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