Fuck your noiserock pt.1: Unsane - Wreck

Unsane - Wreck
2012, Alternative Tentacles

This is going to be a short review. For several reasons. The main one being this: Unsane has been around for over two decades now and have consistently released fucking killer albums, all of them shit-you-pants-intense and megarockingly groovy, in a style I sometimes refer to as stripteasecore (there's a sexy, sweaty, swagger to almost everything they do as well as let's-get-shitfaced-inducing vibe to their particular style of - yeah, I know, there's that shiatty expression again - noiserock) and if you don't know them, shame on you. Seriously. Shame on you. The second reason is this: Wreck has some of the band's strongest material to date (possibly as good as Visqueen) with a close to perfect recording and great songs that keeps growing all the time; and the fact that it's released on Alternative Tentacles is darn cool as well. Third reason: they cover Flipper's amazing, seminal slowcore anthem Ha Ha Ha! What more do you need?

Can't slow down, I've got a date with the Devil

The Love Below - Every Tongue Shall Caress
2012, A389

Wow, this threw me for a loop on the first time around. There's nothing ordinary or even remotely clichéd about The Love Below. I was half expecting something along the veins of Frightener, Nails or Full Of Hell (not that any of those bands are clichéd in any way), knowing the label's penchant for that whole area of dark and sludgy hardcore, but instead I'm completely blindsided by possibly the most unhinged, on-the-verge-of-flippin'-the-fuck-out kind of music I've heard in a long time. Basically this is heavy and, at times, fast hardcore punkrock, with a sort of frenzied, chaotic, noisy attitude that I'm instantly drawn to. All the songs are short, only a couple of them are more than three minutes long, so we are in no danger of getting bored here. Musically TLB sounds a bit like a mix of The Stooges, early Black Flag, the slower side of Motörhead, some traces of G.I.S.M. and a bit of Poison Idea. Sort of... We get awesome super-catchy punkrock riffs; some really cool straight up hardcore based on middle-to-high tempos; lots of audible, heavy rocking basslines; some heavy, almost metallic, breakdowns and tons and tons of rocking hooks.

But what truly sets these guys apart, except for a knack for writing short, instantly memorable songs, are the vocals of Jerry Wayne Woolbright Jr. (yup, that's apparently his name). I can't remember when I last heard someone so totally out there, someone so completely off the rails in his vocal delivery. To simply state that he screams is to do him injustice. He shrieks and howls - somewhere in the middle to upper register, often to the point where his voice cracks - almost seemingly out of control and yet does so with both conviction and clarity. How his voicebox is intact is beyond me. Lyrically there is some truly pissed-off, caustic shit going on here, but much of it written in a non-linear sort of ambiguous way, while hinting at a certain social and moral pathos that is interesting. But even though the lyrics, more often than not, are open to interpretation (which is fine by me), there's also the directness of songs like Nazi Uniform with it's snarling rage against police-brutality and abuse of authority ("You have the right to remain paranoid and afraid") and disdain of religion in Holy Dose ("Overdose on the love of God, choke on the light that shines so bright") to counteract the vagueness. Overall this is a great punkrock/hardcore album - and an outstanding full length debut - with lots of good points to draw you back for further spins. Get their previous releases at their bandcamp site here.

Among the ruins: Doom and beauty

Lycus - Demo CS
2011, Graceless Recordings

This amazing demo by Lycus is one of the better heavy doom releases of last year and possibly even of the last handful of years or so. It features only three songs but they are of such a quality and execution it's hard to do them justice. Lycus plays a slow, dirgelike and crushingly heavy kind of doom metal with such fantastic emotional delivery I was blown away the first time I sat through it. The riffing is some of the very best I've heard in recent time, the melancholy, solemn melodies are simply beautiful and so charged they make the hairs on my arms stand up. There are aspects to their music that are close to, or draw their influences from, traditional heavy metal (only alot slower) as well as post-metal/post-rock; and while the song structures are traditional in the sense that they use tension build-up and release there is nothing traditional to their songwriting. There are no verses and no choruses as such. Even the vocals feel secondary to the music. And save for the deep guttural growling this has nothing to do with sludge either - this is pure doom, with the exception of a brief blast of black metal aggression and speed on the final track. There is a monastic quality to some of the dirgy clean vocals and harmonies, which lend everything yet another layer of complexity and depth. Often the melodies remind me of the those of Ride The Lightning/Master Of Puppets/AJFA-era Metallica, with lots of somber emotion and majestic themes. Even though we only have less than a handful of songs here the total playtime of this demo is almost thirty minutes, which means that all three songs get the time to build and expand and develop organically in their own respective ways. I can't properly describe how eminently fucking awesome this cassette is. You NEED to hear this! It's too good to miss out on. This cassette version is all sold out but the vinyl version is available from Flenser Records and the band's Bigcartel webstore here. And if you don't want a physical copy it's avaliable as a pay-what-you-like kinda deal at their bandcamp site.

Here comes the messenger / Black crow on a tombstone

Young And In The Way - Amen
2010, self-released

The opening track of Young And In The Way's debut album Amen is called Hell Is Other People. It is definately a sentiment I can relate to sometimes (hell, most of the times, to be honest). It's a short number, more like an intro of sorts, but a heavy one, with sludgy overtones, massive down-tuned guitars alternating simple melody and heavy riffs ontop of a pulsating bass. It slowly builds, leading the way towards the sudden explosive pace-change of Dark Seed, where an unrelenting mix of sloppy punk and dark hardcore moves into near-blast beat territory, with screamed, pissed-off and desperate-sounding vocals. The attack here is as varied as it is uncommon in its blend of styles with a closing mix of crusty sludge fading into an ambient drone. Only a couple of minutes into the album and I'm already impressed as hell.

