No. 5: Hardcore Hit & Run

By Bryan Reed

I haven't done much writing about hardcore for a while. This is odd, given hardcore is the first music I truly loved. And, like any first love it never really leaves your system. You might stray for long periods of time, and you might even grow out of it, but any reminder of those happy, bygone days will bring a smile to your face. To this day, Minor Threat is still my all-time favorite band. So, I'm playing catch up, writing quick snapshots of a few (9) of my favorite recent hardcore records that that might have slipped your radar.

And to avoid confusion, they're in alphabetical order, not order of preference.

01. Aneurysm Rats - Dying To Live (Assassinated)

It's less than 15 minutes long, but that's all the time it takes for the Philly fivesome (featuring Colin McGinniss of Paint It Black and None More Black) to leave a dent in your forehead. The 12-track, one-sided LP is a fantastic mid-tempo slammer punctuated by both sub-minute ragers like "Perfect Skin," and fist-swinging anthems like "Babies Don't Eat Sandwiches." Straightforward hardcore beats are broken by flagellating swipes of guitar noise and unexpected moments of gang-vocal mantras. The feeling of the whole is as fun-loving as it is enraged, like a grinning drunk who'll hug you after punching you in the teeth.

"Left To Right" | "Classic Tammy"

02. Cloak/Dagger - Lost Art (Jade Tree)

Better to pogo than to mosh by, Lost Art has a bit of the '77 spunk (like The Damned or The Vibrators), a shot of The Briefs' amphetamine paranoia and a hardcore streak that marries Adolescents giddiness with Fucked Up stomp. The record is a caffeinated fit totally worth it for that inescapable bounce-around-the-room-in-your-socks-vibe. I dig it, and I'd wager even those not typically into hardcore might, too.

"Don't Need A"

03. Friends of Friends - Deep Search

Friends of Friends is easily the most approachable band on this list. Their No Idea Records aesthetic (read: beard punk) is as indebted to the gutter pop of the Replacements and Jawbreaker as it is to Black Flag and Agnostic Front. The songs are simple and earnest, and the choruses almost universally boast group-sung crescendos. But, even as this record walks confidently on well-trodden paths, it's brought a smile to my face every time I've spun it. Surely, that counts for something.

Download all of Deep Search here.

04. GRIDS - s/t 7" (Lunchbox)

Integrity demands that I disclose my relationship to GRIDS as friendly. We share a hometown - Charlotte, N.C. - and a fondness for hardcore and noise rock, and even the most cursory listen to the band's debut single reveals their massive debt to the Jesus Lizard and Flipper. But what appeals most to me about GRIDS is that I know where they're coming from, because we have a lot in common. Punk has always had its regional aesthetics and influencers, and I hear Charlotte when I listen to GRIDS. I hear the suffocation felt by anyone looking to carve out a niche in a city that feels much like a commuter college - its biggest draw is its proximity to beaches and mountains, not any of its own accomplishments. GRIDS isn't happy with that, and neither am I. But we can be pissed about it together.

05. Hawks - Barnburner (Army of Bad Luck)

Another bunch of Amphetamine Reptile addicts, Atlanta's Hawks have crafted a gleefully malicious LP in Barnburner. The bass dominates here, thick as tar and heavy as lead, it stomps the dominant thrust of Hawks' songs, as the guitars lacerate jagged swaths above it. Vocalist Michael Keenan issues threats with a garbled voice as though he's spitting his epithets with a mouthful of razors. But in the midst of the band's sonic attack, there are deep, undeniable grooves that make this musical miscarriage into a work of twisted beauty.

06. Just Die! - Garages and Basements (Self-Aware)

Hailing from Asheville, N.C., Just Die! won me over with the closing track of Garages And Basements, "Watch Your Speed, Chief." It plays like a Gorilla Biscuits anthem, roughened around the edges, more jaded that GB's often naïve optimism would allow, but still hopeful. When the chorus hits, it's something like perfect.

