Portland, Oregon is the misanthropic crust capital of the US. From Ashes Rise and Hellshock are the daddies of the scene, opening their black wings over all the little crustlings, bringing them up with an equally healthy respect for proto-extremity like Celtic Frost, as much as Discharge.
The absolutely unholy Murderess (lady-pun on 'murderous' in case you're slow), who were formed in 2008 by the core trio of Rachel Nakanishi (guitar), Eben Travis (drums), and Amanda Burghard (guitar) are the proud end result of this environment and ethic. With the cavernous, trapped-in-a-well production style of suicidal black metal (although it's never all that suicidal is it, given how many albums Shining have churned out in quick succession?) that lends Jozy Kinnaman's shrieks and howls a haunting, spine-tingling chill on their limited run Aborted Society debut, 2010's 'The Last Thing You Will Ever See...'. Never straying too far from the throbbing, melodic, metallic, Swedish-brand hardcore that the scene is built on - Murderess deserve the epitaph of 'blackened crust', but it's a purposeful, driving assault akin to Bathory or early Satyricon, not the introspective, unfocused sprawl of more beard-tugging outfits to make use of the term.
Seriously. Goat Knight. A knight who is also a goat, or possibly a knight in the service of some Satanic goat order, or possibly the guardians of the goat metal underground. Do you really want me to go through the whole bullshit chorus of selling you on an idea of a band or can we all just agree that this utterly amazing/profoundly stupid name is reason enough to check them out?
Oh, go on then.
Forming in 2010 in Taiwan, four-piece (they presumably added someone after taking this photo) lo-fi thrashbastards Goat Knight have a wanky mission statement and two rehearsal tracks of driving, pre-death metal extremity that do all the real communicating in lieu of an English language discography. A septic, festering open wound in which the flies of Unleashed, Death, Possessed, Kreator and Sodom have settled to lay their eggs, Goat Knight are not unlike the seemingly defunct apparently active Bazoöka in terms of influences and fiercely primitive end product.
You don't need to be told that Arch Enemy are a load of mid-paced, plodding, cancerous garbage, that's one of the first conclusions people come to in their journey through death metal. In that respect they form a vital first touchstone for newcomers to the genre, who whatever their level of immersion into extremity, knowledge of Napalm Death demo order or the the significance of the the different coloured vortexes on Massacre's 'From Beyond', they can all rally around the fact that Arch Enemy are lazily pushing a little dingy through the foetid, still end of the great genre lake and skimming dirty great bucketfuls of stale water, condoms and dead animals from the murk.
'Khaos Legions' is, obviously, another such bucket of all the crap bits from melodeath and Swedish death metal. Watered down with the brackish fluid of lowest common denominator, and bound together neatly by those iconic Mike Amott riffs which were cool in Carnage, fun in Carcass and incredibly, unendingly tedious to hear dragged out since. The basic mechanism is the same as Hatebreed – they take 90s metalcore and NYHC, throw in some broadly applicable anthems about being vaguelly 'down' and vaguelly 'overcoming' them, and then the $$$$ comes spewing in. But hardcore is pretty basic anyway, and its power comes from the simplicity of its delivery, the primal thump-thump-thump of its riffage. Death metal, even in the sausage fingers of bands like Severe Torture and Jungle Rot, is intense and comparatively complicated, and Arch Enemy reduce this to the point of nothing. 'Khaos Legions' isn't even musically terrible, it's just nothing. Absolute nothing – not even the song-titles stick. Rare is the eardrum that will come away with any lasting impression.
Which leaves us only with the image as any sort of talking point. Dressed in anarchy symbols and the black-fucking-flag, Arch Enemy are suddenly offering up their punk-rock status in deference of their shameless corporate might, acres of sponsorship and 17 euro t-shirts. This isn't all that new – Angela Gossow has been touting herself as some sort of feminist icon for ages, despite posing for sexy photoshoots (well, about as sexy as you can get when you're some sort of weird robot creature) and, well, not doing anything that women in music haven't been doing for decades.
