I appreciate a band that can really paint a picture of what to expect with a name alone. On this split with White Slave and Meat Mist I thought I would have a pretty good idea going in but nothing quite prepares you for this assault. There’s nothing like power noise-core to jumpstart a Monday morning.
For the Meat Mist side I had to find their bandcamp to track down the titles to these tracks. It’s appropriately pressed up on black vinyl with hand stamped center labels and not much info on the double-sided sleeve. They make sure to seal this up in those sticky cellophane crackly 7” sleeves that you have to throw away if you ever want to open this thing up again. The first track “What's That Thing You Do?” immediately drives the whole side up into a hissy, static pummeling, I hate to use that word when it comes to super hardcore like this, but it really applies here. The bass and guitar combine into a thick sludge, which doesn’t let the drums through, somehow they've managed to bury the rhythm section under head bashing thunder. The handmade quality of this is winning me over and this deliberate choice to record with as few mics as possible. The third track (I can't even name here it keep messing with the html) goes ultra dark with bent, creaking horror chords and the slowness of Sunn O))). Impenetrable noise with serious bashing and a terrifying screamy vocal making me look differently at the corners of the room. I think that sounds like this exist to remind you that evil exists, don’t get too comfortable ...and not because these guys are the source… if the inverse law of hardcore/punk/metal applies Meat Mist may be the nicest guys ever. There’s always exceptions though and I worry there's going to come a day I go out to see something like this and the band will prove you wrong, no one would blame them, it would be my fault. I'm scaring myself but this soundtrack isn't helping.
White Slave also forced me on a search for track names, and there was no way I’m coming up with any links I want to click on. On “Wet Grave” the drums here are impossibly complex in a hardcore math way, switching up rhythms and even methods of recording in the song. A heavy morbid vocal comes in rough with a plate echo, sounding absolutely like hell to nice effect. They conjure up plastic sounding bashy drums with a trapped in a tiny metal cave vocal.
“Two Way Mirror” pushes the boundaries of rhythm with insane speed past the point where normal people can distinguish a BPM. In the same way that The Velvet Undergrounds hypnotic repetition turns into something else after a while, this dense pile morphs through various forms of chaos, slipping in and out of a distinguishable pattern. The melodic heavy section finally slows down and this dude is yelling like hell. I’m beginning to question that inverse niceness law because those guys in serial killer documentaries aren’t in folk bands. Their huge range of sludge dynamics are an absolute trademark; they employ it across these three tracks, find a drone groove only to bash their way out again with lots of moshing in front of the stage is inevitable.
The inside sleeve has disturbing collages and combines the two names into “Meat Slave"
Both of these guys played in the best named venue of 2013, The Asshole Castle. Got a nice ring to it.
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