Mörser - 10,000 Bad Guys Dead

Mörser is from Germany and they're very pissed off at something, though I haven't the faintest idea what. Maybe it's because they have two bassists, two vocalists, two guitarists, and a drummer, which is silly. Still, I can forgive them because I like their music. And look at their goddamn fancy German suites. Dapper Dan Men, I'm telling you.  I'm also not sure what the deal is with the album title. Maybe it's funny to Germans. Moving on, Mörser's sound is hard to explain. Sometimes they remind me of Bolt Thrower, sometimes they remind me of late 90s metalcore, and sometimes they have their own sound. They can be thrashy, sort of, though mostly I'd just describe their music as pummeling. German brethren Acme and Systral are somewhat apt comparisons, though this isn't surprising because there's some member overlap between the three bands (one of the vocalists and one of the bassists). Unlike Bolt Thrower, their music is not catchy and very ugly. It's tempting to use the word 'sludge'  to describe their sound, but it just doesn't seem to fit with the blast beats. That's part of what makes them intriguing, I suppose. 

DL 

Catharsis/Newborn Split (2001)

Catharsis was a great metallic hardcore band from Georgia. Their singer Brian was (and still is as far as I know) an active anarchist who published the legendary underground zine InsideFront and started Crimethinc, an anarchist collective that publishes literature and releases music. You can find their stickers on bikes or street signs in most major cities (look for crust punks).  Besides this split, Catharsis have two amazing full-length albums--Samsara and Passion--that I highly recommend, but on this split it is the Hungarian emotive hardcore/punk band Newborn who really shine. Each of Newborn's four songs are mini-epics that traverse the history of hardcore, from its punk roots to contemporary post-hardcore, all the while maintaining a youthful energy that is impossible to deny. Their musicianship is stellar on all fronts and the production is top notch. The Catharsis track, Arsonist's Prayer, is nine-minutes of solid and somewhat innovative hardcore that is good but not great, at least relative to their other work. It's all about Newborn on this one.

DL

Fall - s/t ep

In ninth grade I began to play drums with a group of kids from my high school and we called ourselves Fall.  I recently found the mp3s from our only 'studio' recording (the studio was a tiny, cramped basement in Pontiac) and I thought to myself, what the heck, I'll post it.  The production is raw, but we put everything we had to give into those songs and when I listen to them I can still remember how much fun the whole experience was.  We even got to open for such rockstar acts as NineShocksTerror, Twelve Tribes, FaceDownInShit, and Zegota, all of which I had to convince my parents to let me play.

Fall was a bizarre mix of metalcore, melodic emo, and crusty grindcore.  Bizarre, like I said, but for better or for worse we didn't really sound like anyone else.  I still think the first twenty seconds of the second track is super catchy and the vocal patterns through track three, titled 'Rust,' are very intense.  Track four is still my favorite song of ours.  If only I could remember its name.  And yes, that is acoustic guitar in the fifth track 'If Only I could Believe.'  We really liked In Flame's The Jester Race.

Perhaps our greatest moment was when we were disqualified from the Berkley High School battle of bands. After having his amp unplugged by the vice-principal due to kids 'moshing,' Glen asked her how would she like it if he unplugged her kid and the question didn't go over so well. So here is the self-titled Fall ep, which circulated in crusty kid circles from Detroit to Lansing and everywhere in between.

DL

Invocator - Weave the Apocalypse (1993)

I can't recall where or why I first heard Invocator's "Weave the Apocalypse" but I do remember immediately thinking that the first track, "Through the Nether to the Sun," was one of the coolest tracks of European melodic metal I'd heard. More importantly, I still feel that way.  I found later that what's even better is that the whole damn album is great.  And yet despite all of this, Invocator still remains a relatively obscure blip on the metal map, far out-shadowed by At The Gates, Dark Tranquillity, In Flames, etc. If you have a look on Amazon.com right now, there is a copy of this cd selling for $57.00.  Yup.  My guess is that they just sounded too different from the aforementioned crop of Scandinavian melodic death metal bands. Maybe too much of an American influence, even.  It's not hard to imagine these guys really liking Pantera and Morbid Angel.  And really, in terms of technicality and musicianship, I think Invocator had just about everyone in Gothenburg beat. Incidentally, Per Jensen, drummer extraordinaire from The Haunted,  played drums on "Weave the Apocalypse."

