Monomaniac Volume One

It’s easy to forget how awesome compilations can be. Most of them that any of us bought would be more useful as coasters, but for every 10 hastily-assembled, all-album-tracks wastes of space, there’s one thoughtful, well-curated collection that features the right balance between exclusive tracks from well-known bands and pleasant surprises from lesser-known acts and manages to further our experience as fans of the featured genres.

This compilation, put together by Panos Agoros from Dephosphorus/Blastbeat Mailmurder and created as a split 7” collection of compilation-exclusive songs that total a minute each per band, (spoiler alert) sits comfortably in the latter category.

Opening side A is the always-excellent Cloud Rat, who delivers a scorcher called “Finger Print v1.” A perfect way to begin the festivities, the song spends most of its runtime in destructive, hateful blasting mode, leaving around 20 seconds near its end for a sludgy, deliberate and equally destructive finale.

Next finds thedowngoing in a typically off-kilter mood, with three blistering noise-grinders that together clock in under a minute. The relatively mid-tempo “Littered” is the first of their contributions, and serves as a nice transition from the sludginess of Cloud Rat’s track by waiting until its second half to gear up into full-on grinding. Following that is an alternate version of ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS track “Floorboards” that is only 1/3 as long as the original but every bit as intense with its shifting, technical aural abuse. Closing out thedowngoing’s contribution is “Hibakusha (Reprsise),” a brief, distorted number that shifts from death metal vocals and heavy, metallic riffing to piercing shrieks and a circular, Discordance Axis-style riff that ends the song.

Detroit’s angry powerviolence comes next, with a track by the deceptively-cheery name of “Birthday Party.” This is the kind of song that destroys live. After a tension-building opening riff, a tom-centric roll around the drum set transitions into the song’s main riff, which is shortly buoyed by blasting drums and then the band’s pushed-to-the-limit shouted vocals to create a circle pit perfect storm.  After a few seconds, that gives way to a minimal combination of blasts and shouts, punctuated by the occasional stab of guitar, and a brief punk section rounds the whole thing out. It’s all over in a little over 30 seconds, but this brief taste is a pretty good indicator of what you can expect from the band’s other material.

The Noisiest Track of the Comp award goes to Sete Star Sept for their typically blown-out, screeching noisegrind as featured on “Why Not Intersect.” The track is a seething, rolling wave of abrasive noise out of which traditional instrumentation occasionally floats, and if you told me that Kae’s bass was a noise synth I wouldn’t think twice about believing you. Kae’s vocals are the track’s most distinct feature, and the growls and shrieks exhibited here poke their heads highest above the noise. This brief, abrasive track puts Sete Star Sept more in line with Japan’s legendary guitar-less (and bass-less) noisegrind act World than I’ve ever heard them, and this track should cause interest in both their more noisy material (such as the recently-released-on-Fuck Yoga Vinyl Collection 2010-2012) and their more formalistic grind-noise (last year's LP Revision of Noise).

Ryan Page’s Body Hammer project makes its triumphant return here with “Dog Star Man,” a track that exhibits that project’s dual focuses, namely brief pulses of intense grindcore and moody, atmospheric patches of doomy ambience. This track manages to blend the two better than 2009’s Jigoku, and it leaves me itching to hear that album’s followup, which Page is reportedly working on.

The last track on the A side, “The Weapons of the Proletariat,” comes from the heavily death metal-influenced (if not entirely death metal) Greek grindcore band Head Cleaner. Vocals are predominately a commanding growl which is occasionally punctuated by harsh screams, and are the most forward element of the track. While starting on a brisk death lope, the track locks into a groove built around a circling riff and headbangs its way to near-conclusion until the bpms pick up slightly for a layered-vocal finale. Though I would consider it the least successful addition to a stellar compilation, this is a track that is engineered to fit right in the sweet spot of certain groove-oriented extreme music fans.

Diocletian’s blackened death metal opens side B with “Traitor’s Gallow,” a dirty piece of extreme music which, with a shortened runtime to fit with the Monomaniac series’ theme, comes off like blackened Repulsion. The compact format suits the band surprisingly well, and means that a Horrified-esque slab of cemetery deathgrind could be quite a good look for the band’s next LP.

The Howling Wind lives up to its name with “Bewilderment,” an echoey, occult gust of US black metal with vocals so low in the mix that it’s not 100% clear whether they’re there at all or just a trick of the aesthetic. While one guitar shreds along with the drums, another solos for practically the whole track, which makes this black metal duo in line with the genre’s classic tradition of creating a soundscape independent from the sum of its parts. The atmosphere they conjure on this track is enticing enough to make me curious about what their material is like in longer form.

Newcomers Sempiternal Dusk, whose only other output is a just-released cassette that boasts 2 tracks over 24 minutes, serve up a tidy minute of fast, aggressive death metal that boasts technical riffage and is lithe enough not to get bogged down in structural woes while changing up its game several times to keep things interesting.

Despite the length constraint, diversity is Monomaniac Volume One’s greatest asset. This is Past close out the compilation with “Catatonia,” a ritualistic sub-minute chunk of what is ostensibly black metal but consists of Liturgy-esque chant-singing, buzzing picked electric guitar and some ominous cymbal work. Though certainly an unusual submission on the surface, it’s a perfect way to round out the collection.

Agoros’ Monomaniac Volume One fulfills its promise, with a slew of short, exciting tracks that will cement old loyalties and most likely forge new ones.  It delivers a jolt of adrenaline to the dying art of the compilation, and we can only hope the already-announced Volume Two lives up to the successes of this first installment.

Monomaniac Volume One is out now on Blastbeat Mailmurder, and available digitally through Bandcamp as a pay-what-you-want download.

