Metal Riot

A Dying Planet photo by Brian Kirksey

Hey there killers and saints. We made it to Wednesday. Gotta make sure each day these days, ya know? Good news is lots of cool music haps today and #ptsdawarenessday is spreading depression awareness, so that is good stuff. Bad news is fake SCOTUS justice/stolen seat Gorsuch is helping push through more and more fascism and now Union rights are getting screwed badly via #Janus ruling.  Mitch McConnell is the ugliest piece of shit walking besides Trump. Yuck. I guess when we are all exploited even more we can all listen to Municipal Waste in the gutter and drink cheap beer still, but it would be nice as shit to have work protections and a living wage, y’know? On the plus side, Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez won and that is big news.

And now the metal! If you are not scrambling for your life from an onslaught of MAGA troll negativity or Gestapo-like ICE agents, spend some time in the realm of metal when you need some self care and serious riffage. Today I have three cool developments for you to make you feel a little better about our imperiled world.

A Dying Planet (I know the name is not exactly PMA, hahaha) have a debut out in August. The band features members of Zero Hour and Cynthesis and are a progressive group you will want to know about. The outfit has completed its debut album, Facing The Incurable, and has slated it for independent release in August.

The band also features twin brothers getting progressive together, so that is pretty cool. I like the album name as it sort of reminds me of the tipping point for ecological harm. Wake up, people.

Pig Destroyer by Joey Wharton

Pig Destroyer news! How we savor those words! The notorious extreme metal band are celebrating twenty one years wrecking ears this year and are playing Decibel’s Metal & Beer Fest in December (along with Testament doing a New Order and The Gathering set, wtf!!! So cool… plus Triptykon doing a Celtic Frost set, fuuuuck!!) . A new Pig Destroyer album is also coming this year in September from the fine folks at Relapse. Watch this thing below for Head Cage!

And now, for the raddest news of the day of all from mighty Twilight Fauna. I am jamming hard the new “Crooked Road” track right now and dear lord the awesomeness is real. The transition around the one minute mark from fast BM to ambient tranquility was pretty stunning. Please support one of the coolest and most genuine acts around.

https://t.co/tGz2CeqFQk Preorders are now live for the new record and the first 2 tracks are streaming. Test presses, t-shirts, embroidered patches are also up. Give it a listen, spread the word. This is the last 2 1/2 years of my life pic.twitter.com/K8EutAE6ML

— Twilight Fauna (@TwilightFauna) June 27, 2018

Do you know Transient? You certainly should. The Portland grind band completely smoke a lot of the competition and have finally announced a new record. After a half decade the band- featuring members of Landmine Marathon, Endorphins Lost, and more – will soon return with their second LP, Sources Of Human Satisfaction, set for release via Six Weeks Records in August. The album has the band working with Eric Wood of Bastard Noise and is certainly one of the things to be most excited for in 2018 in heavy rock. Shit, “heavy rock” hardly covers the effects of listening to the severe jackhammer mishap sounds of Transient’s full fledged extreme glory.

The band offers, “The title and concept of the album Sources Of Human Satisfaction deals with human happiness and unhappiness – how people aim to please themselves often through external factors and achievements rather than through a focus on and cultivation of internal controls.  Why do we seek what we seek and desire what we desire?”
 
Sources Of Human Satisfaction was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios Oakland, California, with additional recording by Dylan Ludwig at Raven Sound Studio Prescott, Arizona, after which Wood’s noise elements were recorded by Michael Rozon at Speed Semen Clove Factory Sun City, California. The album is completed with artwork by S. Jordan Palmer and Alexa R. Simpson and layout/photos by the band.

Six Weeks Records will release Sources Of Human Satisfaction on LP and digital formats on August 10th; watch for audio premieres, preorders, and more to be released in the weeks ahead.

Song list BELOW.

In a time when the world (or at least America) seems to have gone full throttle casting a shadow of STUPID across the face of the globe, it is reassuring to know a metal institution like mighty UK grind legends Napalm Death are as unstoppable and resonant as ever. Coded Smears And More Uncommon Slurs is a compilation of sold out split EP and Japanese bonus tracks, but it feels as potent and needed as any of their skull crushing political diatribes aka full lengths.

From the mid tempo barrage of “It Failed To Explode” from the Utilitarian sessions to the cinematic experimental unease of the almost Fantomas sounding  “Oxygen Of Duplicity” fittingly from a split with the grunge godfathers The Melvins to the 2:27 perfection of “Critical Gluttonous Mass” from the lazy consumer skewering  Apex Predator – Easy Meat time frame, any of these could have held down a place on the records they didn’t make it on and been just fine. There is literally no quality difference, it all rages. Barney, Shane and the boys bleed for this stuff and deliver 100% like nobody’s business – but you probably knew that already if you are reading it. “Aim Without An Aim” is especially unhinged, Barney’s vocals sounding downright demonic even for him.

Napalm Death, you know what you get. Classic sounding riffs that nonetheless push to further the grind into the future, scorched Earth rage channeled through meaningful progressive topics, a contempt for apathy, pulverizing rhythm section madness, dissonance and destruction.

As bassist Shane Embury recently said in regards to the compilation ,”…We have written so many tracks and the years go by so quick that you forget just how fucking great these songs are!” 

I gotta agree with the guy. There is not a dud in the bunch, despite the piecemeal approach of a compilation. 2CD, 2LP’s of top shelf grind and extreme metal. You’ve even got a mean Despair cover, a Sacrilege cover and some other goodies. Plus you get titles that are pretty much as metal sounding as you can get this side of Carcass. I mean “Omnipresent Knife In Your Back”? C’mon! That’s rad.

