Leeds-based outfit Pips are a leftfield band; I’m not entirely sure how to describe them. Avant-garge? Autistic? In my notes I’ve written “cheeky chirpy weirdo thingrock”, which goes to show 1.) how useless my notes tend to be and 2.) that Pips are pretty good at dodging attempts to categorise them.
I’ll make another attempt: if Mclusky were a lo-fi three-piece who had somehow heard Future of the Left whilst living in Leeds alongside that city’s fertile crop of unusual rock ensembles (Bilge Pump, That Fucking Tank, Lords etc) alongside other midlands/north math-flavoured contemporaries like the recently reviewed Diamonds and Aged Yummy, you might get something that sounded a bit like Pips.
Coming at it from a more mechanical angle, the band rock a very lo-fi sound with a distinct guitar tone; the bass chases after the guitar and typically follows its weird staccato riffs; the vocals are a halfway house between spoken-word and snarls. Lyrically, well, there’s some sort of thread to unpick and follow through the maze here, but they’re oddball at the very least.
Everyone has at least a few bands that they just don’t get along with. For me, one such band is The Ataris - whether it’s fair or not I have a long-standing perception of the band as being far too wishy-washy for my tastes, and far too stuck in a rut of only writing songs about how fucking sad they are. If you’re going to do that, at least have a sense of humour or rock out about it, eh? Like The Ergs? In fact, my favourite Ataris song is actually ‘Song For a Mixtape’, because it has a Descendents sample at the beginning (‘Silly Girl’, if you’ve not heard it).
Another such band is A New Found Glory, who – if I’ve got my banal genre stickers the right way up – qualify as both a mallcore pop-punk group and the progenitors of something that grew up to be called easycore, at least until people got bored with the label. ANFG never resonated with me; although I dug a lot of those driving melodies and anthemic sensibilities I found the slick sound a little suspicious and the band’s image too goofy to take seriously (yes, I know that is pretty much the point).
Although it’s patently obvious that this is so I should emphasise that the above is wholly subjective, and I really have no objection to people disagreeing with me or even outright saying I’m wrong, even though I’m not. This is all just a roundabout way of establishing my prejudices before I drop the now blatant bombshell that I don’t dig Handguns mini-album Don’t Bite Your Tongue. For my money ANFG and the Ataris are the late-90s early-00s bands who laid the groundwork for contemporary outfits like Handguns, The Wonder Years, Set Your Goals and their ilk – see also Transit, reviewed here, who I didn’t get along with for similar reasons. It just ain’t my thing.
The elements of Don’t Bite Your Tongue that I do like are those rich melodies and some of their vocal harmonies; plus there are a few rougher edges and a bit of buzz here and there, which I appreciate. » Read the rest of this entry «
When faced with grind as ridiculously fast as this, the reviewer has a few options open to him or her. The first is to plump for abstract or ridiculous analogies and hyperbole:
Paint-blisteringly fast, The Ergon Carousel are punching you in the face ten thousand times a minute with their unstoppably intense hyperspeed velocity noisecore. GRRind! It’s like being chased down an endless corridor by a ceaselessly screaming cyborg bear with fists for eyes and lasers for teeth.
Another is to pursue a fairly staid biographical approach:
Midlands grind outfit The Ergon Carousel are composed of ex-members of Narcosis, Beecher, Carmen and Mechagodzilla, are have been kicking around since 2008′s The Ergon Carousel EP. Dead Banks is their first album, and with seventeen tracks powered through in under twenty minutes it’s clear they’re not slowing down any time soon.
A third option would be to talk about how they fit into the grand scheme of grindcore, which you’re unfortunately not going to get from me because I don’t know much about grind. Outside of the bands I already mentioned above, the obvious candidates like Brutal Truth and Anal Cunt and a few weird outliers like Xfilesx and The Afternoon Gentlemen I don’t really listen to it much either.
So instead I’ve gone for the fourth option, which is to deconstruct the music review a bit as you’ve already seen. I’m having some fun here, and The Ergon Carousel’s relentless aural violence is an ideal soundtrack for it.
