's Rock Club - 05.08.13

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.  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 Chicago 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.  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, seriously. 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.

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  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 25 current metal frontmen. 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 basement show. 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.
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 this, 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.
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.

"Ahhhh, Pig Killer!!!!" Fanning The Flames That Pig Destroyer's 'Book Burner' Has Caused.

 

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.
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.
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.
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:

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.
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.
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.
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.

Under The Radar: Vog

 

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-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.

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 Shifty 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?).

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.

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:

 

 

Album Review: Pig Destroyer - Mass & Volume

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, under 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.
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.
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 Natasha being released on its own and Brian no longer being in the band, our intentions of releasing Mass & Volume basically evaporated. However, looking back now, Mass & Volume serves as a great epilogue to that particular era of the band."
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.
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.
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 here

Album Review: Early Graves - 'Red Horse'

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.
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.
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 got in, scrambled your brains and got out, 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.
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.
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 Braveheart 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 Plaid 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.
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.
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.

Album Review: Napalm Death - 'Utilitarian'

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 'De-Evolution Ad Nauseum' 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 berzerking saxophone 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 Jesu-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.
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.

Album Review: Beaten To Death - Xes and Strokes

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 'Dead Smart', or the desperate vulnerability that's exposed both musically and vocally in the second half of Pig Destroyer's 'Towering Flesh' 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.