Over the following three tracks, which feel like a single continuous one, we are served the same kind of unpredictability and seething rage where no one element is too out there to explore. We get high speed rage followed by dirge-like doomy sludge; we get punk riffs, double bass drum smatterings and d-beat charged metallic hardcore. There are some black metal influences at work here (I keep thinking of Satyricon for some reason) but also the jangly slightly jarring guitarwork associated with screamo and noiserock (yep, there's that aweful word again). The voice of Kable Lyall has a caustic, swaggery hardcore/punkrock edge to it, as well as a snarling black metal vibe, which he utilises in almost anthemic vocal patterns that are quite memorable right off the bat.

Track number five, White Light, suddenly breaks the furious pace and restless momentum with a dream/nightmare-like atmosphere where simple but effective toms create a rythmic cadence over shimmering guitar tones, alongside repeated monotonous riffs over a throbbing bassline and spoken somber vocals. This is in the realm of postrock/postmetal but not quite and this abrupt change of both tone and pace is as brilliant as it is surprising. The oddities continue on the closing track. Another odd man out in this already oddball congregation, titled The Becoming, it is a thirteen plus minute Neurosis-esque epic, moving from the same kind of melancholy dreamlike shoegaze-shimmering, almost lullabyish guitars as on White Light, to a series of pulsating crescendoes of violins, driving tribal midpaced rythms of sludgy post-hardcore melodies and screamed vocals. This is probably my favourite song on the album, even though it's by far the longest one.

This is an impressive album, indeed - and one not so easily categorized. There's enough here to sate the hardcore fans as well as the postmetal/sludge crowd. Though I'm not quite sure if the black metal influences are trve enough for the quasi-suicidal, self-cutting, corpse-painted juggaloo ubercvlt hordes, but to me it's a non-issue. Taken all together this is a damn fine peice of hardcore and my first proper introduction to the band - and as such it is an outstanding one; I really feel a need to delve further into the band and their discography. Very much recommended for any fan of (slightly) progressive metal-influenced hardcore that offers more than just the genre staples. Amen is available at their bandcamp for free as well as a double vinyl package (with the also previosly selfreleased album I Am Not What I Am) reissued by A389.

We are the rats and we run this town

Gallows - Death Is Birth
2012, self-released

Brittish punk act Gallows return with some sorely needed new material, this time with new vocalist Wade MacNeil (ex-Alexisonfire) and a slightly different twist to their modern take on hardcore/punk/whatever. These four new songs are more direct than the band's previous material and definately more punk in both tone and attitude. In part, this is due to the the new vocalist; the mid-to-high range rasp in his voice and his distinctly punkish delivery and enunciation, but also has to do with the fact that these songs are crisper, shorter and more to the point than their earlier material. Opener Mondo Chaos is an old school sing-along midpaced number with a great, instantly memorable - and sweary - chorus and an awesome faster-paced UK Subs kind of feel to it. Of course there are lots of metallic hooks and riffs but the overall feel is that of snotty punk kids flipping you the finger and kicking your teeth in, just for the fuck of it.

The end is Nigh

Nigh - Nigh
2012

This great short ep showcases some impressively atavistic metallic hardcore blended with a definite old school death/thrash vibe. There's some great riffage being dsiplayed here, with an early Slayer meets Hellhammer feel, alongside some really tasteful, almost covert, NWOBHM flairs thrown in here and there, as well as some really cool Discharge-like fast runs. The production is decent with lots of heavy low end and lots of breathing space for all the instruments to move within. My only gripe is that, sometimes, the drums sound a bit dry and wooden compared to everything else, especially in the, admittedly not very frequent, blast beat parts. This sounds as if it could have been released in the late-eighties, early nineties and I'm thouroughly impressed. Had they been released back then, I guess they would've been labeled as metalpunk or some such nonsense, a label as good or bad as any, I guess. These three songs are over in a heartbeat and that's another great thing about the band's music; they write short to-the-point songs that feel complete and never rushed. There's lots of movement within the tracks and yet they never sound overly complicated or technical. This band needs to be on a label, like right now! Download.

Kill Theme For American Apeshit: +HIRS+

+HIRS+ - Worship 7''
2012

Wow! Just, frikkin' wow! For some reason I'd never heard of these guys before and I can't understand how the hell I could have missed them. They do the same thing Agoraphobic Nosebleed does, only less obviously self-medicated. I rarely use hyperbolic phrases suh as 'face-melting', 'shredding' or 'ultra-brutal' but in this case I'll make an exception, because this shit is insanely fast and vicious, and densely fucking heavy to boot. This is crazily constructed drum machine grindcore (something I generally stay as far away from as humanly possible) with lots and lots of odd twists and turns, time changes and weird fills and lots of thunderous low end guitars and howling, shrieking insane-person vocals. There's lots of dissonant riffing going on to make everything feel more than just run of the mill technical grindcore/deathgrind as well as a power violence vibe to the way the songs are constructed (not to mention all the samples thrown into the songs, which are great by the way). All their material is available for download at their bandcamp site. What the fuck are you waiting for?