Idylls – Prayer for Terrene

March 30, 2014 • self-released

Finally, some mathcore I can really get into. I'm usually of the opinion that the genre is too messy and incomprehensible to be that enjoyable, but Idylls are doing something really cool here.

Sure, the album has its share of chaotic blasting, but it always feels like they still keep some sort of rhythm going so the listener doesn't ever feel lost. Plus, it's often glued together with some solid sludgy chugging sections, which I always tend to enjoy. There's even a bit of great melodic sections like "Fagged Out on the Beach" (probably one of my favorite tracks) to break up the crazy grinding. That's not to say Idylls doesn't do crazy grinding well—they definitely do.

Aside from the staggering seven-minute opener, almost all of the songs all clock under three minutes. But every one of those minutes is totally packed and Idylls squeezes everything they can out of their time on this album. I also have to give props for the production—I love the squealing saxophone that pops up every once in a while, and the growly, dirty bass sound is really great.

My one misgiving is that I don't get the weird tangents they sometimes go off on, like the bizarre bluesy thing they do for part of "PCP Crazy" or the weird surf thing on "Crashing Boar"—it breaks my immersion a lot and simply isn't in a style I like. At least they don't dwell on it for long.

Anyway, even though I haven't been following grindcore much this year, I'm glad this album crossed my path. It's definitely one to take a taste of for anyone into that sort of music or is looking for anything a little on the aggressive side.

7 Inch Grab Bag, part 3

In case you missed my recent haul post, I got a grab bag of ten randomly-selected 7" records. Here are my thoughts on the final four!

Bevil Web / 3 Dream Bag – Split

1995 • Simple Solution Records

Lo-fi rock from the hazy days of the mid-'90s. It's a bit too slow and uninteresting for me, though I have to admit Bevil Web can gloom it up with the best of them. It just feels a bit too sloppy and unrefined to really be of any excitement. Both bands are basically the same thing, though 3 Dream Bag is a bit more acoustic and nasally. Neither are really that great. Oh well.

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Destroy! – Burn This Racist System Down!

1992 • Havoc Records

Yes, finally, more grindcore! This is old-school stuff, too, from the early '90s. Songs are short, to-the-point, growly, razor-sharp; there's also a couple really long meandering ones in there too which is interesting. It's hard to expand much on what makes a grind EP good, so just take my word for it that these guys had their stuff down. Totally recommended (just don't cut yourself on those edgy lyrics...).

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Digression – Controlled

1996 • Surprise Attack Records

Early metalcore, and a very kind of primal version at that. Very aggressive, lots of chugging breakdowns, but also with this lo-fi punk aesthetic. It's probably not something anyone would consider "good" from a purely artistic standpoint but it's interesting to me because, for all the awful DIY punk I hear, I never have really heard any DIY metalcore, and it feels unique just for that. But that's just me, and this still isn't that great. Maybe. "Diary" is pretty good.

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Love + Respect – Deep + Heartfelt

1989 • Penultimate Records

I still don't like garage punk and I don't really like Love + Respect, but there's definitely worse out there. I don't like how most of it is just kind of dumb; I guess Love + Respect is at least tongue-in-cheek about it but that doesn't help that much. The music is just too simple-sounding to hold my interest. I dunno. At least "If I Only Had a Brain" has this neat noise rock thing going on that is a bit different from the rest of the tracks; I like that one.

Humanity's Last Breath – Humanity's Last Breath

September 24, 2013 • Rogue Records

Djent is the kind of genre that you don't really expect to ever develop much, aside from blatant and uninteresting fusion with other genres that almost always wind up being awful. And so I haven't really listened to any of it much lately (aside from the newer Meshuggah albums, and then only a little bit, because they're really not that good anymore). Of course that leaves me with missing out on a lot, as it turns out. Not that Humanity's Last Breath is really bringing something phenomenal or super-innovative or anything—but they do make a pretty good album.

All the standards are here: grinding muted guitar riffs downtuned at least an octave (and no bass, I'm pretty sure), robotic polyrhythmic drumming, devastating growled vocals. Surprisingly, for a band employing a style that's largely repetitive (and based around repetition), these guys switch things up a lot and they manage to strike just the right balance between establishing a solid rhythm or guitar line and then moving around enough to keep the listener engaged. I still can't tell the individual songs apart, but I find that I can skip around to just about anywhere in the album and something interesting will be going on.

A good deal of the album sounds a little bit deathcore-ish as well (I guess there's that fusion thing I mentioned earlier), but they definitely do it much better than it could have been were they a bit sloppier about things. There are lots of interesting parts where the music is very sparse, with slowly-played drum lines and riffs that jump all over the place, which feels a inspired by deathcore breakdowns—though here it's definitely done a lot more tastefully. The atmosphere also manages to have this sort of spacey industrial feel to it, without there really being any industrial metal present; maybe it's the mixing.