You probably want to know what they sound like. If I had to come up with a label I might call them melodic technical groove thrash with hardcore-leaning vocals that sound like a pissed seventeen year old. You should probably just check it out.  As I said, if you at least give "Through the Nether to the Sun" a chance (especially pay attention 1:45 to 2:05 as it is an exceptionally rad progressions of rhythm-shifting riffs) I think you'll find it worth your while.

Also, it has some rad Dan Seagrave artwork.

DL

Silence - Echoes of Depression (2004)

This is for Adrian, the great frenchman pictured above who said he'd pay attention to my blog only if I posted some d-beat hardcore. I don't know much about Silence except that they were from Lublin, Poland, they played excellent dark and somewhat melodic d-beat/crust hardcore, and that they are no longer a band.  Echoes of Depression is their only full length, though they did release a 10" and a 7", both of which are available for free download at their myspace here.

DL

Creation is Crucifixion - everything worth hearing (1998-2001)

Creation is Crucifixion are still to this day one of my favorite bands.  They never managed to make a great sounding recording, but just about everything they put out was awesome.  They came from Pittsburgh and played a unique sounding combination of technical grindcore and metallic hardcore.  I say unique because despite the blast beats and plenty of riffs that indicate these guys have spent time listening to Suffocation, Creation is Crucifixion combined this all with an industrial edge to their music, as if they were taking influence from the aesthetic of Godflesh's Streetcleaner, only to mash it together with Pierced From Within.  Maybe that makes no sense, but it's what I hear.


Anyhow, what I'm providing are all of the band's music tracks (as opposed to the noise tracks for which there was generally one for every regular song) from In_Silico, their first full-length, Automata, their second full-length, the Child As Audience EP, and the remaster/re-recording of their vinyl splits. All in all you're getting twenty awesome tracks. They released two EPs and a split EP prior to In_Silico, but these early releases are interesting to me only as historical record; overall they're of a caliber far below their later releases. Lyrically they leaned heavily towards anarchist/anti-technological/anti-religious diatribes and the vocal delivery was every bit as infuriated as the lyrics themselves. I'd tell you to go buy their shit but I don't know where you'd find most of it anymore. I still have my copy of their 7" split with Unruh. But like a fool I no longer have the book that came with the controversial Child As Audience ep, which demonstrated how to re-program a Gameboy to make a game that teaches children about sexuality. Go figure.


and if you're not convinced yet, they had great song titles which were long and intimidating (and not long and stupid like so many modern tight-pants-wearing shitty spazz-breakdown bands like the Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza et.al): "The Perfection of Suicide is in its Ambiguity," "The Allegory of the Algorithm (or how I learned to stop worrying and love mimesis," "The Iconography of John Henry a.k.a. Eliza was a Program," and lastly, "Subversion as a Tactical Metaphor a.k.a. Species Traitor a.k.a. Technology as an Iron Lung."  You get the picture. If you want the full releases, with noise tracks and the bands they shared splits with, go here where you can find them and get a more articulate account of the band's history. 

DL

Endeavor - Constructive Semantics (1997)

Endeavor were active during the pinnacle years of American metalcore, when bands such as Morning Again and Trustkill label-mates Harvest were fusing a hardcore aesthetic with riffs copped from Metallica and Slayer thereby introducing suburban kids such as myself, many of whom had grown up on ska and punk, to harder-edged, more 'extreme' genres of music, and eventually to metal itself.  Endeavor maintained a strong hardcore feel to all of their music and though they kept company with the more metal-leaning hardcore acts they always, in my mind at least, stood apart. Their lyrics were both political and personal and the band's anger and sincerity shines through at all times:


"Kill Traitors: an ideology. A standard by which to breathe within the machine without a mind. Patriotism defined as a passive reaction to the inexcusable."


Maybe you'll care more if you know that vocalist Mike Olender went on to form Burnt by the Sun.

DL