Viking’s Choice – Bandwidth

Viking’s Choice: Two Inch Astronaut, ‘Good Behavior’

Lars Gotrich — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 10:04:00 +0000

As it stands right now, the current D.C. hardcore/punk scene doesn’t dwell too much on its past. It’s there, it exists, but few seek out the sonic lineage left by Dischord Records in the ’80s and ’90s, which has proved crucial to the area’s revitalization. Two Inch Astronaut, however, has never been shy about picking up the torch. The D.C. post-hardcore band’s youthful enthusiasm has become more steadied over the years, and with its forthcoming third album Personal Life — produced by none other than J. Robbins — Two Inch Astronaut sounds as unpredictable and polished as ever.

“Good Behavior” leads the record with a snappy, twisted pop song. Sam Rosenberg’s knotty guitar work continues to evolve, as a Pixies-like sense of melody lurks the background, and he works nicely in tandem with new member Andy Chervenak (Grass Is Green), the bassist and co-vocalist who’s boosted the musicianship of the already talented trio. But Rosenberg has also finally come into his own as a singer. Here, he plays with the shapes of words as he circles around the melody and sells and yells the hell out of his dejection: “Good behavior cannot help me now.”

Personal Life comes out Feb. 5 on Exploding In Sound.

Viking’s Choice: Pygmy Lush, ‘On A Plain (Nirvana Cover)’

Lars Gotrich — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 11:02:42 +0000

It took seven years for Robotic Empire to finish its tribute to Nirvana‘s In Utero, featuring covers by Thursday, Jay Reatard, Ceremony and Thou. With a lineup like that, it’s no wonder the vinyl sold out quickly on Record Store Day. So with that momentum, the record label returns just a year later with Whatever Nevermind, which counts Boris, La Dispute, Kylesa, Young Widows and others in its track list.

Like Thou, Pygmy Lush contributes to the series again, forever delaying whatever brothers Mike and Chris Taylor — who, yes, were in pg. 99 — and crew have in the works. (I kid! But seriously, guys.) But where the band’s cover of “Serve The Servants” reflected the quieter folk songs found on 2008’s Mount Hope, this version of “On A Plain” exercises the band’s sonic capabilities to such an effect that the song becomes Pygmy Lush’s own.

Chris Taylor’s soft-spoken rattle is an eerie ghost of Kurt Cobain’s, and for a while, the band doesn’t stray far from the folksy Velvet Underground sound of the MTV Unplugged version. Then, two minutes in, Pygmy Lush lays into the noise, soon climaxing in the Crazy Horse-punk chaos that it inflicts on stage.

Whatever Nevermind comes out April 18 (a.k.a. Record Store Day) on Robotic Empire and iTunes.

Viking’s Choice: Red Death, ‘Strategic Mass Delirium’

Lars Gotrich — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 15:13:26 +0000

D.C. hardcore is ridiculous right now. Coke Bust, Pure Disgust, Protester, Collusion, Public Suicide, Misled Youth, Give — these are just a few of the bands ruling the basements of the city, with most (but not all) of its members still in their teens. One of the pit leaders is Red Death, a band that lives up to its name.

Heavier than its peers, Red Death hits that sweet spot between “Horns up!” and the mosh move “picking up change.” Following last year’s promising demo, Permanent Exile is 16 minutes of D-beat-driven, Discharge swinging, early Corrosion Of Conformity pummeling, Death Angel thrash-riffing hardcore. “Strategic Mass Delirium” gives you 50 seconds to swarm in its rolling toms and psychedelic guitar freak-out, and then all hell breaks loose.

Permanent Exile comes out this weekend on Grave Mistake during Damaged City Fest in Washington, D.C. Red Death is on tour with The Flex now.

Viking’s Choice: Pinkwash, ‘Cancer Money’

Lars Gotrich — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 10:35:00 +0000

When you play punk rock with someone for 10 years, communication goes beyond words: The heart speaks through fingers and screams. Joey Doubek and Ashley Arnwine have a long history together in the D.C. punk bands Mass Movement Of The Moth and their own duo, Ingrid, but with Pinkwash (and a move to Philly), there’s an ecstatic pulse that guides their frantic, id-exploding punk rock.

With striking gold-on-purple artwork and a provocative title — both of which nod to ’80s Swans records — “Cancer Money” finds catharsis in head-bashing repetition. Where the band’s debut cassette dealt with Doubek’s mother dying of breast cancer, and found Doubek raging against the medical system in abstract ways, here there is no filter.

Over a squawking, muscle-spazzing riff, Doubek yelps, “Cancer money making you grave,” with a voice somewhere between Daniel Martin-McCormick’s nervous screams for Black Eyes and Nicolas Cage on fire. Arnwine is ruthless with her drumkit, punctuating every riff with a sledgehammer-powered exclamation point and cymbals that shriek like static. The duo closes with two minutes of a single, ugly riff — really, just an open power chord — that becomes an unsettling, wordless mantra, surrounded by eerie ambient noise.

The Cancer Money 7″ is out now on Sister Polygon.

Viking’s Choice: Cretin, ‘Ghost Of Teeth And Hair’

Lars Gotrich — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 14:03:00 +0000

How’s this for an opening line? “Gross. They say I ate you in the womb, that Mom had no room.” After eight years of other projects, members joining Repulsion on tour, and vocalist/guitarist Marissa Martinez-Hoadley’s sex-reassignment process, Cretin has crawled back out of its delightfully gore-obsessed grindcore hole for Stranger and the pit-baiting song “Ghost Of Teeth And Hair.”

