... and let slip the dogs of war

Masakari/Tempest - Split 7''
2012, Replenish Records

Masakari is possibly one of the most interesting hardcore acts around today. After a only a handful of releases they have quickly established themselves as one of the genre's most progressive and forceful entities, both willing to, as well as eminently able to, blend metal, crust, grind and hardcore in uniquely inventive ways that very few, if any, other band today can duplicate. Their music is so forceful it's unbelievable, there is an edge and an exactness that is razor sharp in all aspects of their music. There is nothing half-assed to anything they do. There are shades of Tragedy, His Hero Is Gone and Discharge bringing both melody, aggression and dissonance to their sound; as well as huge doses of Entombed-styled metal, fleshing out the writing with battering metal riffs, barely contained chaos and a sludgy, implodingly dense heaviness. Here they contribute two versions of the same song. It is a previously unrelesed track, X.Pain Concieved As A Tool, recorded during the The Profit Feeds album sessions. They come in both a studio and a live version. It is a quick rager with lots of bouncy d-beat aggression and a nice Tragedy-like guitar melody weaving in and out of the chaos. The live version is obviously a bit rawer but works really well, both as a track in and of itself but also as a contrast to the fairly polished studio version and displays quite well the ferocity of the band's live performaces.
     On this ep they team up with Canadians Tempest, whose style differs quite a bit from Masakaris', but they are nonetheless one of the more interesting bands coming out of this whole dark hardcore style that is evolving out of metal and hardcore today. Their style is extremely dynamic and is moored in lots of chaotic raging black metal-colored aggression, Botch and Converge-like chaotic twisting guitars and monolithic Neurosis-influenced post-hardcore. All of it coated with  depressively dark crust-like melodies, infusing everything with an oppressive sense of hopelessness and desperation. Just as with Masakari's contribution, they deliver a live version and a studio version of the same track, titled Death Rattle (off their 2010 Passages album). Death Rattle is one of the bands slightly more accessible songs, where at first dense chaotic riffs and howled/shrieked vocals, goaded on by galloping, fairly complex drumming, all of it drenched in dark atmospheres, batter you with a chokingly heavy attack, but goes on to open up somewhat, with emerging melodies and guitar lines that eventually moves on to a fairly serene ending. It's a complex and also quite beautiful song, in its way, and a nice introduction to the band's music. The live version comes off as slightly more chaotic, no less dense but a bit more brittle than the studio version, but otherwise it's very well executed.
     This ep is a benefit release, whose proceeds will go fully to two non-profit canine shelters, one in Cleveland and the other in Vancouver, each band's respective hometowns. You'll find a downloadable version of the ep at the label's bandcamp site here.

There will be blood before it is done: Burn Everything

Burn Everything - Hollow Victory 7''
2012, Dullest Records

This short ep by Rochester quintet Burn Everything has quickly become a recent favourite of mine and one that I've spun more times than I can count now and every time I am blown away by how a band with musical chops like these aren't better known. They should be written up fucking everywhere! But for whatever reason there seems to be very little coverage of them so far (or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places). Anyway, this is the band's third ep so far. They play a mix of slightly complicated (or 'mathy' if you prefer) hardcore and metal with faint touches of grindcore, sort of in the same way Converge does, minus the more overtly chaotic parts.

     There's an insane amount of intensity to their music; with lots of blistering speed and a few instances of full on blast beats, loads of fast hooks and really energetic, dynamic, snaking and twisting riffing; awesome heavy breakdowns, lots of extremely dense, monotone guitar passages, sometimes accompanied by smattering double bass drums. I keep thinking of Burnt By The Sun - for many reasons, not just because of some minor details in some of the songs or because of the very similar vocal style and patterns of Burn Everything's vocalist Matt Dalberth; but also the fact that their songs, like those of BBTS, maintain a strong metallic core while obviously integrating loads of influences from various other styles, such as old school hardcore, grindcore, mathcore, thrash and death metal etc.

