Genghis Tron @ Club Europa 06.16.07

by Peter Aleksa / photo courtesy of Jason Bergman

Saturday I had the privilege of seeing three-piece electro-grind ambientcore group Genghis Tron at Club Europa in Greenpoint.

Carbomb opened, and while they had what seemed a pretty dedicated cadre of fans present, their set came off, to me at least, as pretty unimpressive. There were a few moments of ambience and some tight drumbeats that caught my attention for a few seconds at a time, but mostly it was straight-up thrash metal. My compadre, Erik, fell asleep against the wall (or had a seizure from their light show, I forget which it was).

Genghis Tron hit the stage next. I had never seen the group live before and was interested to see how they pulled off such complex numbers live with only three members. I have to say they pull it off really fucking well, with a tight live sound and great stage presence, all backed by their impeccable drummer Fruity Loops Studio. On the set list were all our (my) favorites from the first two albums, including "The Folding Road", "Asleep On the Forest Floor", "Arms", and "Laser Bitch", as well as three new songs off the upcoming album. The new joints (hot joints? bitching jams?) were extremely satisfying and despite Mookie's rather formulaic explanation of the song structure ("i'm gonna scream a little, there'll be a guitar riff, some ambience, we'll both play keys for a little, then we're gonna bring it all home") they alleviated any fears I may have had that the band might settle into their sound and become dull. They closed with a song off the upcoming album, which I always view as a risky move. However, for a song largely unknown by the audience the energy remained high. It turned out to be the perfect closer and possibly my favorite performance of the evening.

All in all it was definitely worth the $10 cover and I left slightly in awe of the trio's presence and seriously fucking pumped for their next album.

Since the Tron played second, I bounced out early and so can't really tell you anything about Total Fucking Destruction or Pig Destroyer's sets but it probably sounded alot like this: "CHUGG-CHUGG-GRAWR-MOTHRFUCKING-GRAAAAWWWR-METTTAAALLLLL". So, whatever.

The Always Open Mouth

by Peter Aleksa

Since their 2003 debut Odd How People Shake, Fear Before the March of Flames has fast become one of the most respected and innovative bands in today’s hardcore scene. And with their highly anticipated third album, The Always Open Mouth, released September 19^th on Equal Vision Records, the band is poised to make some serious waves.

Fear Before the March of Flames has really created something unique with The Always Open Mouth, a dense sonic landscape full of haunting piano melodies, anguished screams, singsong vocals, spoken word samples, breakdowns, and ambient noisecore. The band has really broadened their sound on this album, layering a myriad of synthesizer parts, delayed guitars, and multiple vocals to create a dense, rich sound. And unlike some hardcore bands who just hold a few keyboard chords with the default settings on a Korg, the use of keyboards and piano is done astoundingly well on this album, blending perfectly with the host of effect laden guitar parts and driving bass lines, as the whole mixed media collage of sound is punctured perfectly by Brandon’s stabbing drumbeats.

As the band shifts genres at ADD speed, they seamlessly combine elements of a host of diverse musical styles to form something that sounds like many different bands, but like nothing else at the same time. Songs like the crushingly heavy “Drowning the Old Hag” and “A Gift For Fiction” offer a new take on the breakdown-driven sound Fear demonstrated on their last album, Art Damage. While sections of music like the electronic techno babble and catchy hooks of “My (Fucking) Deer Hunter,” which features guest vocals from Anthony Green of Circa Survive, and the odd timed grind and stoned out heavy metal of “A Brief Tutorial in Bachanalia,” similarly give an altogether familiar feel to the album. And yet, paradoxically, it is somehow unsettlingly different, like the way that people and places in dreams become distorted.

Lyrically, the album is a haunting tale, like stepping through the looking glass into a discomforting vision of a future gone terribly wrong. A nightmarish take on who we’ve become and who we are on track to become, the album abounds with themes of repression, apathy, greed, rampant materialism, drug abuse, and the disintegration of the modern family. On “Mouth,” the lyrics anguish about the lack of discourse in modern society, “Anything to numb/ anything to encourage ignorance/ anything to put us to sleep,” and later rant about our coddled existence and generational apathy, “Someone/ anyone/ take off your shirt/ and pacify/ make it easy for us to eat/ easy for us to sleep/ someone/ anyone/ take us out back/ and put us down/ I think we deserve it.”

There is also an excellent usage of unnatural imagery to unnerve the listener, such as in “Dog Sized Bird,” “Have you seen me lately/ I am the dog sized bird on the tracks/ I have an unhealthy handful of options/ and a couple of trains on my back.” The chillingly apocalyptic predictions in “Taking Cassandra to the End of the World Party” further the unsettling tone of the album, “At six miles up you will explode/ I can see it all/ at sea level you will be drowned/ I have seen it all/ beneath the surface the monster will have you/ I can see it all/ but God damned no one will believe me.” Such lyrics echo the dilemma of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, questioning whether, in a world predicated on certain illusions, being the only person able to see the truth would make you appear insane.

Some of the most insightful lyrics on the album can be found in the track “High As A Horse,” which examines our modern drone like existence, as we dull our senses with pharmaceutical dependencies and mindless television. Commenting on the systematic fleecing of the american public, Adam and Dave sing, “If we give the horses blinders/ they won’t see the approaching ledge/ too much time and effort spent on just another bridge.” And by accusing, “We trust the local doctor/ we trust the medicine/ our child gets a scratch/ we give our child a brand new head/ we eat what’s on our plate/ we drink what’s in our cup/ we like the shiny TV screen/ it spits/ we lap it up... There’s no need to talk/ when we have medicine/ there’s a pill for every fucked up thought/ and a cure for every fucked up child,” they capture perfectly our reliance on modern comforts to supplement unfulfilled existential desires as well as the epidemic of overmedicating American youth.

