HC: Made in South Bay
The MRR site isn’t the most beautiful thing to look at, but it’s functional. And last week sometime, the folks over there posted an obscure HC comp featuring folks I’ve never heard of. Most of it kinda stinks, but not Artistic Decline even if they’re a Descendents rip off.
Bathtub Shitter – Dancehall Grind (Super Hit Jam Records, 2005)
This Japanese band wants their metal to be so intense that it hurts your insides. Partially, Bathtub Shitter attempts this by utilizing two vocalists; one with a deep voice, one with a ridiculously high pitched voice. So, really, the band comes off as somewhat of a gimmick or a joke half the time. But the rest of the time, the band is tight and horrifically brutal enough to be ahead of the newer crop of grind acts. They’ve been around for about a decade, so they’ve had time to hone their craft and become a rather good metal outfit. Most of these tracks will end up sounding similar to one another, unless you are a metal connoisseur. But, there are a few stabs at experimentation though. “Shit Drop” has some really beautiful acoustic finger picked guitar, while “Stihs Latem” is backwards and oddly enough comes across as more metal than the last decade or so of Metallica. All of this just makes me more curious about the cultural exchange between the USA and Japan. Regardless, the lyrics are convoluted expressions of angst that would probably come across more intelligently, in their native tongue, which really isn’t the point. Buy it for the titles, listen to it for the high pitched screamer, enjoy it for no other reason than it’s metal.
Backstabbers Inc. – Kamikaze Missions (trash art!, 2004)
Well, the first track is an intro, so really there’re only 13 songs full of contemporary hate from the northeasterners in Backstabbers Inc. The most startling discovery on this plate is that there is rhythm in most every song (especially “Ask, Answer”). After the inception of HC style in the early eighties, a number of bands simply began playing as fast as possible. And while that yielded interesting effects, the inclusion of rhythm changes the music. The music maintains its’ inherent viciousness, but instantly becomes more easily digestible. It’s noise that swings. And here it achieves the ever-elusive groove. In hardcore the tempo is obviously as nauseatingly fast as possible, and then the breakdown. Backstabbers include a third tempo; there’s a sort of real fast punk tempo (between the thrash and the breakdown) that moves songs along in an interesting way. This is displayed to some extant on “Even Slaves Will Be Swimming In the Blood of the Iron Fist”, which boasts the chanted chorus of, “We are not you’re fucking friends/Not now/Not fucking ever”. But, the title of this track brings me to a point that needs to be made. Long, pompous titles (ala Shai Hulud), don’t automatically make you a thinking man’s band. Maintaining your ideals while thoughtfully articulating them makes you a smart dudes rock outfit. At-least these guys sound authentically pissed, I’d buy it even if rock music is all posturing. Production, as much as posturing, always plays a paramount role in how an album is perceived overall. On this slab, the production fits the music. But the vocals, already unintelligible yelps of disdain, are drowned out regularly by guitar attacks. Troublesome, but fitting. Oddly, I can understand his anger without the words.