Women in punk have never felt the need to push their gender to the fore, it's just a biological fact like asthma or big feet – it might inform the lyrics, but the band are supposed to be bigger than any one person. From Crass to Bolt Thrower, bands rooted in punk rock, tossed aside any attempt to view their art through the lens of gender as offensive and patronising. And here are Arch Enemy, offering up claims up punk status, of liberation politics, in one hand – and confirming the lack of a penis as being some how amazing and remarkable with the other.
I'm a strong, powerful woman – pat me on the head and feed me a fucking peanut.
The ancient civilizations’ legacy is immortal. It shall live until the very end of human race and dig roots into every work of art. Extreme music makes no exception. Some of the bands, responsible for the evolution of metal in this new century have found the essence of their sound in a world which existed more than 2,000 years ago. The pyramidal death of Nile or the biblical approach of later Behemoth almost resurrected an ancient, divine power.
Greek symphonic maestros Septicflesh have a lot to do with this wave of extreme metal. They are technical, distinctive and precise; the world they create is a majestic mix of more than few mythologies, as the big return with ‘Communion’ proudly declared through the crash of Lovecraft-ian occult atmosphere, Egyptian phenomena and many other important details, leading the listener to the ruins left from this catastrophe of ideologies.
The energy, radiating from the ruins, builds up the atmosphere of ‘The Great Mass’, an album that rises from the ashes of a great, unknown colossus. Using the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra once again, the band reach evangelical scale IN THEIR music; ‘The Vampire From Nazareth’ is the simplest song (along with ‘Rising’), but beauty, ugliness, aggression, melody and deep melancholy all meet during the four minutes of atmospheric perfection. This is Septicflesh at their best, smartly balancing between epic orchestrations and modern, yet trve in its own way death metal. The title-track masterfully piles up layers of brutality to the point where on the last section it transforms into desert storm… of blastbeats. Mysterious female vocals, ritual percussions and dramatic guitar yell are so ‘visual’ that you're bound to feel the Pyramid god's untamable anger. Radical experiment this is not, but 'The Great Mass' completes the development of Septicflesh’ sound; a journey that started from ‘Sumerian Demons’ and ends right here.
Winds of Plague (pronounced 'Play-gu') have been through a lot of incarnations in their bid to be the new Bleeding Through, having shed four keyboardists since 2002 - not that you care - due to the demanding Jersey Shore-like schedule of gym, tanning and mosh call out classes required to be Upland, California's premier shirtless symphonic deathcore beefcakes.
An amazing four albums in, and Winds of Plague have well and truly missed the boat - not sure what the kids are all jamming to now, but over-polished mosh (guest vocals from members of Terror and Hatebreed) is all kinds of 2003, superfluous, Cradle of Filth keyboard parts are 1997 and vanilla deathcore is ancient, carbon dated to 2007. Only using extremely creative maths can you get these component parts to equal 2011, which suggests that WoP should drop this whole pretence of zietgeist-hugging cruciality, like they're just on the cusp of being the next big thing. Seriously guys, Abigail Williams were far more hyped than you, combined some of the same elements, and they stopped being a valid band even before they released anything.
I'm not hatin' just for the sake of hatin', because I think Winds of Plague are the wrong kind of metal or something boring like that - I care for them and I want to help them, because they're very confused. And luckily, there is one remaining career path wide open to them, gaping like the Salaac, and the choice of narrator on 'Against the World' (WWE nobody the Ultimate Warrior, to the delight of manchildren everywhere, does a spoken word piece) and the preponderance of mid-paced groove metal plod ('Built for War' is wedged somewhere between Full Blown Chaos and one of those latter-Slipknot filler tracks that revolves around Corey Taylor's gruff barking) suggests they know it. Discard the admittedly pretty flimsy deathcore inclinations and the Ice Cream van keyboard jangling, and get yourself onto the mid-West college town circuit, playing to juggallos and rednecks with Pantera backpieces.
