Album Review: Winnebago Deal - Career Suicide

Their last full-length came out four long years ago, but it’s only really been a couple since Winnebago Deal stopped touring and took a hiatus. Considering how fast music industry tastes have shifted in that short time, and the vast influx of bands flexing uber-aggressive punk guns to supplement their output, it’s going to be quite a struggle for the Oxford duo to make an impact with this new effort. Perhaps, a resort to type might seriously be professional hara-kiri but, judging from this Career Suicide, a fierce slab of stripped-back second wave punk is certainly what they’ve given us.

Yep, this sure is one supersonic speeding slab of pure fury, smeared with the grime of their discontent, and it slays. The two Bens, Perrier and Thomas, start out with ‘Heart Attack In My Head’, a fluxing powerhouse that employs smeared sustain over pummelled repeater snare and broken screams to really ram home their point, rip through another 12 tracks that barely scratch the two-minute mark, and finish with the demon nut-crusher, ‘Can’t See, Don’t Care, Don’t Know’, which Perrier uses as an instrument to scrape clean his vocal chords. There’s no rest for the wicked, they say and, at this rate, their arms will be bloody stumps if they tour long with this doozy in their pocket.

Amongst an album that seems conditioned to congeal itself into one heaving mass, with it’s verse-chorus-verse blueprint being strictly adhered to, picking out highlights is a tough call but I sorta dig the eerie opening build to mayhem and vampiric cajones that ‘I Want Your Blood’ sports even if it does seriously cut the cheese. On the flipside, the 1:09 of ‘Frostbiter’ is particularly obnoxious, the sound almost folding in on itself as Perrier’s guitar and vocals slew around, the dB piling up to a crushing climax, whilst ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’ teeters on the edge of punk-pop mediocrity before properly dropping it’s shorts on the chorus. They won’t sell a gazillion copies, the odd brainless idiot will no doubt declare that punk is dead, but the ‘Deal will simply shrug, stick one mighty middle finger in the air, and gig with this hatstand-mad collection of bruisers in every nook and cranny they can find and we’ll all naturally flock forth and hail them kings of all they survey once more.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/11/winnebago-deal-%E2%80%93-career-suicide/

Album Review: Suicide Silence - The Cleansing

Now this is scary shit. Even the album artwork gives me the heebie-jeebies. But then it would, it being the work of the legendary Dave McKean, best-known for his graphic novels and Neil Gaiman collaborations. The band lurking menacingly within are Suicide Silence, a pummeling mixture of death metal, grindcore, hardcore and doom. Upon spinning the opening tracks of ‘The Cleansing’ I can’t help but notice the surgically precise, distorting time signatures and destructive breakdowns that drill slowly, persistently into your brain. The vocals are a mixture of tearing screech fighting for dominance over the heavy spadework of bass-grunting. It’s mindless, nigh-on incomprehensible and meltdown-inducing.

The promo blurb with the CD announces that on its release in the U.S. ‘The Cleansing’ made the Billboard Top 200 entering at 94. Vocalist Mitch Lucker reportedly responded with “It felt fucking amazing to have the Billboard news broken to us. It also felt great knowing that all of the non-stop touring and going fucking nuts every night on stage had such a positive effect on our first week sales”. That’s an impressive breakthrough for such a brutal band and bodes well for the band’s future.

As I write, I’m about half-way through the album now and each track has been indistinguishable from any other. But, wait. ‘No Pity For A Coward’ has a nicely balanced double-kick, guitar whine and bullet-bass concoction. Combined with the rhythmic vocal changes, a spot of arpeggio guitar lead and you actually come out the other side without feeling completely nauseated. Well, that’s a result. The screamo parts are starting to grind but I’m persevering.

The band have clearly set out to cherry-pick the most bruising, deafening sounds they can find from a variety of genres and the result is a cacophony of vitriol from beginning to end. Without doubt its one for the more discerning death metal fan to find fault with – I’m flailing, nay, suffocating here. It’s track eight - appropriately titled ’Bludgeoned To Death’ as it happens - and I’ve made my peace with the deep guttural growl and plan to team up with him and take out his insane, caterwauling friend who seems hell-bent on obliterating my ears. I decide I might use my desk-phone to beat him to death with. No, hold that thought, I’ll ram this portable heater down his throat instead.

The last track approaches and it’s ‘Green Monster’. Frenetic double-kicks slip in and out of the breakdowns and move on into some feisty spots of snare-bashing. The guitars feedback, then pistol into a grinding mash of bass and lead. All the while the vocals wallow before there’s a reverberating, watery thread of city sounds, garbled phone conversations and high-pitched guitar whine over bowed strings. The fade-out leaves me at peace. No! There’s a hidden track!

The lack of track variety leaves me with no choice, and this won’t be popular with their rapidly increasing fanbase, but to advise you to steer well clear of this one. There is the odd glimmer of respite as, at times, promising snippets of dark and thickly melodic guitar shine out above the misery. The band proudly shuns their genre’s predictable conventions but for me they would be better served incorporating a few of them into any future efforts, if only to break free from the remorseless attack of repetition that they seem to have found themselves wedged in.

Also online @ Subba-Cultcha = http://www.subba-cultcha.com/album-reviews/article.php?contentID=5363