I guess in at least that sense Humanity's Last Breath sounds quite a bit fresher than (say) Meshuggah, though I hesitate to recommend them to just anyone as their style is probably going to inherently turn away a lot of people. If that's the case it's a bit disappointing as I think they do a surprisingly good job at it; it could definitely have been a lot worse. There's just a lot of amazingly fun riffage to dig into, and if you can get into that, this album is definitely worth checking out.

Yautja – Songs of Descent

February 11, 2014 • self-released

Another random Bandcamp find; unfortunately I don't have a lot of background knowledge of Yautja, but I will say that going by this album, these guys are absolutely stellar.

Songs of Descent falls nicely into a bucket I like to call "sludgecore" (see Struck by Lightning and some KEN Mode), a combinations of dirty, heavy, chugging sludge with some of the faster technical elements of metalcore and modern hardcore—even a bit of grindcore, too, at least here. I haven't found many spectacular examples of this genre in action, but Yautja has definitely caught my ear. These are the kinds of riffs that really dig in under your skin—vile and nasty stuff but catchy and satisfying at the same time, and Yautja brings them non-stop and in full force.

The songs blast by quickly and there's a lot to process in a short time—fourteen tracks in less than forty minutes is lightning speed, especially with some of them being just a minute long. And they do a lot with the short time they have, going from Mastodon to Rotten Sound in seconds. It's a really interesting experience, one that demands attention from the listener as they never let what they're doing get repetitive or stale.

The one nitpicky thing I can think of is that the vocals are always pushed way far back in the mix (unless it's just my headphones?) that they often might as well not even be there. I think a better vocal presence could really push this band even farther. The rest of the band sounds great, though, and the mixing is otherwise very well-done.

Again, definitely worth giving a full listen. I definitely hope to hear more from Yautja soon.

The Phantom Carriage – Falls

February 28, 2013 • Throatruiner Records / Braincrushing Records / Theatre Records

Genre boundary lines when it comes to modern heavy music are so blurred nowadays that it's become really difficult to describe some albums nowadays. What is Falls? I suppose you could call it a combination of black metal and screamo with a bit of Converge-style metalcore thrown in for good measure, but it's tough to say. Regardless, it's pretty safe to say that you'll know if you might like it from that description alone. It's not bad, but I'm not a huge fan.

Granted, the music can be pretty interesting. Complex arpeggiating guitar riffs, intense drumming (blastbeating and otherwise), the occasional breakdown; it's all there, with a suffocating atmosphere evoking the cover art well. Sometimes the music gets a bit too technical for its own good, though, and it's all too easy to lose focus as the riffs pile up on each other into a cacophonous wreck (take "Mistakes & Fixes"' frantic ending). At the same time, though, there are plenty of really awesome bits that stand out—for instance, I really like the slow burning feel of "Dreamers Will Never Stop Dreaming"; it gives the song something a bit more interesting above all the blasting.

On the whole, though, I'm not really feeling Falls too much. Maybe it's just my taste—after all, I've never gotten into Converge, and this band has a lot of similarities; this sort of super-chaotic songwriting simply doesn't resonate with me. For fans of this style, I suppose I can see this being a hit. But I'll give it a mild pass for now.

5

Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind

October 9, 2012 • Epitaph Records

I've been listening to Converge for a few years now, and try as I might their music has never clicked much with me (neither Jane Doe nor No Heroes). By rights they should be a band I moderately enjoy, but it just hasn't happened. All We Love We Leave Behind is more of the same; perhaps solid, but not terribly appealing to me.

Like their older albums, All We Love has the same extreme-metalcore thing going—fast, technical riffs, aggressive and complex drumming, incomprehensible screamed vocals. Converge sounds a bit more punkish this time, though, with a bit of hardcore and grind influence leaking out. It's intense music, to be sure, and it doesn't really ever let up over its forty-minute runtime, instead simply trading the metalcore for slower, doomier sludge-metal-like stuff.

I guess my beef with Converge is mostly personal as I've never really been that into the whole "chaotic hardcore" style, especially not the way Converge does it. It seems like they just can't decide what sort of music they want to play, ever, and are always switching between slow sludgy sections and fast blasting sections with no warning (or playing them at the same time, somehow). It's a weird juxtaposition that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, and I don't think Converge can do it well. It feels like the songwriting just tends to meander pointlessly for the sake of technicality, which is a huge turn-off.

I guess it's just me, though, since this album has been extremely well-received. I guess that for the style, it's probably one of the better albums I've heard (and I've been listening to a lot of stuff like this lately) and it's definitely listenable; it's just not something I'm going to listen to much at all in the future. And that's fine. Plenty of other people will get enjoyment out of it.