In the crusting grindosphere there are few albums as gleefully anticipated as the new jam from Swedish d-beat furies Victims – yeah, sure, Rotten Sound, Gridlink and Total Fucking Destruction are fairly prominent, and Morbid Angel will drop a new steaming semi-industrial, PVC-clad turd at some point this year too, but all of them come with an element of risk. Victims may not be the 'heaviest', the most out there or the most technically accomplished of that batch, but they deliver satisfying, heart-racing hardcore thrills with absolutely no chance of disappointment. It's inconceivable that 'A Dissident' could be anything other than glistening dis-crust, swaddled in those gossamer thin, cotton candy soft melodic guitar lines, hoarse shoutalong anthems, and peddle pounding drums, driving the whole thing onwards like a gentle spring day when you just suddenly feel like running.
Guess what, 'A Dissident' is absolutely all of that, only with slightly sharper production than 2005's 'Divide And Conquer' and 2008's 'Killer', bringing the subtlety of their unsubtly to the fore - sort of like being able to see the bevels on a Lego brick. Forever the perfect antithesis to the rest of vocalist/bassist Jon Lindqvist's discography, the acutely weaponised aggression of the late, irreplaceable Nasum and scarcely active brutalists Sayyadina, Victims get you so pumped up that you want to punch yourself in the face and spit blood at passers by.
A celebration of all that's great about Sweden, Stockholm bruisers Remasculate wed the fist-clenching, blastalong fury of Nasum to the driving, Slayer-referencing, syrup thick riffology of Dismember, and even some moments of swaggering grind 'n' roll that'll get Entombed nodding along in approval at this summer's utterly crucial Obscene Extreme.
Forming in 2004 and gathering current and former members from underrated new(ish) school brutalists like Insision and Demoniacal, Remasculate swagger through modern death metal like a leather-clad biker gang hitting some scumbag dive bar and spoiling for a fight. Their sole full-length to date, 2008's 'Perversemonger' (on Unexploded Records), is the sound of a line of shots being knocked back and the empty glasses being smashed against your head.
A couple of years ago they were promising a split with the superb Exhale and haven't uttered a word since. Possibly because, as befitting the sleazy rock 'n' roll image they've expertly cultivated, they're sponsored by a local sex shop and got Remasculate branded ball gags out of the bargain. So, y'know, if you're in the market...
Context is everything. Lee Barrett for example, while being an enormous fan of widdly technical nonsense and corset-clad lady metal, is a voice to be trusted when it comes to fast, bollock-bashing hardcore (he's probably to be trusted when it comes to that other stuff too, but how on earth would I know?) - he's of the generation where this stuff was taking off, where words didn't exist to describe what made Heresy and Extreme Noise Terror different and exciting. So I know that if he offers up a band, it's not because he's read about it in some irrelevant, dollar-chasing magazine or it's ticking some demographic box, it's because it somehow bottles that frantic, all-or-nothing chaos that blew his mind umpteen years ago, and he thinks I'll dig it too. He's a wise man, and he's right in this case. Migra Violenta are utterly savage.
Playing the sort of breakneck, thrashing hardcore than Latin tongues seem expertly suited to - Ratos de Porão, Los Crudos and Cripple Bastards being good examples of this venomous delivery at its best - Migra Violenta formed in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires in 1999, though their members are drawn from Colombia and Brazil, and created a whole mini-scene around themselves with a zine, a label, a distro and the like. Contemptious of Yanqui posturing in the vast majority of South American hardcore bands, Migra Violenta confront regional issues - government, war, capitalism and corruption - head on across a number of splits and releases, the most accessible of which being 2004's 'Holocausto Capitalista', an unrelenting assault of tense riffs, urgent, anxious vocals and the occasional heart-tugging Tragedy melodies that seem to emerge from the smoke like a lost child in the aftermath of a riot.
The Electrowerkz smells pretty much as you'd expect given it's most often inhabited by fat goths emptying pools of sweat out of their PVC top hats. Maybe the odour of virginity and red wine is anathema to crusties, who doubtless get all kinds of sex from addled crustettes with daddy issues, and therefore reek of semen and white cider.