The high point of the album by far, though, has to be the brilliant two-song tandem of “Complete and Utter Confusion” and “...As A Result Of Signals Being Crossed.” Here, the band’s new blend of ambience and brutality is at its most stunning. In “Complete and Utter Confusion” vocals sweetly soar over a mix of piano, clean guitar, and electronic blips, “There’s a man from the afterlife/ at the door trying to sell us hope,” before brutal screams coming crashing down on the listener with, “Lock the doors/ and close the windows.” The song continues to alternate between sugary, dancey atmospheres and heavy rock, before finally fading out in a sea of feedback. Which, is where the companion track “...As A Result Of Signals Crossed” picks up, continuing the religious and salesman motifs of the previous track, as well as the masterful shift between beautiful instrumental arrangements and calculated brutality.

Throughout the album, the band makes use of repeated imagery and lyrics, such as, “What you see/ and what you believe/ are never going to be the same,” appearing in both “Drowning the Old Hag” and “...As a Result of Signals Being Crossed,” that help tie the album together into one big fucked up portrait. This is furthered by the continuity between the opening track “Absolute Future” and the closing track “Absolute Past,” with their repeated refrains of “Everything will not be made right.” The album artwork, designed by drummer Brandon Proff, features unsettling mashups of portraits of individuals, cityscapes, and productivity charts that embody the thematic elements of modern life encroaching on humanity that is representative of the overall tone of the album.

Pick up The Always Open Mouth now, it’s one of the most unique and rewarding albums in recent memory, and probably the only album you’ll find worth listening to in quite some time.

It’s A Pizza Party!

by Pete Aleksa

“We couldn't decide if we should stay in Chicago and keep eating pizza for the rest of our lives. But after two days of rigorous theory, we realized we had to write divine music about the pizza. We decided to drive home immediately and write and record a 5-song EP called ‘Pizza’ before Sounds of the Underground and Warped Tour started. God was there,” came the website explanation from HORSE the Band as to why they made an early exit from their recent tour slot opening for Gatsby’s American Dream and Portugal. the Man. HORSE fans, accustomed to the irreverent posts found on the band’s website, may have been surprised to discover that this posting actually spoke the truth. After leaving the tour, the band did, in fact, write and record an EP extolling the divine properties of this delicious modern-American dietary staple (no confirmation on whether or not God was there). Entitled Pizza, the CD-EP was released on September 5, 2006 with a limited edition vinyl EP, encased in a pizza box, to follow in the near future.
Musically, the Pizza EP is an oddly catchy amalgamation of hardcore, punk, synth pop, grind, and lo-fi electronica. The rhythm section remains rock solid throughout, while the keyboard serves up countless helpings of cheesy brilliance (oh god, the puns) and the guitar work, while not showy, is nonetheless impressive, providing an excellent counterbalance to the keys. Of note is the last thirty seconds of the second track, Crippled by Pizza (Pizzarrhea in the Pizzeria), featuring an odd timed riff played by a compressed guitar that is the most spectacularly strange section of music on the album. And, as played out as the comparison between HORSE’s music and various video game music is these days, I must mention one of the high points of the album are the eerie melodies found in the track Werepizza, reminiscent of the background music one would find in the NES-classic, Castlevania, or the B-horror scroller, Zombies Ate My Neighbors.
True to the bizarre nature of the album, the Pizza EP ends with a tongue in cheek cover of the beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. While the comic rendition of the pizza-loving Turtles theme is a cleverly funny addition, and one that fits with the theme of the album, it ultimately does not bear repeated listens. After the initial run through I found myself skipping the track on subsequent trips through the album.
I’m not quite sure of what to make of the ongoing pizza leitmotiv. My enjoyment of this joke seemed to move in cycles, from the initial chuckle at such a ridiculous premise, to a growing annoyance with the joke, to a point where the joke had run on for such an unbelievably long time that I couldn’t help but laugh yet again. With the lyrics on the previous HORSE album, The Mechanical Hand, Nathan Winneke’s sometimes absurd lyrics were underlain with a certain innocence and vulnerability, at points displaying genuine emotional content and reflection on the dissociative state of modern society. On this new offering, however, it’s hard to make such a connection. Winneke makes use of some clever word play that is charming in its blatant simplicity, screaming on Werepizza, “Be aware/ or be a were/ werepizza.” If anything though, the real artistic statement of the lyrics lies in the decision to write about such a dispensable consumer commodity as pizza. Perhaps, in line with the band’s stated preference for “making incomprehensible statements beyond critique, like lots of artsy screamo bands,” a concept album about pizza is meant to function as an updated version of 1960s pop and camp art, with ironically passionate odes to pizza meant to mock the abundance of super-serious bands in the hardcore/screamo scene. Or maybe, they just really like pizza.
The most promising aspect of the Pizza EP is that the band demonstrates its growing ability to create well-developed songs out of a collection of seemingly discordant pieces. However, while there are moments of ambient brilliance, a handful of crushing breakdowns, and some genuinely evocative vocal moments, overall the EP functions much like its doughy namesake: as a quick and sometimes delicious diversion, but one that ultimately leaves the listener craving a proper meal. Still, it is ultimately well worth a listen, and I especially recommend it for HORSE fans in search of a snack to hold them over until HORSE’s next full length release, due out in 2007.