Review: HEADED FOR DISASTER: "Jellyfish" EP (Self-Released)

Right from the start, Headed for Disaster come at you swinging like a rabid bear that hasn't eaten for 10 days. They bust out one metallic punk hymn after the other, landing direct hooks on your already swollen head from too much extreme music. Yes, these guys are noise afficcionados and you gotta love them, really.

Now I should mention at first that these guys are Swedes; and in a way, this monstrous ball of aggression still wears the mark of this rock n roll generator of a country. The musicianship is ultra tight and way above average, I mean these guys can PLAY. They have one foot firmly rooted in 80s aggressive hardcore/punk, but at the same time embellish their sound with lots and lots of icing: straight up thrash, pure rock n roll touches, upbeat skater California punk (RKL, Suicidal Tendencies etc), Motorhead crusty dirt, Swedish punk n roll, epic heavy metal guitar harmonies, some melodic singing coupled with sparse crust/death metal growls, some hard rock singalongs in there somewhere too, and the list goes on. I mean... how do they pull it off? This sounds totally consistent yet it is all over the place!

This punk thrash outfit is like a huge lizard wearing an ST shirt and a backwards baseball cap, skating off a 40ft  ramp with a cola in its hand, grinning in your ugly face. As the name says, destruction and disaster is the game here. This is real flaming rock n roll, by people who must live it in order to play it so well. These tunes are so hard and so tight, and have the perfect sense of urgency and emotion. What is more, Headed for Disaster have the power and ability to transmit this feeling to the listener, Yes... good music is always infectious and contagious and I'm glad to have listened to this.

The song below is from an older 2010 release, but I put it up here cause the song is rad and cause the cover for this video simply rules.

- Fotis TYS

also check:

http://hfdsweden.bandcamp.com/

http://soundcloud.com/hfdsweden/

Thrash Friday #1: ADRENICIDE

From now and on, every Friday at TxYxS will be Thrash Friday! What that means is that we will post stuff about cool bands (current or from the past) that trhash it up and pack tons of energy and aggression. The reason we dedicate Fridays to thrash is because Friday marks the end of the week, the day everyone waits to get some time off and have fun. And what better way to encapsulate and celebrate this feeling with some balls to the wall, crazy fucking music!?

Here is some not forgetten thrash that worships all things DRI and Suicidal Tendencies. It's the mighty Adrenicide from rainy England with a 2011 thrashterpiece! A must listen...

http://www.adrenicide.com/
http://www.myspace.com/adrenicide1

p.s. All our sXe friends, don't worry about the beer worship either, we're sXe too but can still enjoy fun music.

Review: HARM's WAY "Isolation" (Closed Casket Activities)

Harm’s Way play brutal hardcore, but unlike many peers, they are as solid and heavy as it can get without any melodic ear candies or other trendy elements inside. In the present album Harm’s Way put together the grooviest and heaviest styles from hardcore and metalcore, to transform them into a sound uniquely theirs. You can be sure that this record is going to conquer your soundsystem in heavy rotations!

At first listen, Isolation does not sound that startling or extraordinary, rather tardy worn out and cliché, nevertheless it grabbed me from the neck with its megatone heaviness. Slowly as the tracks went by, I started realizing that Harm’s Way stand out from the crowd of ‘chugga-chugga’ thugs and copycats. Especially after listening the title track things got more interesting and addictive to the point that I kept repeating the tracks again and again. Isolation contains at least three of my favourite brutal hardcore numbers of the last years, namely ‘Breeding Grounds’, ‘New Beginnings’ and of course ‘Isolation’.

Here’s the recipe: 90’s mid-paced brutal hardcore ala Buried Alive, Hatebreed, Strife, Terror,  Naysayer etc., pounding open-chord progressions reminiscent of Machine Head (‘The more things change’-period), Throwdown, Soulfly etc (but totally hardcore and personalized). They make some occasional use of thrashy but warm and tuneful Merauder-like riffing of Master Killer era (pay attention to the 2:18 of ‘Slither’ or the starting riff of ‘Pretender’). There are some influences from darker hardcore acts like Integrity or the newcomers Xibalba but also slow downtuned boneshaking Crowbar grooves alongside doom hints. Yes, there are also breakdowns, but given in the band’s plodding and harsh style.

All is delivered in Isolation under an ice cold, introvert yet devastatingly heavy prism with black & white aesthetics. It is anguish, nihilism and soreness that drives Harm’s Way, not the street attitude. It is not another band that produces plastic copy/paste patchworks by the pound; the more you dive into Isolation, the more you realize that it is a cult album that paradoxically deviates from the standard macho style in spite of its heaviness and dance parts. Even though Harm’s Way is a straight edge band, this fact passes totally unnoticed throughout the record.

The songs are perfectly-crafted to reach their ends of pulverizing despair and anger: riffs, moshing grooves, breakdowns put in just the right place to create a flow of different tempos. The severe throaty vocals are sparingly used to force repetitive abstract words into the music like nails and make the crash absolutely harder (in ‘Becoming’ the phrase "cast a shadow. plead. freed" is repeated throughout the whole song). That is a real departure from the tiring endless screaming used by most bands nowadays. 