07. Lewd Acts - Black Eye Blues (Deathwish, Inc.)

Lewd Acts understand dynamic. They understand that opening space in a song only makes the dense parts feel heavier and more burdensome. They know that a well-placed slow riff makes a lightning bridge all the more shocking. And on Black Eye Blues, the San Diego band uses this adeptness with variation to its advantage, pairing Tyler Densley's bile-churning growl to an instrumental storm that surges and recedes, torrents and trickles. It can be the slow-dripping water torture or a sudden immersion in a boiling sea - both ways it kills.

"Wide Black Eyes"

08. Lowbrow - Broken Speech (Self-Aware)

Another Charlotte band, Lowbrow made a vibrant contribution to my hardcore listening queue this year. The band's punishing sound probably wouldn't be out of place on a grindcore mixtape (next to, say, Brutal Truth or Magrudergrind), but Lowbrow's got a surprising handle on dynamic - especially given this is their debut. For all its redlining speed and blitzkrieg aggression, Lowbrow shows itself to be a band willing and able to scale back for moments of spacious tension. It only serves to leverage their next blow into a knockout every time.

09. Psyched To Die - Year One (Dirtnap)

The way Psyched To Die -  pictured at the top, and fronted by ex-Ergs frontman Mike Yannich - so gleefully delivers their short, fast bursts of depressive anxiety perfectly balances sarcastic humor with pointed irony. But more than that, it lends itself perfectly to the band's dry, West Coast-style hardcore. This singles compilation is one of my hands-down favorites of the year. That it bridges the deliriously snotty fun of The Ergs, the bouncy venom of vintage West Coast hardcore with the sarcastic bitterness of both is just gravy.

"Conditioned To Fail" (.m4a)

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Also in rotation: Agnostic Front - Victim In Pain (reissue via Bridge Nine); Frodus - Conglomerate International (reissue via Gilead Media); Flipper - Generic Album (reissue via Four Men With Beards); Zero Boys - Vicious Circle (reissue via Secretly Canadian)

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Bryan Reed is from North Carolina and, despite his best efforts, he still hasn't grown out of the racket that irritated his friends and family in high school, and continues to irritate them in the present. Stalker-types should know that they can follow Bryan on Twitter @subparrockstar.

No. 4: Royally screwed

By Bryan Reed

I feel bad for any number of bands and labels who thought, months ago, that October 13, 2009, would be the best day to release their new record. I feel bad, even for the good records. Among them: Skeletonwitch's Breathe the Fire, a riotously fun blend of black metal, death metal and NWOBHM; Marduk's Wormwood, another solid entry from the Polish black metal titans; reissues from the UK's Bolt Thrower and France's Gojira; the latest psych-rock excursion from ex-Yeah Yeah Yeahs sideman Imaad Wasif; and Grond, the second entry in an alleged trilogy from the mysterious and brutal black metal outfit Nihill.

They all lose. They got screwed. Royally.

Baroness also thought October 13, 2009 would be the best day to release its new album, Blue Record (Relapse) and it's absolutely untouchable.

You remember Baroness, of course, for 2007's Red Album, a startlingly diverse collection that rampages through acoustic blues and backwoods folk, prog, psych rock and sludgy Southern metal. Blue Record is not so much a departure as a continuation and a refinement, as though the whole purpose was for Baroness to render its excellent predecessor obsolete with superior quality on all fronts. The metal parts are heavier, when the riffs gallop it's like the Apocalypse is coming and it's the best thing ever. The melodies are more intricate, more reliant on the instrumentalists' interplay and counterpart than ever before. Guitar harmonies worthy of Iron Maiden flicker like gemstones underfoot. You'll hear moments of everything that's ever been great about heavy rock, metal or otherwise - noise, psychedelic rock, even indie rock. It's all represented, and all seamlessly woven into Baroness' masterpiece.

It's almost reductive to try to describe or critique this record, when saying it's essential should about cover it.

Also in rotation: This time, just Baroness.

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Bryan Reed is from North Carolina and, despite his best efforts, he still hasn't grown out of the racket that irritated his friends and family in high school, and continues to irritate them in the present. Stalker-types should know that they can follow Bryan on Twitter @subparrockstar.

No. 3: Wig, flipped

By Bryan Reed

It's interesting how a small deviation from what we expect can make such a huge impact in the way we respond to something. It's what makes difficult music difficult in the first place, and why it takes an adventurous listener to even approach experimental music.