Yeah, that's definitely what it is, because it seems painfully empty for BARSTAHN, MAZZARCHEWZETTS Third Reich fetishists Panzerbastard who have the atrocious sound for their opening song. Frustratingly it's their signature tune 'Bastards Die Hard' – an unapologetic beer-swilling, DGAF anthem for thugs everywhere. Luckily, whatever dispute their Celtic Motörcharge thrash punk was having with the PA reaches an amicable conclusion and an equilibrium is reached. It sounds suitably fierce, 'Hellgate' especially, and there's a lovely, grateful homily to English punk rock and heavy metal, the sort that bands feel compelled to make on their first trip to London – sort of the rock 'n' roll equivalent of Jerusalem Syndrome, where visitors to the Holy Land become convinced they're angels/prophets/etc. Also, vocalist/bassist PanzerKeith (as he definitely isn't called), looks like Burton C Bell would if all the chipmunk DNA and triple decker cheeseburgers were removed and replaced by post-apocalyptic Viking biker.
Not sure who's in North-East 'rippercrust' hellions Hellbastard anymore, and the rest of Hellbastard don't seem entirely sure what band they're in either – they're just concentrating on delivering pose-striking thrash metal while the affable Scruff takes care of all the things that make Hellbastard who they are. And that works, he's certainly got more than enough punk rock to go around. Over-earnest condemnations of the New World Order are delivered with the sort of heartbreaking sincerity that excuses anything, even the fact that his plaits are coming undone. The crowd fills out a bit, with awkward looking punks jostling with thrashers and grumpy skinheads, neatly summing up the strange twilight world in which Hellbastard dwell – too much conscience for the knuckle-dragging metalheads, too much self-absorbed shred for the orthodox punks, and too much peace and love for the militant anarchopunk dustbin divers.
Those cunts are totally missing out, because Hellbastard take genre orthodoxy and juice it like a vitamin rich raw veg smoothy - harsh and earthy to the taste, but doing you the world of good.
‘Brutal’ is a word that loses its weight too often nowadays, but Anaal Nathrakh show its true meaning, and the fact they do gives us basis to mention their name on places like Extreme Responses... the other reason being of course that Dave Hunt growls better than you!
The English duo's ability to change without losing momentum is truly inspiring, but the key to their success remains in the paradoxical accessibility of records such as ‘Hell is Empty, and All the Devils Are Here’ – one of the rare cases when a band achieves popularity with no sign of compromise. 'Passion' illustrates the evolution in their sound and serves as an audio map of (almost) everything extreme in the world.
Twisted, evil and, of course, brutal, ‘Passion’ is the logical continuation of ‘In The Constellation Of The Black Widow’, with a few improvements such as the impressive depth of the sound and the unorthodox structures of the songs (‘Drug-Fucking Abomination’ is a good example). The blackened riffs, Emperor-like epics, tortured bass lines and grinding blastbeat after d-beat drum schemes turn the album into a pure exploration of misanthropy. 'Tod Huetet Uebel’ sees Hunt doing his best behind that mic; the Benediction frontman throws painful, hysteric, psychotic screams of bitter poison at your face and at the end, ‘Portrait of the Artist’, leaves an open gate for the next release, promising that it will be even darker, faster and heavier than this one!
Helping themselves to a fair bit of hype thanks to being the latest crust-etched skit-kickers snapped up by Southern Lord, Oslo, Norway's Summon the Crows are playing Roadburn this weekend, on the stage curated by Southern 0))), alongside eighteen bands who sound like Earth, for the edification of 1,800 people who look like the dude in Earth.
You know, the sad looking one.
Forming in 2000, this odorous three-piece have been fitfully active, cranking out pummelling crust metal which takes equal helpings from Bolt Thrower's first disc, Axegrinder, Kreator, Discharge and perhaps even a bit of black metal in the frosty riffs and haunting instrumentals that pop up on both their 2006 debut 'Scavengers Feast' and second full-length 'One More For the Gallows' (on vinyl from Ruin Nation Records and super limited CD from Southern Lord), along with a spot of driving Motörcrust redolent of Czech filthbags Malignant Tumour.