5

Special bonus: Album stream courtesy of Epitaph!

Converge, Torche, Kvelertak, KEN Mode

October 15, 2012 • Skully's Music-Diner, Columbus, Ohio

Skully's was exactly like I expected it to be, a sleazy, dirty restaurant whose average clientele could really appreciate a Motörhead album. But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see this great lineup. It wound up being one of my favorite shows I've been to yet.

KEN Mode

The surprise of the day. I was merely lukewarm towards their recent album, but they put on a pretty stellar show. Maybe their music just inherently works better live, or something. Regardless, I was pretty impressed and it was enjoyable. Props to the bassist for sticking through cutting his finger on his strings (I assume) and getting blood all over the pickups.
7 • Goriest Performance Award

Kvelertak

Not much to say about this show—if you've heard their music (and you should), their show is exactly what you'd expect. Loud and heavy punkish metal, but very energetic and loads of fun. I found interesting the fact that the band seems to be made up of five very nerdy-looking guys, with a Viking for their vocalist. An entertaining combo. Good times for sure.
8 • Most Impressive Fingerpicking Award

Torche

They started out a bit disappointing, as the audience didn't seem into them and mix was poor (could've been that I was standing close to the stage), but quickly turned into my favorite act of the night. It helps that Meanderthal is one of my all-time favorite albums and they played a few tracks from it. They sound a lot heavier live, and their slower and doomier pieces were especially crushing. There was a point where one guitarist was having technical issues and we had to wait at least five minutes or so while they fixed it, and the rest of the band goofed off playing solos and some faux-grindcore (not as interesting as it sounds, but it was funny).
8 • Best Tapping Award

Converge

I should have known what was coming with this part of the show, and my lack of preparedness ruined things. I forgot that metalcore fans (especially bands like Converge) are prone to continuous slam-dancing inside a moshpit they conveniently decided to place right in front of where I was standing. Fortunately, the decent people outnumbered the idiot asshole kids, but it's still annoying when I'm trying to watch the band. They were alright, I suppose; I've never been much of a huge fan, so there wasn't much for me to enjoy. But the kids liked it, so whatever.
5 • Apparently It Was Jacob Bannon's Birthday Award

Bone Dance – I Have Lived Like an Animal, but I Will Die Like an Angel

March 29, 2009 • self-released

I picked a bad album to review today. Not in the sense that the music is bad, but more in that Bone Dance is just a hard band to review. Maybe it's me, but I feel like there isn't much to be said about this style of music anymore, even if this album is pretty good.

Bone Dance plays a particularly abrasive and crushing form of metalcore, alternating between fast punk-like sections and slow sludge sections. There isn't really anything particularly unique about their sound and it's a lot like plenty of similar music I've reviewed recently, which unfortunately means I'm a bit jaded by this album and it's tough to assess it fairly. However, I'm happy to say that Bone Dance do manage to do a pretty good job at this style. They are very riff-oriented, so each song is catchy and somewhat memorable in its own way. It might be a simplistic approach, but I think it works quite well, and the album is very consistent

I guess it says something about Bone Dance that I've totally saturated myself with this sort of music in the last few months and they still make an impression on me. (Then again, it might just be coincidence; I didn't care much for this album on the first listen.) But this is more one of those albums you just have to hear yourself to have an idea of whether you think it's any good.

6

Dog Days – Via dolorosa

July 10, 2012 • self-released

I've always had spotty experiences with metalcore, even though it's not something I listen to often. It seems as though in order to be good, you have to mix it with a bit of something else—progresive metal, sludge metal, or something else—but Dog Days don't really do that. Consequently they wind up sounding pretty average, though that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Via dolorosa showcases a pretty typical version of metalcore, so unfortunately there isn't really much to say about what they're doing. You have the typical fusion of metal and punk riffing, breakdowns, harsh vocals, and so on—basically a less-technical Botch (there's nothing technical at all about Dog Days, really). They do have the occasional powerviolence-ish blasting here and there, which is pretty cool, though I would have liked to see more of that.

But it's still decent, at least in the sense that they do metalcore well. It probably appeals to me more than usual because it tends to lean more toward the punk side than the metal side a lot of the time, because the metal bits tend to sound a bit silly (see the beginning of "Rain Shadow"). There are plenty of catchy bits and the breakdowns are nice and moshable (so I assume).

But yeah, like I said before, it's decent but there isn't much of anything that makes it stand out, so it's not really recommendable to anyone who doesn't already love the genre. Personally, I won't be revisiting it much (if ever) in the future, but for what it is, it's not bad.