My expectations were rattled recently when the self-titled debut from Philadelphia's Seabrook Power Plant (pictured above) arrived in my mailbox. I was previously unaware of the band, led by jazz guitarist/banjoist Brandon Seabrook, but they share a publicist with Asheville, N.C. skronk-rock trio Ahleuchatistas, and I guess he thought (correctly) if I liked one, I'd like the other. The album explodes from the start with "Peter Dennis Blanford Townshend" (in homage to The Who guitarist), in which any expectations about how Brandon Seabrook might be wielding his banjo are upended as soon as the instruments percussive flair begins to resemble a Dave Lombardo blast.

The way the trio uses the banjo's percussive attack in its math-metal fueled cuts (the album was recorded by Colin Marston of Dysrhythmia and Krallice, so it's got its loud rock bona fides) is at once novel and effective. On the transcendent "Ho Chi Minh Trial," Seabrook's banjo is an instrument of surprising melodic acuity, evoking Eastern melodic structures, even as its frantic percussiveness drives the song like there's a machine gun shooting at its feet.

Brandon's brother, Jared Seabrook, drums with finesse and power (notably on the chiming doom of "Doomsday Shroud," where his plodding punctuations split the haze of electric guitar and bass, pushing the song forward behind Brandon Seabrook's hypnotic, repetitive riffs).

Bassist Tom Blancart drives the melody, answering Brandon Seabrook on the jazzabilly "Base Load Plant Theme," alternately echoing Brandon Seabrook's riffs, or pulsing ahead of Jared Seabrook's backbeat.

That there could exist a trio of musicians playing a mix of frantic punk, tech-metal and jazz-skronk is hardly surprising, though. And after listening a few times, the banjo's timbre is less novel, though no less effective. What really defies expectations is the consistency with which the three players' talents are congealed here.

That's also what made listening to Eight Bells, the latest from longstanding heavy-psych outfit SubArachnoid Space exciting for me. This album was my introduction to the band, through cursory research reveals an almost 15-year career with releases on labels including Relapse, and, for Eight Bells, Crucial Blast.

Led by guitarist Melynda Jackson, SubArachnoid Space has, apparently, been a shape-shifting creature, constantly rotating its roster. But on this record, the shapes that shift are mostly textural, as the band's spacey tracks move fluidly through different melodic passages and layered drones.

But what surpasses expectations, isn't that the band touches on psychedelic rock, drone, noise and post-hardcore, but that it envelops it influences and coalesces as something new and exciting. Perhaps it's the ever-shifting line-up that contributes to the fresh, extemporaneous feeling I hear in Eight Bells, or perhaps it's a well-honed professionalism masquerading as startled discovery. It doesn't matter. The record's front-to-back good, and that will always be a welcome, but unexpected attribute.

Also in rotation: Ahleuchatistas - Of The Body Prone (Tzadik); Lightning Bolt - Earthly Pleasures (Load); Psyched To Die - Year One (Dirtnap); Horseback - MILH IHVH (Turgid Animal); Baroness - Blue Record (Relapse); Converge - Axe To Fall (Epitaph); Pelican - What We All Come To Need (Southern Lord); White Mice - Ganjahovahdose (20 Buck Spin); Skeletonwitch - Breathe The Fire (Prosthetic)

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Bryan Reed is from North Carolina and, despite his best efforts, he still hasn't grown out of the racket that irritated his friends and family in high school, and continues to irritate them in the present. Stalker-types should know that they can follow Bryan on Twitter @subparrockstar.

[Photo of Seabrook Power Plant by Peter Gannushkin]

No. 2: Quite excited

By Bryan Reed

I first saw Black Cobra (above) about two years ago. They were opening for Pelican in a double-bill at Tremont Music Hall in Charlotte. What I remember most about the show was thinking that Black Cobra was monumentally more captivating than Pelican - which put on a good set, just not as good - and feeling bummed about not having enough cash for records. So to say I was excited when the Cobra's third record (first for Southern Lord), Chronomega arrived in the mail is a mild understatement: I was quite excited.