Taking all the usual influences - Disclose, Discharge, Amebix and a adrenaline shot of rage - and hammering it into a warhead of the familiar made venomous, Spanish duo Disflesh formed 2003 in the barren Spaghetti Western tundra of Almería and have carved out a reputation for metal-laced barbs of wicked crust. Tempered with those seemingly ubiquitous Anticimex harmonies and a healthy respect for black metal's nihilistic bleakness, Disflesh have proven their worth across three demos and a recent 'War Would Be Disastrous' split with the ENT-like grindcore bruisers Slugfest.
At some point in 2010 they started talking about a forthcoming full-length and haven't said anything since. What is out there, though, rules.
“A couple of people have gotten pissed off about some of our songs, but that just shows insecurity on their part” explains Steve Mahler of how the Irish unit's antichristian, occult grindcore runs contrary to the genre's accepted subject matter, as handed down in the Big Red Book of Crust. “Punks don’t give a shit really, there’re a million other bands who get upset and vocal about capitalism who they can listen to - we don’t need to do it.
“It’s weird because I like some punk bands, but I don’t agree with 75 per cent of the politics, but I like the beat and sound of it. I think punks and black metal kids are all about the image and the trend as well as the music,” adds Abaddon Incarnate's vocalist/guitarist contentiously. “Whereas a lot of death metal people are in it for the music. I mean punks take a lot of time with their hairdos, and getting the right spikes and studs on their jackets, it must take forever to get ready to go out at night. Most death metal people just get up and go with a smelly t shirt and the trousers they fell asleep in the night before. Or is that just me?
“Anyway, it would be a bit hypocritical to lambaste capitalism when we are manufacturing and selling CDs, records and merchandise, and selling them for a small profit. While I’m on the subject although I’m hesitant to use an Abaddon Incarnate interview as a platform to air personal political comments, I'd like to say in my humble opinion as a consumer and a citizen - Capitalism is cool, I like it, once it’s ethical. I would prefer more state control over what people can sell and charge. We get a lot of sub-standard food in our supermarkets that has come to us through a lot of poverty and bloodshed. If goods are sourced locally and we are forced to pay a fair price for things, it’s better for everyone and creates a stable local economy. And the government stops this cheap import slave labour type goods. “Back to the lyrics , I’ve often had some goons come up to me complaining that we don’t sing about porn or gore and sadly also a few black metal mafia types about ten or fifteen years ago complaining that we didn’t take Satanism seriously. We are first and foremost a metal band, I like some punk but I’m not trying to break into that scene we just play what we would like to hear and what we enjoy doing. Anyway,” he concludes confrontationally, “if anyone doesn’t like what we do that’s cool, just ignore us and start your own band, yeah?”
Fair enough. Forming in 1994 during the death metal explosion to play sinister, blackened death, Dublin's Abaddon Incarnate did the unlikely and devolved into furious, blasting chaos – where other bands with one foot in the ether would have their music follow suit, disappearing into odd and misjudged latter-day Morbid Angel vistas where the slime lives.
“The sound changed really because we got Meiszko from Nasum to record the second album,” admits Steve. “We basically just told him to do whatever he liked with it and we learned a lot of tricks. We’ve been using his set up ever since. Also we got a bit pissed off playing five minute long death metal songs and preferred to play shorter songs. So everything got grinded up. A lot of the stuff we listened to was grind anyway so it was easy to work with both styles.”
Taking into account their most result assault is a split with longrunning Orange County grind punks Phobia (on Underground Movement), which aside from the odd Morbid Angel riff (“Well, it's 80 per cent of what I listen to,” admits Steve, “Morbid Angel, Immolation, Deicide, Nile, Nocturnus, Incantation, Carcass... so it’s natural, but it when it comes to a rehearsal, it gets simplified and heavier, and grinds up”), is so dependant upon a chassis of toxic d-beat, the name is a bit of a misnomer. Was Disolate Ways already taken?