     There's also a brevity and sense of real urgency to these four short songs that appeal to me. The band manages to write brief, extremely dynamic songs that never really sit still for very long, though without ever becoming exhaustingly chaotic. And they're also really memorable from the get-go, which is always a bonus for those of us with ever-shortening attention spans. There's also alot of melody infused into the songs, underneath all the aggression and ferocity, that lend Burn Everything's music yet another layer of complexity. Beside the fact that these guys write fucking amazing songs, I am hugely impressed by the vocals on display here. Raw, raspy and covering lots of range, but never falling into clichéd boring guttural growls or high, monotonous shrieks, Dalberth display a vocal talent that is all too rare in heavy music these days. All in all, a truly immense ep, that is impressive as hell. I urge anyone into bands like those previously mentioned, as well as Dillinger Escape Plan, Botch, Code Orange Kids etc, to check Burn Everything out. Their previous eps are available for free download at their bandcamp site, as is this ep for merely $4.

You ain't so cool, I really can't take it. You've got an ugly face, you know I'm gonna break it!

Trenchfoot - Trenchfoot 7''
2011,

On their self-titled debut, New York's (the state, not the city, I think) Trenchfoot unleash ten tracks of sharp, quick and unrelenting modern hardcore with only minimal metal influences. It's not necessarily built on unwavering speed all the time but rather a sense of urgency and nervous aggression that's refreshing. Awesome breakdowns, fuelled by great riffs and sense of dynamics break up the frenetic pace of the songs and make them all really memorable. And the vocalist has a really cool Dwid meets Pushead thing going on that I dig immensely. Trenchfoot's particular style feels like it owes alot of it's existence to some of the heavier acts of the 80's HC era, like Septic Death, Corrosion Of Conformity, Sick Of It All and Die Kreuzen, rather than anything more recent; the tone of the music is dark and depressing and has a vicious streak that's oddly infectious. This is a short release, around nine minutes or so, recorded by Kurt Ballou (Converge), but it's really cool and really hope these guys stay the course because this ep is smoking hot.

Hardcore cluster bomb pt 3: Time For The Resurgence of Female Fronted Metal and Hardcore?

Oathbreaker - Maelstrom
2011, Deathwish Inc.

For some reason women rarely feature in the bands I listen to, which is perhaps not so strange considering the testosterone levels of most of the music within the metal and hardcore scenes. But it's always been there at the back of my mind: why is it that only a handful of the acts I listen to with any degree of regularity have any female members (Landmine Marathon, Despise You and Detente comes to mind)? Don't they rock as hard as their male counterparts? Of course they do.
Do they somehow lack some prerequisite ability or obviously male-only metal/punk talent? Of course they don't.
Perhaps it's just a matter of female musicians having a hard time penetrating the heavily guarded walls to the Boy's Club of Rock n Roll and proving themselves? Probably.

Either way, Oathbreaker vocalist Caro (a member of that supposedly weaker sex), doesn't need to prove shit to me. She's more than welcome into the Boy's Club. In fact, she'll probably kick most of their asses. Rarely have I heard a vocalist perform so fucking outstandingly well in this specific genre. Male or female. Her unbelievably harsh midrange screams fit perfectly as a counterweight to the density of Oathbreaker's music. At first I thought her vocals would get a bit stagnant since they rarely ever stray from that almost panic-like sense of vicious desperation and anger, but I soon realised they're fucking perfect for what the band does. And once you scrutinise the lyrics a little bit closer, that realisation only stenghtens.

Oathbreaker does that whole metallic hardcore thing, and they do it really well, with tons of tempo shifts and breakdowns, moving from upper midtempo to sludgy almost Sabbathy riffage without sounding contrived or unfocused. They're slightly closer to the metal end of things than most of their contemporaries but this fits their style to a t. They're also alot heavier than many of the bands I'd usually tag as metallic hardcore, but they in no way come off sounding as an Integrity or Ringworm clone. In fact it's only by default and a lack of a better genre descriptor I'd even call their music metallic hardcore as these guys (and gal) have done what precious few bands ever do, which is to perfectly meld punk and hardcore aggression and simplicity with the complexity and higher level of musicianship of such diverse bands as Slayer, Converge and Ministry (minus the industrial parts).

This is the band's sophmore release, follwing their self titled debut from 08, which blew me away a couple of months ago. On Maelstrom they've sharpened their collective tools a bit and brought out an immense heaviness that wasn't quite as apparent on the debut ep. Still present but slightly less obvious than before are the touches of melody the band manages to pour into the gaps and cracks of the songs, fleshing them out without bloating them. Production-wise this is top-of-the-line shit. I wouldn't change a thing. Everything is exactly where it should be in the mix. There's enough density and warmth to add to the heaviness of the songs but still with a sense of space and clarity. This is definately one of the best hardcore/metal releases so far this year.

