davidcarradine – “”S/T” Live at AS220″
davidcarradine is a power violence/ hardcore band residing in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. I’m a punk guy so new metal terms seem to get my head in a spin. But when they spin like this, like when I listen to davidcarradine, I’m perfectly fine with that.
For the uninitiated- there are young metal/hardcore bands that disperse with the ornate, the unnecessary. Their music is similiar to what you would experience if you would bite into a live electrical cord.
Their music is short, hard, brutal and true. No solos, no unnecessary fat- just pure anger, energy and spite, emotion plus noise- aimed like a bulls-eye at your cranium and ears.
I’ve seen this year that most, new vital hardcore bands veer towards this category, whether they call it grindcore, power violence or d-beat. Bands like Goolagoon, D-Sagawa, Crystal Methodist, Horrible Earth, Exile and others.
This is music that is in your face, raw like the early punk but has more in common with the aggression and power of metal.
This music, I do consider in the realm of punk, but it has more in common with jackhammers hammering into your skull, spurned by the frustration and disillusionment of modern life, sparking an avalanche of sound with ferocious lyrics that smack you hard in your face.
This is music, but more importantly- this is emotion, power and force colliding into your being with a true, uncorrupted sense of worth, that is intense and pure and raw.
Let us now collide with some of these sonic slabs of sounds.
“Paramedic” starts with some gloom and doom chords, moving like molasses, where the drum comes in slightly past the beat as the guitars clomp, menacing along. Once the screaming, guttural vocals come in (unlike a lot of bands with two guitarists, there’s two vocalist here, folks) all is moved up a degree in intensity as the heavy, hanging, depressive tone moves relentlessly along, ending with one final vocal purge. This song is right and will cure, all that ails ya.
“Thinning The Herd” is much more upbeat, moving at almost a hardcore tempo. Some grinding chords, growling vocals- alternating high and low range, along with crashing cymbals, imitating what it might sound like with a bull loose in a china cabinet. Sounds pretty good to me and in twenty-one seconds it’s done.
With accusatory, screaming low vocals answered by a drum roll, “Running For Darkness,” makes it’s appearance. But as the drums explode frantically and the vocals are spit out vehemently- a slower, metal-like breakdown arises leading us towards the end of this outrageous outburst of a great song.
After a barrage of guitars accented with a cymbal hit. This song struts in like a wounded Brontosaurus, raging in anger and intensity. “Roll The Dice,” the song challenges, but you won’t loose if what you want is a song that is hard, brutal and intense.
“If The Kids Are Divided” whose title is obviously, a reference to the Sham 69 song “If The Kids Are United.” Doesn’t sound like that classic punk song but more like a car crash of fast rhythms, plus the two vocalists, mixing high black metal ones with low death ones, and then settling on a fierce, hardcore groove. This is the most chaotic song on this live record and it might be the best.
David Carradine was an an American actor and martial arts artist, best known as playing the lead role in the seventies hit television series “Kung Fu,” which was a kind of half-assed Asian philosophy tribute. He died at age 72 with a ruling that suggests he died of auto-erotic asphyxiation- the same way Michael Hutchense of the band INXS died. The way Slimedog may go at any moment.
davidcarradine, the band, it vital, full of life, full of hard, rough music that rips you hard, right through your soul. And though we, or they, don’t support auto-asphyxiation what they do support is opening your ears to the new metal/hardcore music that is short and to the point. This music is as bleak and hard as the young view the world but their music is pure and compromising as the young view their art.
David Carradine was a big time actor- big deal! Here we have a band that aims and succeeds, artistically, while his sorry ass was left, jacking off hanging from a door step.
Harsh words? Yes, and these are harsh times and this is music that is true and brutal reflecting that, with an honesty that is pure and raw.
(Slimedog)