“Yeah, Cory [Sloan, ex-bassist] and Olan [Parkinson, ex-drummer] wanted to change the name but I wouldn’t let them. Both are gone now anyway. I really like the name. It represents what the lyrics are about and I don’t want some brutal violent name for brutality sake or whatever. Abaddon Incarnate, it's full of esoteric, hidden meanings. And it comes up pretty much first on the trade and distro lists which is handy.”
Luckily for the brilliantly named Terror of Dynamite Attack, no-frills crustgrind is the real international language here - though you can't really mock this Indonesian unit's grasp of English, they may lack finesse but they get their point across with song-titles like 'Stop War and Invasion'. Forming in July 2009 in Bandung, Indonesia's third largest city, Terror of Dynamite Attack bundle up the slovenly chaos of Extreme Noise Terror, Phobia and Agathocles into a tightly wound, high octane detonation that passes muster with all the usual reference points of 21st Century grind: Wormrot, Lycanthropy, Mesrine etc etc yawn yawn yawn.
Already renown in their locality, they've toured with DC powerviolence duo Iron Lung and defunct Aussie dirtbags Pisschrist, ToDA are currently working on a whole host of splits, one worth mentioning being a 7" alongside superbly toxic Italian grinders Repulsione. You can pick up their cassette EP 'Behind the Exploitation of their Richness Nature' from Sukma Records (via Indonesia) or Revulsion Records (via USA).
The following video is absolute turd, but that's all there is, take my work for it - this is raw, unsweetened old school bollock smashing of the sort that set Peel's pulse racing.
Everyone's suddenly talking about Human Remains, about time too one might think - the pioneering death/grind band that later gave birth to mighty Discordance Axis are long overdue some love, perhaps even another tasty reissue and some retrospective fapping from magazines. Alas, it turns out an "occult NWOBHM band" called Hell have released an album called 'Human Remains' on Nuclear Blast so obviously they're all up in people's grills, pushing their way to the front of the Satanic rock queue by merit of age - they include renown producer Andy Sneap, whose weighty wallet/contacts book gave pagan thrashers Sabbat a welcome second airing.
Obviously Hell are about as "occult" as London Dungeon and about as interesting as Avenged Sevenfold, and their sudden reappearance fits seamlessly into the general narrative of classic heavy metal being back, or whatever. Apparently some people have a lot of time in their lives for this sort of Magic: The Gathering noodling, and on the off chance any of them find their way here - consider this a watershed moment in your understanding.
At the risk of running up against consensus and feeding more bullshit juice into the great media bullshit machine, Chicago's beard-tugging American Heritage are absolutely fantastic. Forming at some vague point in the mid/late '90s, they're usually stacked alongside Knut and Keelhaul as one of those hoary old riff-manglers who deserve more respect than they get – despite splits with Mastodon, the Art of Burning Water and a whole batch of awesomesauce releases, they've largely slipped under the radar.
Five years on from their last full-length and 'Sedentary' can be neatly summed up by its credits which feature guest strings from Mastodon's Bill Kelliher, Minsk's Sanford Parker (who also produced), Intronaut's Leon del Muerte and Black Cobra's Rafa Martinez, keyboards from Sulaco's, recording with Torche's Jonathan Nuñez, and more than can be easily listed. This is groove-laden, hypnotic sludge rock with an undercurrent of progressive metal oddness and syrupy thick and syrupy sweet Kylesa melody. Destined to be compared effortlessly to a whole mess of other bands– this brand of strained, heaving bloke-rock being very much the soup of the day for much of Hydra Head and Relapse's roster – American Heritage have been doing it longer, and much better.
Like Anaal Nathrakh if they replaced the black metal influences with Agoraphobic Nosebleed, West Sydney harshness purveyors Thedowngoing bely their reduced roster (two incoherent Westies, plus samples) on 'I am Become' (downloadable here) with a incoming tidal wave of chaotic grindcore, eardrum rattling feedback and programmed unease like Gnaw Their Tongues drunk, angry and lashing out after a bad night on the razz.