Cretin makes no apologies for its allegiances to the grind and death-metal fathers of nasty — Carcass, Repulsion and Autopsy — heard here in a ferocious chug-a-lug that hits like a steel-toe boot to the shins. By contrast, new member Elizabeth Schall’s (Dreaming Dead) guitar solo is atonally acrobatic, but you can almost hear her grin as Matt Widener blasts the twin-eating-twin track wide open with a bass solo that channels Mike Watt in a spastic mood.

Stranger comes out Dec. 9 on Relapse Records.

Viking’s Choice: Accept, ‘Final Journey’

Lars Gotrich — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 10:36:00 +0000

The late-career resurgence of Accept has been hard-won. The German heavy metal band has endured three splits in its 40-some-year existence, original vocalist Udo Dirkschneider left the band in 2005, and the genre lately favors extremity to craft. But since 2010, Accept’s been revived by the voice of Mark Tornillo (TT Quick), alternating between a snake-like rasp and a sandworm squeal, fronting founding members Wolf Hoffman (guitar) and Peter Baltes’ (bass) fist-raising anthems, like “Final Journey” from the band’s 14th album, Blind Rage.

“Final Journey” has all of the band’s signature moves: a bevvy of cocksure riffs balanced by a strong melody, not to mention Herman Frank continuing to prove Wolf Hoffman’s most sympathetic, yet challenging guitar foil. Lest you think the song title signals the end of Accept, Tornillo writes over email: “‘Final Journey’ is certainly not about Accept, but about all of us. Eventually, we all take that final journey and when we do, we will most surely travel alone. ‘Where to?’ is the question!”

Accept is also no stranger to classical themes (see: the Beethoven and Tchaikovsky-referencing “Metal Heart” or Aram Khchaturian‘s Armenian folk melody heard in “Sodom & Gomorrah“). But it is surprising to hear Edvard Grieg‘s “Morning Mood” in the last minutes of “Final Journey,” especially pitting Grieg’s theme that conjures spring and new-ness to a song about death. Wolf Hoffmann writes that his love for classical music “became a standard around 1980”:

When I write a song, it mostly starts with a riff. A riff sets a mood, a mood sets my emotions in motion and then … a bridge evolves between that mood and the most wonderful pieces written by the Old Masters. I do not have to search for what would make it into a song. I seem to have an endless pool of remembrance …. It is always there when I need it.

Blind Rage comes out Aug. 19 on Nuclear Blast.

Viking’s Choice: Swear To The Oath, Faithful Servant

Lars Gotrich — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 08:03:00 +0000

When you name your band after a Mercyful Fate song, you’d better damn well live up to it, especially when that song swears “henceforth to be a faithful servant of his most puissant arch-angel, The Prince Lucifer.” Thankfully, The Oath sounds something like the two bad-ass women in Heart raised on a healthy dose of King Diamond. So embrace the darkness and listen to “Silk Road.”

The Oath was formed after vocalist Linnea Olson left Stockholm to find new musical challenges in Berlin, where she discovered guitarist Johanna Sadonis. Last year’s “Night Child” b/w “Black Rainbow” 7″ was a riff-packed hard-rock stunner that owed as much to the haunting melodies of Mercyful Fate as it did to the biker-speed chug of Motorhead. Both tracks re-appear on the band’s self-titled debut, an album that finds commonality with doomy, occult metal bands like In Solitude and Ghost B.C.

But “Silk Road” stands apart for a number of reasons: Olson’s soulful vocals have this wild ascending/descending quality; every time it sounds like she’s lost control of a pitch bend, she snaps it back into place like a dislocated shoulder. Sadonis achieves the same effect on the guitar by reversing the octaves in the second part of the verses only to — again — snap everything into focus with a single-note riff laid at the feet of Tommy Iommi. Backed by a solid rhythm section made of Kadavar and Angel Witch members, “Silk Road” is a bluesy squall that teeters on the brink of insanity.

The Oath comes out April 15 on Rise Above Records.

Viking’s Choice: Psalm Zero Masters Its Own ‘Undoing’

Lars Gotrich — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 14:38:00 +0000

Unlikely collaborations can unnerve and unwind heavy and extreme music in ways we’d never before imagined. There’s Painkiller, the guts-spilling grind-jazz band featuring saxophonist John Zorn, bassist Bill Laswell and Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris. Doom-metal duo The Body regularly engages outside its genre, including works with a female choir, a post-rock band and, soon, dark electronic musician The Haxan Cloak. Now, we can add Psalm Zero to the list with The Drain, one of the most oddly compelling heavy-music albums of the year so far. Take a listen to “Undoing.”

There’s a dynamic creative tension to Psalm Zero that drives “Undoing.” Charlie Looker comes from avant-rock bands like Zs, Dirty Projectors and Extra Life, and currently heads up the Renaissance folk-music group Seaven Teares. Andrew Hock leads Castevet, a claustrophobic yet melodic black-metal band. Under a Godflesh-y industrial drum machine, there’s a regal duo of guitars and Looker’s droning, cantor-like voice, answered by Hock’s manic growl and sludgy basslines. It’s a mid-paced, elegiac track that nearly comes to fisticuffs — but rewardingly so, as the disparate parts we might assign to Looker and Hock find ways to co-exist.

The Drain comes out March 4 on Profound Lore Records.