Stomach : "Midnight in Pain"

 

These are the dudes from Weekend Nachos playing some blown out feed back ridden doomy sludge. Half the punk boogie of Eyehategod, and more oppression as these tunes are pounded into your skull. Sure this is heavy as fuck, but heavy is pretty much where things begin and end. The title track sounds almost just like the opening song. The vocals are a shouted growl with a touch of throaty anguish. If you like slow and dense then perhaps that is all that is needed to keep you happy when it comes to music. If that is the case then I need to get your weed dude's number. I need a little more in terms of dynamics, but get what they are going for. I have always said sludge is doom for punk rockers and continue to prove myself right with this album. 

When they do switch gears on "Double Lung Transplant" it is a punk outburst, that I guess the kids these days are calling power violence. They go back to a lumbering creep of a crawl that is a little darker. I need more darkness, and a little more ambiance than just feedback. Though the guitars are gritty and mean as fuck, which is something else many of you might be pacified with. But I am sticking to Delta 8 and not on that level. The vocals are mixed further back, which in terms of sound is a variation from what we have heard before this song. But in terms of songwriting, it leaves something to be desired. 

Ok, I hit the pen again, lets see if it improves "Tooth Decay" but it rumbles past my ears without causing me to pay attention. It just sounds like low frequency rumbling. "Ocular Migraine" has them angry enough. I am convinced of the wretched mood, I just wish they were not such one trick ponies sonically. Crushing could apply to what happens on "Bathwater" but that has been the mood of the hours as this album has unfolded, so it might be more crushing if the weight of sound hitting you varied, so there was some surprised to it. It now feels less crushing, because you have already been crushed and are numb to it. It does ebb down into atmosphere, but it is just slower, with the same tones being expounded upon. They get let it ring out for the rest of the song.

After sitting through four minutes of feed back they finally get some motion in the ocean they are trying to drown you in. I will give this album a 6, you can round it up to a 7, if you like to huff glue while you smoke pot from a milk carton. That is the kind of  numb my head would have to be in to make me pay attention to the monochrome grumbling of their sound, that works off sound more than songs, but they are convincing while doing it and have it dialed in how they want it, and you might be into that. 

Weekend Nachos : "Apology"

I have always thought this band's name was silly so never listened to them. I know they have a fan base that  has been looking forward to this release so I'll give it a shot for you guys. Most grind-core and power-violence clocks in at under three minutes so this five and a half minute opener is a bit of an oddity.It doesn't take long for the dense rumbling which is very heavy to turn into into a blur of riffs. With music that is so heavy, the first song runs you over with sheer intensity then i generally ask myself ...o.k, now what else can they do? I realize not every one asks this much of the music they consume. When I was younger I didn't either. When I got into metal thrash was the heaviest thing going. It was not until "Scream Bloody Gore" came out and the rise of death metal that this changed. i have described in this blog my interest in this and band's like Morbid Angel, Deicide, Nocturnus, Obituary and Cancer. I liked the darker more Satanic flavors more than punk, though I was into Black Flag, Bad Brains and Suicidal Tendencies, but my interest in punk stopped with D.R.I and the Cro-mags. Though Storm Troopers of Death, who helped spawn this sort of thing, got tons of play time on my walk-man. When you get into "Judged" it's evident these guys ow more to Storm Troopers of Death, but there is no where near the song writing to get me invested into this like I was when "Speak English or Die" came out.

"Writhe" digs into gritty heaviness, but the momentum is punk like in the chaotic outburst sometimes coiling into more groove laden riffs that impress for a minute. The golden rule around here is "cool riffs alone do not make good songs" this comes down hard on band's like this who have no interest in melody or dynamics that do not involve shades of fast. They are plenty angry 'NARC" should convince you of this, this is a monochrome range of emotion. It mutes the aggression, like a crying baby you've tried to comfort eventually you tune it out. They grab my attention for "World Genocide", but the vocals on every song are the same angry bark. The guitar tone never changes. Every thing feels very flat to me. Some of their best attempts at song writing take place on the more mid-paced 'Night Plains". The first appearance of melody is found in the layered guitar of the title track that closes the album.  But this drones on the same sluggish bashing for ten minutes.

 This is their final album, if you have stuck around with them up to this point, then this is your thing and you can go back to breathing in the sweet fumes of your Elmers. I'll give this one a 4. These guys might continue to push grind-core into the metal mainstream, but it doesn't do much for me.