6

Gaza – No Absolutes in Human Suffering

July 31, 2012 • Black Market Activities

I have no clue why I tried out this album; I generally have no interest in mathcore / metalcore and haven't liked most of what I've heard in the past. Gaza may be a turning point for me; while they may not be too different from other extreme metalcore bands they do seem to have something pretty cool going on with this album.

No Absolutes is, first and foremost, really ugly and dirty music—the guitar is downtuned to hell and has a grimy tone to it; the raw, guttural vocals have a distorted edge to them, and the drums are absolutely monstrous with trading off between punkish grooves and some pretty damn intense blastbeats. I've heard plenty of extreme music in my time, obviously, but as far as stuff in the punk family goes this is sitting comfortably near, if not at, the top of the list.

At the same time, they'll pull out a calmer and more emotional moment now and again (comparatively speaking, of course). These sections really mesh with the faster parts well—both contrasting with and accentuating the album's normal intensity and standing up on their own as good examples of sludge/doom. Take "When They Beg"'s slow and brooding end, or the title track's churning sludgy sound, or the slow doomy end of "Not with All the Hope in the World"—especially the way the latter calms the listener down a bit, only to basically smack them in the face again once "The Vipers" starts up. It's pretty great.

You might need to be in the right frame of mind for Gaza—one that is prepared to accept some pretty high levels of brutality—but it is definitely worth the ride and has helped rekindle my interest in the genre a bit. Not for everyone, but I'll definitely take it.

7

Plebeian Grandstand – How Hate Is Hard to Define

March 2010 • Basement Apes Industries

This album is another entry in the long list of furious, chaotic, pounding mathcore albums that follows in the steps of bands like Converge and Botch, and while it follows the formula pretty closely and doesn't bring anything terribly new to the table it's still a pretty solid album in its own right. I'm nothing of an aficionado of this style, admittedly, but How Hate Is Hard to Define stands up alright.

Like the aforementioned Converge, Plebeian Grandstand's sound employs a nice blend of fast technical riffing and somewhat milder, yet still brutal, breakdowns. The band's performance is pretty tight throughout, making the constant changes in tempo and time signature seem simple; there are also some more consistent songs like the sludgy "Easy to Hate / Hard to Define", showing that the band does have a bit more diversity in them than it would first seem.

Like a lot of music in this style, though, the songs can be difficult to follow at times and so the album can be a fatiguing listen. There are only a few places that the audial face-stomping finally lets up (the interlude "Pie in the Sky" is a welcome respite) and to me a lot of it still sounds kind of messy. I don't mean this in a technical sense (as I've mentioned, the musicians are quite proficient); rather, the music itself is just all over the place and it's hard to find footing in what I'm listening to during the more chaotic parts. But there are a few places where the riffs really click—the start of "Are You Angry?" has a really nice groovy rhythm to it of which I would have liked to hear more.

So while the album isn't really my style, I can appreciate it alongside the rest of my tiny mathcore library. While it's not something I'll be revisiting very often, truer fans will probably enjoy it, and that's at least a mild success.

6

The Contortionist – Apparition

September 25, 2009 • self-released

They said deathcore was a genre that couldn't be saved. Every album in that style ever released was just a rehash of the same old chuggy breakdown clichés and it all sucked and nobody cared anymore. Emmure, Suicide Silence, it didn't matter, it was all the same crap. For a while I was one of those people.

Well, they must not have heard The Contortionist. Because this release totally turned everything around for me.

Sure, the typical deathcore elements are there—throaty and not-noticably-good vocals, detuned guitars playing muted and rhythmic riffing, breakdowns galore... but there's something about Apparition that makes it stand out. There's a certain atmospheric quality to it that saves it driven by exploration with other genres. The EP has a definite progressive influence, with a lot of melodic lines and some complicated guitarwork to complement the heavy breakdown riffs. "Eyes: Closed" has a melancholy, almost post-rockish bridge, in between some heavy but still emotional melodic lines. The band winds up throwing a lot at the listener, changing it up pretty frequently: a crushing, slow segment here, a quick break to clean, jazzy guitar, then a complicated polyrhythmic riff. It's the kind of erratic mishmash of style that I normally don't care for, but here everything comes together excellently in a way that keeps the listener on their toes.

Even though there are still a lot of typical breakdowns, the music comes off a lot more intelligent and interesting than your typical Emmure ripoff band, which is why I keep coming back to this EP for more. The juxtaposition of ugly chugging with beautfil, soaring melodies works brilliantly and the contrasts between styles just makes the heavy bits heavier and the proggy parts proggier. My only complaint might be, again, the vocals; they sound a bit off and don't always go with the music terribly well.

So if you can stomach a bit of djent in your metal this is definitely a release to take a listen to. And I still have no clue why I haven't yet checked out their full-length Exoplanet (2010).

8