From the swirling riff tempest of 'Cutinhalf' to the unsettling, inescapable, yowling space baby (possibly the one pictured) shovelling the world into its star-flecked maw on 'Motionless', Thedowngoing prove able to swerve from moody, sludge-driven squalls to frenzied noisecore hailstorms, with the only constant being the all-pervasive sense of dread and menace that tethers the whole thing right down in the darkest depths of the low end.
Currently nipping at Magrudergrind's heels as the premier hard-touring, groove-dispensing US grind shitkickers, Chicago's Weekend Nachos are already cranking out the follow-up to their 2009 Relapse effort 'Unforgivable', tucking two of the future album tracks into this four-song 7” EP. Pretending that last year's oddly epic 'Bleed' EP didn't happen, they return to the Madball-inflected, Eyehategod-flavoured powerchugviolence of 'Unforgivable'. There's nothing else that needs saying, save the new album better appear pretty bloody quickly because five minutes isn't nearly enough to build up mosh momentum and there's at least one lamp still to knock over.
Containing former members of cult crust grinders Filthpact (whose final album, incidentally, is available for sliding scale download), progressive deathsters Korpse, the short-lived Fester and current members of Ablach, Aberdeen's Bonesaw have a pedigree that ensures there's no fucking about – building a globally recognised brand of bludgeoning old school death metal that harvests the organs from Autopsy, Repulsion, Machetazo, Necrophagia, Death and even a spot of Incantation's rumbling menace of their most recent output. It's not enough to simply write shuddering slabs of primordial death metal, you've got to make all the right associations.
Given splits with Kam Lee-fronted horror metallers Bone Gnawer and and post-Autopsy filthbags Abcess, as well as the 'Resurrected in Festering Slime' vinyl compilation that kickstarted the briefly hyped Swedish death metal re-revival, Bonesaw have done that. Their 'Sawtopsy' full-length is immediately worth getting your hands on in preparation for the forthcoming split with Sicilian gorelords Haemophagus – this disc is fearsomely tight and cavernously heavy, check out one song here.
Heavy music long ago devolved into just desperately rearranging building blocks in different orders and hoping for something different enough to make your listening experience in some small way memorable. On their own, Discharge + Hellhammer isn't particularly interesting, being instantly indicative of the over-saturated and joyless glut of Fenriz-endorsed pose-striking metalpunk bands. Throw in the original wave of corrosive post-punk/goth rock and belligerent East Coast hardcore, and we're breaking out the partypoppers.
Referred to by idiots who only listen to one type of music as 'Satanic hardcore' – anyone remember when Bleeding Through were briefly called 'black metalcore'? – San Diego's elusive Crime Desire crank out brooding, mean-spirited, stripped down (to the point where it was recorded on an analogue tape and then mastered straight onto vinyl) hardcore that's absolutely spoiling for a brawl. Their recent wax work, 'Alone in a Dream' gets right up in the face of their core inspiration and gives them a great big kiss with guest wailing from Christian Death's Gitane Demone (plus her daughter Zara). Both that, and the earlier 2009 EP 'Every Day... in Chains' are downloadable for pay what you want (including nothing) here. Get it now and daub weepy streaks under your eyes with mascara.
Once merely the band that emerged like a strutting, swaggering rock-fuelled hardcore butterfly from the raucous, combative pupa of Louisville, Kentucky hardcore giants Breather Resist, Young Windows existed in that mid-'00s purgatory of bands who sounded a lot like and a lot better than the shit that was clogging up the Ferret and Solid State rosters. Yelpy, bearded, checked shirt wearing stuff with difficult lyrics and discordant rhythms – the sort of thing that Everytime I Die popularised. The trio's 2006 debut 'Settle Down City' continued down Breather Resist's Helmet/Jesus Lizard-inspired feedback-driven template to the immense delight of a handful of people who gave the hardest shit in the world, which was an increasingly declining circle of listeners, being as Breather Resist fans were largely just people who were too fixated with appearing cool on forums to admit to liking Converge.