It’s safe to say that Hold Tight! are deeply embedded in the contemporary US punk rock aesthetic, from trivial markers like the exclamation mark in their name (seriously, those have been a thing for a while now) through the endearingly sloppy qualities of the vocals all the way to the way the band string together their fat, chuggy, distorted melodies and multiple vocal lines (replete, of course, with eternally fun “woahs”).
There’s a certain magical x-factor (not the TV show; as an aside, I despair that one day all short-hand phrases such as this may one day be robbed from us and put to work promoting some cynical, banal and short-lived commodified shit) that makes this style of punk rock really work, at least as far as I’m concerned. Essentially it’s a fusion of music and lyrics that walk a casual line between sweetness, melancholy, passion, driving energy and relentless force, all with enough honesty to resonate in the tough lump of scar tissue that is a punk rocker’s heart.
Slabdragger play music that belongs firmly in the “as fuck” category. You know: loud as fuck. Heavy as fuck. Sludge as fuck. Stoner as fuck. In fact, I’m kinda bummed that I’m not writing this review whilst baked out of my mind, but in fairness taht cluoc krow tuo yldab rof uoy ,eht redaer.
So yeah, what we have here is a collection of nine songs with a few scattered vocals; they’re mostly instrumental and there are quite a few tracks that extend past the four or five minute boundary. It’s best enjoyed with a decent set of headphones to really bring home the sense of volume and riff bombardment that drives it.
First track ‘Bab el-Mandeb’ is a chuggy number that uses quite a few vocals; you’ve got the usual dual-vox metal pairing with one guy using a higher, snarly voice and another guy bringing the gruff lower tone. It’s a strong advertisement for the power of a good riff pumped through a good amplifier: it settles into its chuggy groove and more or less sticks with it for nine and a half minutes. And ah, there’s more going on than that, but it’s all embellishment around that central chug: a bar and a half of palm mutes and then half a bar of hanging chords. Simple, yet effective. As fuck.
Hailing from Michigan’s Grand Rapids and the fantastically named Kalamazoo, Protected Left play fast-paced melodic hardcore punk rock. They’re far from alone in this, but it’s hard to deny that they do it well. Take opener ‘Nightmare’, driven by an almost unrelenting punk drumbeat (you know, whacking the snares on the 2nd and 4th beat… you have heard this drumbeat a thousand times!) that only pulls back for the song’s bridge; the meat on the song’s bones is composed of fast and simple power chord progressions with a vocal line that faithfully follows along.
The band have thoughtfully sent me the lyric sheet for these three songs, and I can say that all three opt for articulations of self-doubt, fear of ageing and failing; that kinda thing. That there’s such a consistent lyrical theme speaks well of the passion and honesty behind these words, but they’re so cloaked in ambiguity, and lacking specificity, that they never really stick in the mind – despite nice turns of phrase like “resolve became rigid / and in the end he’d crack”.
Dutch outfit Antillectual recently lost their bassist, Tim van Tol, so I’d guess that Start from Scratch is the last record on which he’ll play. It’s a shame but the band have been around since 2000 and changes to line-up are hardly going to stop them at this point.
The band hail from the Netherlands – Nijmegen / Utrecht to be precise – and play melodic punk rock with a hardcore slant. It’s poppy, sure, but there’s chuggy palm-muting and fast-paced aggression aplenty. It’s a bit of a predictable comparison to make with a Dutch punk band, but I get a definite Undeclinable Ambuscade vibe – perhaps it’s just the Dutch accent singing in English over melodic punk – but Bad Religion are also a likely inspiration. Antillectual are more earthy and less abstract or ideological than BR, but they back up their hooky and melodic tunes with a mix of lyrics exploring both the personal and the political.
There’s little obvious filler present among these twelve tracks, although there are a few tracks which are a little weaker or make some odd choices. ‘The Hunt Is On’, for example, is a little bland and unmemorable, and ’Some of my best friends are meat eaters’ – a riff on the old “some of my best friends are black/gay/etc” cliché, I assume - bizarrely namechecks Pamela Anderson and Weird Al Yankovic. I concede that Weird Al’s career covers many decades but regardless those are two heavily 90s-esque names to drop. Then there’s ‘America’s Worst Role Model’; I suppose pop-punk is a fairly US-centric genre but it’s odd that Antillectual choose to tackle American social issues rather than those of their home nation.
