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Despise You/Agoraphobic Nosebleed: And on and on…
14/06/11 || Khlysty
Let’s be honest, here. If one has even a passing interest in grind/powerviolence, one should be salivating uncontrollably just at the thought of such an unholy alliance as the one displayed in this here impressive split. On one hand you gets Despise You, one of the legendary SoCal hXc/powerviolence bands, which hasn’t released anything for more than ten years; and on the other you gets cybergrinders Agoraphobic Nosebleed, legendary in their own way (d’you know many bands who have managed to cram 100 “songs” into a 3”-20-minutes-long cd?), who during the last few years have displayed a wonderful maturity in the songwriting department, making, say, “Agoarpocalypse” a kind of grindcore epic. So, both of them, in one record… pure fucking grinding bliss, right?
Well, not exactly. Don’t get me wrong, the 18 songs offered here by Despise You and the 7 ones by Agoraphonic Nosecandy are what I could easily call perfect examples of two great bands doing their thingy and doing it perfectly. Despise You go for a furious not-exactly-hXc-punk-neither-exactly-grindcore sound, creating some of the most pissed-off, incendiary music this side of “Damaged”. Their skate-punk ethos, combined with grind’s hypercompressed time-frames and their own, hopelessly nihilistic worldview, makes for an exhilarating listen, to say the least. And ANb seems to feel quite comfortable, either going for the outta-this-world drum-machine-mayhem songsquirts of their past, or for the more deliberate but no less assaultive and corrosive sound the band seems to have embraced as of late.
So, generally speaking, this split is exactly as one would expect it to be: fast, furious, extremely aggressive, full-on glass-splinters-tornado chaotic and more politically incorrect than a catholic priest among nubile altar boys. Plus, it’s fucking fun to listen to: Despise You gives us a hilarious cover of Fear’s “I don’t care about you”, plus the macho male barks combined with the pissed-off, slightly child-like female ones create a dislocated feeling, never letting you fully agree whether these guys are serious or if they’re just fucking around. As for ANb, their own off-kilter approach towards grind and the world in general is fun in a sick, darkly funny way.
What I consider as a deal-breaker here are the last song of Despise You set (“Cedar Ave.”) and the first ANb one (“Half Dead”): both are slow, crunchy numbers that, while impressive as curveballs in a record that seems to run a thousand mph all the time, don’t seem to do anything at all or go anywhere in particular. Yes, stylistically speaking, they’re both interesting detours from each band’s beaten path, but they don’t seem to make the record better. Plus, being the longest songs for each band, they really take a lot of time from a not-so-long record. After a couple of listens, they became for me the skipable parts of what is overall an impressive job.
Anyway, to make a long story short, “And on and on…”, while not the masterpiece one would expect it to be, is one hell of a good record for speedhounds and lovers of general mayhem. Nice job, guys –and gals!!!
- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Relapse Records
- Website: Despise You MySpace & ANb MySpace
- Bands
- Despise You
- Agoraphobic Nosebleed
- Tracklist
- 01. Despise You – Bereft
- 02. Despise You – Repeat Until You Fail
- 03. Despise You – Roll Call
- 04. Despise You – 3.26.00
- 05. Despise You – Three Day Hold
- 06. Despise You – Yes Officer – No Officer
- 07. Despise You – Fears Song
- 08. Despise You – Two Or Ten Faces
- 09. Despise You – Shit Goes In And Shit Comes Out
- 10. Despise You – You Can’t Fix Me, Don’t Trip
- 11. Despise You – Painted Gray
- 12. Despise You – All The Regimes You Hold Most Dear
- 13. Despise You – Destinial
- 14. Despise You – Bankrupt Social Code
- 15. Despise You – Seven Funerals
- 16. Despise You – They All Died Is What Happened
- 17. Despise You – …And Expirations
- 18. Despise You – Cedar Ave (Was The Best Place To Watch People Ascend To Heaven)
- 19. Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Half-Dead
- 20. Agoraphobic Nosebleed – As Bad As It Is…
- 21. Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Miscommunication
- 22. Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Los Infernos
- 23. Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Ungrateful
- 24. Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Possession
- 25. Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Burlap Sack