Having settled into Chronomega, the new jams fail to disappoint. Opener "Negative Reversal" is a blunt-force stomp indicative of the rest of the album - sharp riffs, gruff grooves and a driving, sludgy feel somewhere between High on Fire and early Mastodon. This is no kind of reinvention, but the collection hits its mark without getting stale. I still prefer Bestial (Black Cobra's 2006 debut), but I wouldn't have even mentioned Chronomega if I weren't suggesting it's at least worth a listen.

Lately, though, I've found my attention drawn elsewhere, to three albums, each playing within the black metal spectrum, though not necessarily completely: Azaghal's Teraphim, Merrimack's Grey Rigorism and Mount Eerie's Wind's Poem.

Azaghal's latest, Teraphim, out Tuesday via Moribund Records, comes closest to the sound of the Norwegian first-wave, putting chaotic blast beats behind expansive guitar melodies. This corpsepainted quartet from Finland doesn't stretch the boundaries of what black metal is, but even as it colors inside the guidelines the band adds shades of nuance by way of thrash riffs and - on the record's most divergent cut, "Hänen Musta Liekkinsä" - by way of synthesized orchestral arrangements that are simultaneously cheesy, endearing and adeptly atmospheric. It's telling that the first three seconds of almost every track sounds the same - immediate blast beat that gets ripped open with an introductory roar from vocalist Varjoherra. It's also telling that when it doesn't, as is true of "Filosofi," we can expect a slight but important shift in approach as the song adopts a steady riff and a strong chorus that reminds somewhat of Boris in its melody and vocal pairings.

The Merrimack record, also released by Moribund, has been out for some time now, but has kept my attention because it doesn't seem to settle. Black Metal, for me anyway, is a dish best served with a healthy portion of unrest, lest the waves of guitar become sedative white noise. Like Texas' Absu, or Illinois' Nachtmystium, Merrimack (who, by the way, hail from France) relish elements from all stripes of heavy metal: death metal's bottomed-out groove, sludgy textures and thrash urgency to scratch the surface. I've seen the term black 'n' roll used when describing black metal bands that pack a Motörhead-style hook, and even though I think the term sounds stupid, it fits Merrimack. Check out "In The Halls of White Death," and notice how from the first notes it finds a solid midtempo groove and rides it insistently, even as the guitars float in like an ominous fog to wrap the song into a dark haze.

That haze is pretty much the only thing Mount Eerie's so-called black metal album shares with its European counterparts. This is less br00tal, more br00ding, like Phil Elverum, the perennial indie-dude, discovered a Xasthur record and informed his entire picture of what "black metal" is from that. But - and this is a crucial "but" - Elverum's seemingly shallow venture into the kvlt realm serves this project well, making an album that is good both as a lo-fi indie entry (hey, this is Blurt, not Terrorizer) and as a metal entry. Folks familiar with the plaintive, melancholy folk Elverum's been peddling for years might be startled at first by opener "Wind's Dark Poem," and its harsh-if-muffled roar. But Elverum's not donning corpsepaint or switching his quiet croon to a strangled yelp, he's appropriating textures from the insular, claustrophobic and somehow broad-stroked bedroom black metal of Xasthur and Leviathan, stretching their bleak sounds capes over his own mournful singing and poetic songwriting. "Stone's Ode," the final word in Wind's Poem, is not at all unlike much of Elverum's work, even as it sustains its chords like worn , grayed tulle behind him, and even when he recasts last year's profoundly intimate "Lost Wisdom" (here as "Lost Wisdom Pt. 2") as a droning, blackened dirge, it's Elverum's voice, the sad clarity of it, that grabs us even in the darker, harsher environs he's masterfully created for this effort. That, if you ask me, is quite exciting.

ALSO IN ROTATION: Lightning Bolt - Earthly Pleasures (Load); Horseback - MILH IHVH (Turgid Animal); Baroness - Blue Record (Relapse); Pyramids with Nadja - Pyramids with Nadja (Hydra Head); Chord - Flora (Neurot); Iron Age - The Sleeping Eye (Tee Pee); Landmine Marathon - Rusted Eyes Awake (Prosthetic, reissue); Title Fight - The Last Thing You Forget (Run For Cover)

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Bryan Reed is from North Carolina and, despite his best efforts, he still hasn't grown out of the racket that irritated his friends and family in high school, and continues to irritate them in the present. Stalker-types should know that they can follow Bryan on Twitter @subparrockstar.