Cheers to the band for remaining in the fight and on the front lines of extreme music and activism for so long. People need to see that kind of passion as a rebuttal to apathy. Such respect for this band.

Hardcore idols Sick Of It All have posted a clip of the band performing a stone cold classic “My Life” from Blood, Sweat and No Tears in Tokyo with Barney from fuckin’ Napalm Death on vocals! The crowd is of course loving it. Good times and just what the doctor ordered to cheer you up after a week of deaths in the metal scene.

Expect a new record on the horizon from extreme art grinders Pig Destroyer.

The celebrated band has entered the studio to begin recording their 6th studio album and follow-up to 2012’s Book Burner. The yet-to-be-named full-length is being recorded at the band’s own Visceral Sound Studios in Bethesda, MD and recorded/produced by guitarist Scott Hull. The album is expected to be released Summer 2018 via Relapse Records.

Additionally, PIG DESTROYER has announced a few exclusive concerts for the winter. The band will tour the weekend of December 7-9 in California with a tremendously intense line up featuring Despise You, Necrot & labelmates Call of the Void!

PIG DESTROYER kicks off 2018 with two East Coast shows in New Jersey and in Long Island at Obnoxious Noise Fest. The band has also been confirmed for Maryland Deathfest 2018 on May 26 in Baltimore, MD. Stay tuned for further tour details in the near future.

Itinerary BELOW.

I was feeling pretty glum after the news Trap Them is calling it a day, but it seems – much like in Clone Wars when Anakin went to that weird ass planet Mortis and sort of accidentally balanced the force by screwing up royally – that the grind force that unites us all in hellbound moshery has decided the scales must be balanced with good news today as well for the genre. Yes, obviously I am getting around to telling you the wonderful skull punting news that Corrupt Mortal Altar, one of the more insane UK extreme bands, just dropped a new album for FREE download called Eunoia.  Pick it up HERE!

I have listened to it all the way few twice already and it is a serious rage fest. The pummeling “Engineering Consent”, more sort of rocking Letters Organize meets She Rides reminiscent “Night Chant” and the deadly barrage of “The All Consuming Self” (which would find the band in good company with some of Throatruiner’s current roster on a bill), are all impressive. The whole thing really burns and it is very cool of the band to take the risk of name your pricing it. Obviously the music is the most important part of this, but remember to try and support the band also so artists can keep making their work a priority.

I don’t have any of the production info but this thing sounds amazing and will sear your orifices shut. Hails.

A lot of people know Brutal Truth, perhaps the heaviest grind band that ever snarled and raged beneath a mushroom cloud of bong smoke, for their Sounds of the Animal Kingdom album the best. It simply comes down to the cover art being so fucking bad ass (though Need To Control has a killer front cover as well) and the fact that Relapse seemed to really give it a good push, arguably one of the records that helped kick start the post-early days ascendancy of the label along with some other classics like Neurosis’ Through Silver In Blood or DEP’s Calculating Infinity, for example. As extreme and interesting as those bands were, Brutal Truth are simply not palatable in basically any way for most people, even open minded ones. You have to be all about the grind, sludge and chaos with a smear of politics and loathing for the inanity of humanity.

For me, this was the first album that really made me ‘get’ grindcore and was a huge mental puzzle piece in moving me towards the most extreme stuff in my collection being Fear Factory and some Death or Sepultura to fully embracing Napalm Death, checking out Repulsion, yadda yadda. I still think Kevin Sharp has the most fearsome bellow and it does more for me than a lot of even lower gurgle death metal vocals like, say, Nile or Pathology (not to take anything away from them). Cannibal Corpse may have had the extreme record art and some fierce growls, but Kevin Sharp always sounded like he had just half eaten someone and was yelling at them DURING the cannibalistic act.

Animal Kingdom is a perfect storm capturing in desperation in our collective, obsessive and narcissistic society. It shoves reality in your face and laughs at the idea of civilization, laying bare our cruelty as the most destructive force in the food chain.

The band had done some great stuff in the past with Colin Richardson or Steve McAllister who had credits with Crisis and Corrosion Of Conformity, among others. Animal Kingdom found the group getting one of their most vivid and intense sounds yet with the help of Billy Anderson. This record was able to match some of the social commentary of an early track like “Anti-Homophobe” that was so promising with some of the crushing heaviness of Need To Control, refining all sides of the band’s strengths into a magnificent onslaught on “Jemenez Cricket” or “Postulate Then Liberate.” And there is hardly even much you can say about the Lilker and Hoak rhythm section insanity besides ,“Holy fuck!”

For guitarist Brent McCarthy, this was his swan song with the group, as high point of an exit as you are likely to find in metal (though BT made great albums after him in the years to come as well). I can remember staring at the graves and skyline montage on the back artwork and getting freaked out at the push of mortality and the oppressive stupidity of my fellow man, something all too prominent in the news again these days like almost never before. Sept. 23rd marks twenty years of this smashterpiece and everything else is STILL not loud or fast enough. Light one up and give the old girl a spin if you haven’t in awhile (or even if you have).

Photograph by Mika Aalto

While the rock and metal world reeled last week from the death of the iconic Chris Cornell, thankfully this week is starting off with a reminder that metal, punk and rock will not only never die but has many disciples still here to help carry the torch forward. From UFOMAMMUT’s clobbering new “Warsheep”, to Davey Suicide’s gutter glammy “No Angel”  to Silverstein’s screamo charged “Retrograde”, let’s celebrate that rock still comes in many styles. That said, if you want to kick off your week hard may we recommend you take a big fat Finnish kick in the crotch from grindcore heroes Rotten Sound this Monday. “Thrashmonger” is here and gone in just over a minute but will open your eyes like Uma getting some of that Pulp Fiction adrenaline.

Check it out below and keep the faith.