Although I’ve written about London’s The Border Surrender before, it was a review of a digital single so I’ve only heard the one track. It was a doozy, though: “an elaborate song that builds up and pulls back with relaxed restraint, supported throughout by a simple hooky bassline and soft vocals.”
The four songs present on the Lean Season EP all fit in with single ‘Oh Mary’, exhibiting powerful and stirring indie rock with strong folk and Americana elements and notable melodic sensibilities.
‘If You Pass Me By’ is the most immediate and perhaps the most memorable song present. For much of its length it’s restrained, with keys, grumbling bass (probably synth), high guitars, simple licks and delicate, heartfelt vocals. A simple and hooky riff leads in to the choruses which are significantly bigger and pacier, a heel-slamming rhythm shifting into gear . The song’s a steady builder, though each time it returns to one of its component parts they’re embellished and enlarged, lending a constant sense of growth and increasing impact. This structural approach is matched by the song’s video, which you can watch here if you’re so inclined:
It’s only a few months since Diamonds last graced Nostalgia For Infinity; you may recall this review of the An Introduction EP. Crystal Ravens is their first official release and is also the debut release for label Allegiance Records.
I’ll refresh your memory: Diamonds play a distinct and distinctly oddball style of music that draws on disco-punk, powerviolence and the it-means-whatever-you-want descriptor spazzcore. They remind me of an Aged Yummy that grew up listening to Agnostic Front and Born Against alongside !!! and Tortoise. That comparison is unfortunately a bit meaningless; they do fall down a bit here. If you’ve ever heard Deep Elm’s Free Diamonds there are some similarities there, though Diamonds are drawing on hardcore and metal subgenres rather than emo and punk.
The oddball nature of the seven songs on offer here is endearing, though at times where the band unleash their more ferocious moments I found it hard not to wish the songs had more sonic meat on their bones. Perhaps it’s just a restriction due to production costs, a necessity of equipment set-up, or even just my personal preference, but without a thick and full sense of heaviness and volume or even just a hard edge – to support moments of feral posturing it falls a little flat.
This is a little unfair, though, as it’s focusing overly on one small element of the band’s music. There’s a lot to like and little to diss, provided you’ve got the time for unpredictable, improbable yet danceable music. Plus it’d be cool to see these guys live at a hometown show; the idea of fly disco moves exploding into pit action for the chuggy mosh-ready sections is appealing.
When I was sent this record to review I was told that the band didn’t really know what they sound like. I can sympathise; it’s pretty difficult to describe your own music. I figure this is because when you’re playing them, you think of songs as being built out of riffs and licks and beats and vocal lines and those sequences of notes or rhythms that you really like, whereas when you’re listening to music you’re more inclined, conscious or not, to try and understand it in terms of what you’ve heard before. I dunno – that might be bullshit, but it sounds about right.
Anyway, Grazes! These guys hail from Sheffield, and this here is their first official release, a 7″ co-release between Holy Roar, Ebb and Flow and Crash Landing Records. It’s also available digitally, yadda yadda. In terms of sound I’d place it alongside the nascent powerviolence scene of the 90s, itself emerging from the hardcore punk scene of the late 80s and early 90s, along with some early thrash-esque solos. There’s a solid old-school feel to it, in other words, both in terms of songwriting and sound.
Don’t misinterpret that, though; this isn’t some shoddily-recorded EP from the 90s. The sound is beefy and solid as befits a modern release: the drums, bass and guitars all pop out with suitable intensity, keeping songs from devolving into a mush as the pace picks up. ‘Down in the River Styx’ is perhaps the most reminiscent of the aggro UK hardcore scene, even at times reminding me of how old crust/anarcho bands sound (in my head, at least; memory often disappoints with old records). As with all of the songs present, though, it’s not a love-in for a particular genre that’s had its day: the band draw influences from an impressively distinct range of sources, which is pretty impressive given the stripped-down nature of these songs.
Leeds-based outfit Pips are a leftfield band; I’m not entirely sure how to describe them. Avant-garge? Autistic? In my notes I’ve written “cheeky chirpy weirdo thingrock”, which goes to show 1.) how useless my notes tend to be and 2.) that Pips are pretty good at dodging attempts to categorise them.