Blast Eats: thedowngoing Nachos

This is the first post I'm writing from my new apartment in Delaware, so I hope that there won't be too much lag between this post and the next one. The Aussie grinders in thedowngoing just released their newest full length ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS last month, and it turns out that grind isn't the only thing that they do extreme. Drummer Muzz (who Mathias tells me is a huge fan of insane food shows like Man v. Food and Epic Meal Time) brings us a killer plate of nachos perfect for your next party (or to dare your friends to finish in one sitting).

Muzz Makes Nachos

Ingredients: Ground Beef/Mince meat ~500g =$5

             Mozzarella cheese (shredded) ~500g =$5

             Seasoning mix ~30g =$1

             Corn chips ~200g =$3

             Sour cream ~300ml =$2

             1 Spanish/red onion

             1 Capsicum/pepper

             1 shallot/spring onion =$2

Nachos are the undisputed champions of taste. If you do this right it will offer you a temporary state of contentment which is all too rare to find these days. First get ~$20 and go shopping (Sydney prices here, I assume its cheaper everywhere else) There's potential to feed an army so either go all out (party)or save some leftovers. Cook up the meat, and season in a fry pan, Add some Tabasco? for spice. Get a baking dish (or 2) and stack Corn chips, then meat, then cheese. 2 layers is optimal. Cook that shit in the oven, should take about 15 min. While this is happening dice up the veggies into a pile. Pull out your Nachos when golden, top with chopped veggies and sour cream.

So that's pretty much it. I recommend consumption while listening to thedowngoing's new CD ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS, and your favourite bottle of beer or cola. Respect each other and enjoy.

thedowngoing- ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in a many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.” - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (1985)

Some of the best grind bands can be described by such adjectives as “unrelenting,” “piercing” and “destructive.” Those words speak to some of the most intriguing traits of the genre, and epitomize what I love about some of my favorite records. Yet every so often, a band like thedowngoing comes along and makes those adjectives seem quaint.

thedowngoing are noisegrind for the Discordance Axis set: relentlessly distorted and punishingly abrasive, yet technically adept enough that the noise and chaos remains a conscious artistic choice. As much of a car wreck as ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS may at times seem, it’s all J.G. Ballard precision, not haphazard evening news violence.

“the nature of numbers” rides shifting, sideways riffing and blasting, always just short of being engulfed by a wake of noise. The brief “floorboards” opens on a tantalizing technical riff before stumble-twirling into a slower, heavy section that drunkenly moshes in and out of blasts before collapsing with one last scream of agony. That noise always nipping at the heels of other tracks fully submerges “untitled,” the record’s 8^th track, instrumentation, vocals and samples rolling over each other and never quite gathering their bearings until they wash up onto the shore of feedback at the track’s end.

The duo weaves samples expertly into their already thick tapestry of grinding noise. Voices and sounds shamble into and out of focus like apparitions in dense fog, adding to the conscious discomfort of the band’s aesthetic. This sidesteps the worst pitfalls surrounding sampling, its use on songs like “Vacant Caves” rendering sampled material as elements of composition rather than filigree around the piece’s frame.

Much has been (justifiably) made of Mathias Huxley’s wall-climbingly insane vocal delivery by my fellow reviewers. Descriptions of its chaotic qualities, as well as its likeness to demonic possession, however apt, belie the Large Hadron Collider-like control required to sustain performances so seemingly unhinged and free of rational interference.

Cueing up Arsedestroyer’s Teenass Revolt or Swarrrm’s Nise Kyuseishu Domo (Thee Imitation Messiahs) or Black Bong next to tracks from this record will neatly underscore the difference between chaotic-sounding and truly chaotic, improvised vocal delivery. Those records sound chaotic due to the conditions they were written and recorded under; in contrast, Mathias’ vocals are chaos as a tool toward aesthetic cohesion.

Perusal of Huxley’s lyrics (included with the physical release or available on thedowngoing’s bandcamp) reveals a shattered, poetic, free-associative lyrical style that complements the insanity of his vocal style. On songs like “the nature of numbers,”  Huxley recalls Eyehategod’s Mike Williams and his beautiful, Burroughs-indebted insanity:  “a binary fascination scratching at the ones and naughts etched in my teeth and nails bleeding coalescent  / a tectonic love circles dates months away while i spend new years eve doped up with the dogs.”  Elsewhere, the seemingly relationship-related material on songs like “snakecharmer”  echoes the disturbed, lovelorn obsessiveness of Pig Destroyer’s J.R. Hayes: “breaching my skin adrift a desert sea singing the hymns of decay  / that charm the snakes that dance inside your eyes  / now i stand an ancient ruin a relic to mourning you.”

The album’s physical release comes in the form of a handmade slimline cd. Its artwork and liner layout, though leaning toward the simplistic, manages to come off as pleasantly minimal and sidesteps the rampant garishness that the meeting of extreme music and the visual arts too often produces. The disc itself looks fantastic. Though it’s nothing more than a simple white disc hand-flecked with black paint, the final product epitomizes how DIY the release is, and the lack of a title mirrors the obscure, disorienting sounds coded onto it.

While only 3 songs and a few seconds longer than last year’s impressive Untitled EP, everything about ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS  feels more full, more complete and more thought-out, and worthy of the title of LP. Tighter songwriting and aesthetic cohesiveness means that this is their best put-together release to date, and the tightrope walk that goes on between noise and musicality makes it a must for fans of truly insane experimental grindcore. 

The release can be found on the band's Bandcamp page in pay-as-you-want digital and as a physical release.

[Note: The band sent me a copy for review.]