Five years later and 'In and Out...' could be the product of a anonymous band for all the good context does. If you ear-squint over the speakers you can probably pick up a signature guitar sound or something tedious and possibly entirely imaginary of that ilk, but trying to crowbar the disc into some sort of flow diagram of the band's output is futile, only serving to underline how alien a record this is to their canon. As foreshadowed on 2009's split with dishwater-swilling post-metal bores Pelican – urgently in need of following the dodo into extinction (and also, has anyone pointed out how shit the drummer is ololol?) – Evan Patterson has soothed his serrated bray with liquid woodsmoke, haunting the songs like 16 Horsepower's David Eugene Edwards crooning through a coffin lid, the guitars slide roll across the bass like tumbleweed in dirge-rock Americana landscape not unlike that explored by Murder by Death and Across Tundras.
As hypnotic and comforting as the passage of the sky overhead on a warm evening when a combination of alcohol and deep thoughts compel you to lie back on the ground, Young Widows' noise rock'n'core template has been broken apart for firewood and all that remains are gentle, glowing embers.
I only have one thing in the new issue of Decibel, but it was one of the most difficult things I've had to write - to simultaneously keep it factual and in perspective, but also do justice to a really fantastic human being. It's a full-page news piece/obituary for Extreme Noise Terror vocalist Phil Vane with a really beautiful picture from my bud Rafael Yaekashi taken on a Japanese tour.
Also in that issue is the coveted Napalm Death flexidisc, also dedicated to Phil with the touching legend "A life spent being bloody chuffed."
I think that's really moving. Pick it up if you can, there's a pretty rad Gridlink interview too.
Seemingly created entirely to bait the Australian metalcore personality of the same name – former I Killed the Prom Queen, Carpathian, Bury Your Dead vocalist, 'Big Brother' wannabe and egotistical, delusional dick jar – Sydney suburbanites Michael Crafter quickly evolved beyond that basic premise, leaving sixteen songs of parody on their clattery riot of an initial tape demo/album, 'Winston... This One's For You' (I'm proud to say I contributed one title back when I was relevant; 'I've Quit a Band LOL', based on a MySpace exchange with the aforementioned hate figure.)
2010's 'DY or Die' (stream AND/OR download for fuck all) was a more measured assault, hefty production and good songs – it's an absolute riot of tight, fast hardcore – and the same period is captured on 'Live @ Hot Damn'. Shortly after that they drove their tinny-filled yute right off the reservation for a super limited doom cassette, 'Double Doomin' (sorry, gotta buy this one but you can stream it), which has unbelievably bad artwork and surprisingly engrossing atmospheric sludge. Maybe the artwork lowers expectations to the point where you're expecting some parodic wailing and My Dying Bride-style GCSE English lyrics that rhyme 'sad' with 'bad', and 'woes' with 'rose.
This duo don't stop, there's a new 7” out on April 17 through Tenzenmen Records, from which the following track has been plucked like an overripe berry:
It says a great deal about Iceland's taste for difficult music that perhaps their most well known 'heavy' musicians are Sigur Rós and Mínus – even jamming some Björk is a bizarrely alienating and off putting experience, although mostly because she's shit.
Clearly taking influence from noisy hardcore, mathematically inclined grindcore and a dash of swaggering rock'n'roll weirdness – obvious reference points would be Burnt by the Sun, Coalesce, Brutal Truth, Botch and maybe even Meshuggah for those swirling riffs and 'Twin Peaks' for that slight sense of cold unease, Klink formed in 1999, toured with Deicide in Europe in 2004 and then promptly split up. Reforming recently and getting aboard some far more fitting shows (and prestigious/precocious hype showcase Iceland Airwaves), in Iceland with Today is the Day, and in London with Soylent Green – hopefully that'll keep them from splitting up because with no obvious releases after 2001 (if you find any, do tell), it's all about the live show.