There are also some more subtle elements that push this record even further like the 2:55 minute mark of the ‘New Beginnings’, where the open-chord groove is molded into pure distorted heaviness that brings sludge/drone mantras in mind (especially the opening riff of Torche’s ‘Charge of the Brown Recluse’). When the vocals kick in the outcome is scorching! Another super effective creative detail is the mellow, quiet end of ‘Slither’ that has an Oceanic era Isis touch (and all the feelings of detachment and withdrawnness it denotes). It lasts only 50 seconds but is again repeated in ‘Pretender’ (the album’s closer) which finishes off with a  synth-assisted epic doom riff.

Isolation is honestly delivered, not overproduced but it has definitely a crashing production (by Andy Nelson at Bricktop Studios, mastered by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering) and highly danceable grooves that can tear any moshpit apart. Harm’s Way deliver mid-paced metallic hardcore of monstrous heaviness; a homage to the 90’s with a reclusive personal twist. While they incorporate a dark image and a hard sound they do not mix many styles (crust/black etc.) like other contemporaries do (see Rise & Fall, Oathbreaker, Trap Them, All Pigs Must Die etc.), they prefer to stay on the straight side of brutal hardcore. Not a single note drifts away from hardcore sound, rather all instruments are packed together like a fist of concrete. Thumbs up also for the great cover illustration by John MacNair!

Harm’s Way have been always changing, steadily focusing their sound on what culminated into Isolation, which is by far their best effort to date. Since it is a relatively young band, the expectations are sky-high for their next steps.  I would be surprised if there are any bands out there that can do any better metallic hardcore than these guys from Chicago.

Harm’s Way previous discography:

(2007) Imprisoned 7’’ EP (Organized Crime records, Tooth Decay Records)

(2009) Reality Approaches (Organized Crime records)

(2010) No gods, No Masters EP (Closed Casket Activities)

- Rigas

http://www.facebook.com/harmsxway
http://www.closedcasketactivities.com/

Featured Bands: NOOSE - Chicago Straight Edge

Noose is a vegan straight edge band from Chicago US. Their 2010 demo has created quite a lot of noise in the worldwide undergound HC scene, and for a good reason: these guys play no frills, pissed off hardcore that is not easy to come by these days! Their music takes us right back to a proto-HC sound reminiscent of Boston HC like SSD and maybe some faster shit like Infest. Even the production sounds like it was recorded in a crappy studio sometime in the 80s - and that's a good thing!

What is awesome about Noose is the sheer intensity of their sound, which - argue as much as you want - only old school hardcore music can deliver. It's so great to find out bands with this trademark sound in this rotten day and age! The band is now signed on React! Records and their new record will be out soon.

Check their site below because they post all kinds of cool stuff, like photos from their shows, links to other cool HC shit (zines, bands etc), merch, tour updates etc. Also, make sure to listen to their Fuck Art/No Respect demo.

http://noosexchicago.blogspot.com/

Review: DEUS OTIOSUS "Murderer" (American Line/FDA Records)

It is just great to see death metal bands taking their music seriously. Any bunch of deathcore kids who wanna have fun can learn to play brutal and fast after some years of listening to Relapse bands and practicing; but the bands that ultimately stand out from the pack are the ones which have something more worthwhile, the ones with members who live and breathe real Death Metal all their lives. I'm talking about bands that can creep into your subconscious mind and make a nasty home in it. And Deus Otiosus is such a band.

There is a big difference between just banging out some solid DM tunes with the right ingredients (death growls, heavy riffs, double bass drums etc), and making a piece of real unearthly, sick, and disgustingly dark music.  While Deus Otisius do have all the right ingredients for sure, they fall into the latter category of true deathsters, and have offered the world a true old school DM masterpiece.

Their brand of DM goes way back to the roots of old school death metal. That means really brutal, with a thick wall of sound created by the the solid guitar riffage, 100% DM vocals and a crazy drummer blasting out necro beats in the background. What I mean by 'necro' is that the beats are not hyper fast, more like an exchange of mid tempo/fast parts, but coupled with a punishing and selective use of the double bass. If you want references of what this albums sounds, then I'd have to drop in some names like early Death, Apshyx, Sinister, Bolt Thrower, maybe even rocking stuff like Entombed and Dismember. At times, these guys seem to black/thrash it a little bit in the old school style like Possessed, Celtic Frost etc. And that, my friends, is where the real inferno is at.

While Deus Otisius plays straight out DM, they manage to create a ghastly atmosphere without the use of long interludes, keyboards, or any other extras. They manage to collectively use their instruments, lyrics and layout in such a way as to create a real deathly atmosphere that drives your mind into hellish images, cold cemetaries and ghouls running amuck. Some of the riffs have an epic feel to to them and create a war/battlefield atmposhere, hence the Bolt Thrower influence I mentioned earlier. These are some of the parts that really start growing on you after you give this record a few listens.

To sum it up, I'll leave you with a line that the band itself used in order to promote the album: "twisted death metal with the reek of the damned". This is what it is!

PROS: Total old school feel, great vox, some truly epic guitar riffs, nice production, high level of brutality.

CONS: None, but strictly for DM fans

LOWDOWN: A true DM album for those who worship the roots of this music.