[Photo Credits: Black Cobra, bu Shannon Corr; Merrimack, Vertigo; Mount Eerie, Mount Eerie]

No. 1: We do this to ourselves...

By Bryan Reed

Beginning a thing without a determined endpoint is necessarily uncertain, but I'd argue that's a part of its excitement. This could be a failure. Or it could succeed. Or it could merely be, neither failing nor succeeding for whatever lifespan we deem to grant it.

As I embark on this uncertain and exciting experiment in offering my own excursions into the happenings of popular music's louder, less accessible poles, I find it painfully ironic that one of my favorite metal bands of the past few years - the Durham-based Tooth whose Animality EP features prominently in my memories of my senior year in Chapel Hill - is dead. Tooth is yet another casualty of the Summer-of-Death that so far has claimed a handful of celebrities and, apparently, America's ability to bite its collective tongue.

(Tooth guitarist Rich James leading his band's final show in Durham, N.C. Photo credit: Jordan Lawrence.)

That Tooth disbanded before fulfilling its potential for greatness is perhaps most indicative of the nature of beginning something with no pre-determined endpoint: it will end, eventually, and when it does it'll make an impact.

Fortunately, Tooth's dissolution arrives with a concession, bittersweet though it might be, in the form of a split LP with Philadelphia's The Claw. In a way, the record marks an end for both bands. The A-Side captures Tooth's final recordings. So when Tooth vocalist J-ME Guptill declares "We do this to ourselves," in "Suicide Myth," it's hard not to assume his lyrics are foreshadowing the band's own demise. The B-Side documents the last tapes cut by former vocalist Mikey Brosnan who died in late 2008 at the hand of a drunk driver. And when The Claw launches into its first of three songs, "Grief Is For The Living," it's hard not to let a sense of doom creep into the experience knowing that not long after recording this song, Brosnan would be dead, and his living friends and family would be grieving.

The Claw, though, soldiers on through their three songs - tense, thrashing metal with an ear for Swedish melody and Florida brutality - and into the future. Tooth, though, has made its final statement with three songs that somehow amplify both Rich James' perfect guitar leads and the band's hardcore urgency without sounding contradictory.

My friend Jason Kutchma, of the band Red Collar, wrote a summary of Tooth I really can't beat, so here it is:

"It seems these days that most metal bands have solos that go on forever, jerk-off sessions that I can't stand. In order to make themselves more interesting, they have rhythms that get head-y and too complicated but I think it often has the opposite effect: I think it makes it boring as hell. Tooth however are everything, and I mean absolutely everything, that I ever loved about metal and truthfully about music in the first place. They do everything right. They are perfect. I kept on seeing them live, listening to their two song demo to see if I really mean it when I say I believe they are perfect. If anything, it just strengthened my belief. I believe them when they play. I believe in them when they play. They are a most beautiful Frankenstein, put together with the greatest parts of metal, thrash, and punk. But they don't lumber and thud along with their arms outstretched, motivated by an Abby Normal brain wondering where Master is with their next quick fix of an electrical jolt to get them through the night. They have what Frankenstein and the many, many metaphorical Frankensteins in the music world never could have or never bother to get: heart and soul."

Tooth leaves us this three-song testament to their largely - and criminally - unheralded greatness. But I still believe in them when it plays.

ALSO IN ROTATION: Marduk - Wormwood (Regain); Lowbrow - Broken Speech EP (Self-Aware); Greymachine - Disconnected (Hydra Head); Keelhaul - Keelhaul's Triumphant Return to Obscurity (Hydra Head); Earth - Radio Earth (Southern Lord); Magrudergrind - Magrudergrind (Willowtip); Graf Orlock - Destination Time Today (Vitriol); Pryamids with Nadja - Pyramids with Nadja (Hydra Head)

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Bryan Reed is from North Carolina and, despite his best efforts, he still hasn't grown out of the racket that irritated his friends and family in high school, and continues to irritate them in the present. Stalker-types should know that they can follow Bryan on Twitter @subparrockstar.