Neanderthal - Fighting Music

This will probably end up being a really short review since I'm still on the road, but well... I guess circumstances could be more inappropriate for a band whose discography clocks in at 10 minutes.

"Oh yeah, I'm traveling right now. I don't know if I mentioned that before, but its why I haven't updated lately. Expect more regular posts come mid-March!", he typed excitedly, unaware of the irrelevance of his words. It seemed the internet had turned its back on him a long time ago; like the light from a collapsed star, the dissolution of his audience would take a lifetime to become apparent.

Neanderthal's lone EP is the stuff of legends: incredibly influential, hopelessly un-dated, and incomprehensibly expensive on ebay. Consisting of a pre-Man Is The Bastard Eric Wood and Matt Domino of Infest, Neanderthal was an extremely short lived project that single handedly kicked off (and coined) powerviolence as a genre. At this point, Infest had existed for several years, and No Comment had already put out their first EP, Common Senseless, but this is really where it begins stylistically. As such, Fighting Music is about as pure as you're gonna get, and contains all the scuzz, filth, and heaviness the genre provided before the great emo/90's hardcore gentrification struck.
As the name might make you think, the sound this band produces is primitive, brutal, and mammoth spearing as fuck. Imagine the speed and tantrum-like, bellowing rage of Infest mashed up with creepy, Rorschach-esque riffs and the tremendous grit and intricate basslines of Man Is The Bastard. It's about as rad as that descriptor might lead you to believe, and fits snuggly alongside a number of EPs I've raved about in the past - a short, but really fulfilling listen.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ilzmnzu2mqt

I've never been able to confirm this, but I've heard that Joel Connell of MITB (then of Shrimper label weirdos, Refrigerator) was somehow involved with this band. Does anyone know if Neanderthal performed live shows? If they did, I gotta conclude that Joel filled in on either drums or guitar. Matt Domino is listed in the liner notes as handling both in this EP's liner notes, but I kinda doubt he was doing that Happy Flowers thing where he'd slide his foot around the strings while drumming.

Maybe that was too obscure of a reference.

Iron Lung - Sexless/No Sex

This could end up being an unusually short review for me. I'm just starting it a few minutes shy of 10:30 and need to be up and peppy tomorrow morning for work in the ol' produce mines. I'm not sure why I'm doing this, but sometimes you just have to risk being groggy at the crack 'o dawn for Iron Lung's sake. Consisting solely of a drummer/vocalist and guitarist/vocalist, I'm tempted to label them as a "dynamic duo"; I have self-respect though, so let's just settle on "awesome 2-piece powerviolence band" instead. They're also from Washington and formed in '99. These aren't particularly interesting facts, but I usually like to squeeze in a little background info in these reviews. Use it wisely.

Iron Lung are a really obvious choice when picking a musical unit that's truly more than the sum of it's parts, as it's literally mindblowing that just two guys could create an album that sounds as heavy, pummeling, and enveloping as the one to your left. Sexless/No Sex is the band's third full length (unless Cold Storage is a compilation), and as far as I'm concerned, the best thing they've ever done. In the past, the band focused primarily on the ultra-high speed aspects of powerviolence, but like Weekend Nachos, the past few years have shown the band heaping on more and more elements of sludge. Being a huge fan of Dystopia and especially Man Is The Bastard, it was really exciting to hear one of my favorite bands taking up this particular torch, especially with a guitar tone this great. It almost sounds like it was tuned for one of those annoying "mathcore" bands with a quadrillion different confusing time signatures packed into every song (but in a non-incriminating or annoying way. I'm a shitty writer) :

Sexless/No Sex features 20 tracks in only 21 minutes, but there's not a note out of place or any reason not to flip this back to the A-side once "Cancer" ends. I'm not Mr.Knows-Shit-About-Competent-Musicianship, but I've probably listened to this album a gazillion times since it came out and have yet to locate a sour moment. The vocal trade offs are great, and the way the band careens back and fourth from crushing sludge to blasts of manic hardcore is like a party in my ears that I'm inviting you to through illegal downloading:

http://www.mediafire.com/?wyjg0tdt0nv

I still hate my worthless husk for missing these guys' performance at Maryland Deathfest.

Also: whuddyaknow, that wasn't very short at all. Of course, now it's almost midnight and I should've been in bed a while ago. Dicks.