Hardcore cluster bomb: American Heritage

American Heritage - Sedentary
2011, Translation Loss Records

Before listening to this record I had never heard of American Heritage, whose history as a band - it turns out - goes back to the late nineties. A big oversight on my part it seems. After releasing a slew of shorter formats, including a couple of splits and two full lenghts, this Chicagobased act now releases their third full length album, Sedentary on Translation Loss Records. This album dropped into my lap like a fucking cluster bomb and had very much the same effect. Shit just exploded. Sedentary opens with such a round-house kick to the stomach, with the track Sickening Rebellion, that I'm having difficulties not breaking shit in my immediate vicinity whenever I listen to it. This album is like a juice blender of equal parts Melvins, Motörhead and Nomeansno, with dashes of Dwarves and Earth AD-era The Misfits thrown into the mix. This shit is everywhere, off the charts and uncontainable like a Ritalin-deprived spastic with ADD. Just look at their song titles - Tomb Cruise, Morbid Angle and Kiddie Pool Of Baby Blood ! - and you know these guys are good. This album isn't one that is easily categorized into some safe genre; you could call it metal, but that's just as misleading as saying GG Allin was a bit of a rebel or that Muammar Gaddafi is somewhat eccentric. Suffice it to say this is an extremely refreshing and exciting new album, one of the best so far this year. For anyone whose tastes include heavy sludgy doom-laden rock, punk with a bit of an attitude problem and/or the new kinds of hardcore/metal-meld type of bands like Coliseum, Black Tusk and Black Breath (though American Heritage is in no way a carbon copy of any of these bands) - you should definately give this a whirl or two. Not doing so would be fucking stupid.