This is the pattern cut from the cloth / This is the pattern designed to take you right out

Touché Amore - Parting The Sea Between Brightness and Me
2011, Deathwish Inc.

Since I'd never really properly sat down to actively listen to an album by Touché Amore (as opposed to just idly letting it play on in the background), I only really had the vaguest of ideas what to expect. I knew words like 'post-punk', 'screamo', 'emocore' and such had been tossed around in various configurations in online blurbs and reveiws that I'd scanned quickly, but more often than not it's really difficult to get a proper grasp on what a band sounds like from those kinds of descriptors, if not downright impossible. The tracks I'd heard previously had left no lasting impression in my long term memory, so I basically had no clue to what was going to erupt from my speakers as I hit the play button.

What did erupt, starting with the enigmatically titled ~, was something both intensely melodic and emotional and yet raging and furious and untamed. With elements of aggression and intensity taken from hardcore/punk and the melodic and more complexely structured elements from emo, Touché Amore's music is an extremely diverse affair. I find myself drawing comparisons to such different bands as Converge, Quicksand, Dag Nasty and Fugazi. There are tons of stuff going on all the time; little melodies weaving in and out of the mix, quick tempo shifts and short breaks, sometimes with a slight dissonance, but almost always melodic. The clean crisp guitar tone works pefectly with the material; any more distortion and a lot of the subtle nuances in the songs would be lost. In fact, there's so much going on in these songs that it would be a difficult task to stay focused for any length of time if it weren't for the bands stellar song writing and the the unique style of the band's vocalist, whose mix of screaming, singing and speaking, sort of all at the same time, really give the songs an added sense of urgency and emotion.

Another amazing thing about this records is the fact that only one of the thirteen songs pass the two minute mark and still the band manages to cram the songs full of shifts and breaks and melodies and somehow not make them feel 'mathy' or chaotic. I'm fairly new to this particular style of screamo, post-hardcore or whatever kind of pigeonhole you wanto to put Touché Amore in, but this album has really opened my eyes to the genre and I feel that I definately have to go back and check out the band's earlier work more thouroughly. This is awesome stuff. Chalk up another great release from Deathwish Inc.


Opening track ~, or Tilde, below:

Splitsville pt 1: Shock and awe

Converge/Dropdead - Split
2011, Self released, distributed by Deathwish

I've always been a fan of the split single concept, where two bands share the running time on a record, almost as if in a duel. Preferably a seven inch vinyl single (yes, I have a thing for vinyl eps). When it works, as it does in this case, it is, by far, my favourite format, because there are none of the drawbacks of a full length release. The two bands ensure that there is no risk of boredom if they're stylistically well matched: not too similar but equally not too disimilar. The brief running time equally ensures there will be no risk of shit dragging on indefinately. It also ensures that the bands are at their very best and that their material is top notch. This little gem is short but fairly intense. It features one track from Converge and Dropdead respectively. The sound quality is excellent on both tracks, even if I've yet only listened to the songs in their digital form; distinct and warm but with a slight dirtiness. The Dropdead track is slightly less heavy on the bass end of things and a bit more metallic but that's only natural considering the style they play. Converge opens up with the utterly raging, yet still emotional, Runaway, sticking to the weirdly catchy but aggressive note they struck on Axe To Fall with tracks like Dark Horse and the title track. Choppy, fast-paced and with that bouncy structure that's almost danceable, with added bursts of blast beats and violently shrieked vocals. As I said, it's catchy in an odd Converge way: there are lots of twists and turns in the song, from blasts of speed to short choppy breaks to midtempo rages and with hints of searing discordant melodies deep in the mix. But the song never gets uninspired or unstructured. It's only two minutes long, but it's definately one of the better songs I've heard from the band.
Dropdeads track, Paths Of Glory, rips right through you in just over ninety seconds but it does so with an amazing feel for fast hardcore punk with a bit of eighties sensibility. There is not even a hint of power violence or fastcore on this track; instead they get a more traditional hardcorepunk vibe going, which probably works better in this context. There is more than enough aggression going on to balance the hints of melody buried underneath. I get a distinctly anthemic World Burns To Death feel from this track, which is no bad thing. All in all a very wonderful little record.