Horrible Earth – “Horrible Earth”
Horrible Earth is the name of this band and it’s such a strange name to me.
I mean, it makes no sense. Earth is only a planet of wonderfulness. Not a life built on cruelty, where the basic premise is that animals have to kill other animals to survive, mostly eating them alive in doing so. The pretty birds in the backyard aren’t really sucking their prey out of the ground by their heads to devour them, are they?
There’s no racism, sexism, homophobia around. Rape is not the acceptable form of reproduction in the animal world or a minor offense in ours.
And the “smartest” species on this planet is not the one most likely to cause its demise.
This must be quite an imaginative band ’cause there’s no horrible earth as far as I can see.
But I do see that this is a grinding, dooming metal band with growling, death vocals and songs that are brief and comprehensible even for a simpleton like me. And not only are the songs clear and concise but have value, emotion and excitement. How do they accomplish this you may ask?
While I’d like to encapsulate it all and send it on a rocket to Russia to kill Putin, the asshole who first put Pussy Riot in jail and now wants to take over the world- but instead…. Let’s first listen to some of their songs, shall we?
“Leaderless Resistor” starts out with in your face aggression at the very first moment of its existence. “Isolated from society.” The vocals are growling death ones spitting venom and disgust onto the carcass of modern corporate life that we all live in and love. The drums are stomping hypocrisy into the ground. The guitars are grinding chords of discontent representing the frustrations of the millions. A three note reprisal repeated is the only respite from the on going madness of modern life. Lots of words to write about fifty-one seconds of sound. Lots of sweat and guts and venomous passion in this song as well. This tune kicks all kinds of ass and is my favorite on the album.
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/03 Leaderless Resistor.mp3|titles=Leaderless Resistor]
“World Wide Famine” starts with vocals bellowing, drums bashing and rolling, guitars spreading shards of noise like beehives disturbed. A slight pause to take a breathe and then the powerful, potent rant begins again. Then suddenly were into a doom section, taking place after the end of the world, with guitar feedback soaring over a wasteland with a light rhythm bubbling up from the ground. When life returns it’s in a heavy, morbid vibe with cyborgs coming out of murky swamps to rip everyone’s entrails out. What a wonderful song!
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/04 World Wide Famine.mp3|titles=World Wide Famine]
A crashin’ rockin’ beat starts out “Pleasure To Burn,” sounding like a joy ride through a cemetery with growling vocals and burning guitars. “It’s a pleasure to burn everything down. So burn it down, to the ground.” Some sampled vocals and a high pitched guitar note ricochet over the music effectively, sonically transporting us after a few verses. Then the vocals come back in to stamp this song into history. “Let’s burn this fuckin’ place to the ground.”
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/05 Pleasure To Burn.mp3|titles=Pleasure To Burn]
A few echoing, vibrating notes sail calmly away to set off this song. But soon, “They’re All Dead,” is off with a double beat thrash explosion with the vocalist ripping chunks of blood from his lungs to spew violently upon the speakers. “They’re all dead. They’re all fuckin’ dead.” He sings cheerfully as the instruments clang and beat happily along. This is fifty-seconds of pure, life affirming music giving us all a reason to live.
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/08 Theyre All Dead.mp3|titles=Theyre All Dead]
So Horrible Earth tags themselves as deathgrind (fuses death metal and grindcore), grindcore (music combining thrash, industrial, noise and crust) and power violence (raw and dissonant sub-genre of punk, along with doom.
And this, thankfully, makes sense to me. And I’m glad that the word “hardcore” is not mentioned as at its heart this is a metal band- no doubt about it. But it’s certainly not your typical metal band and not anything like that useless music they call metalcore nowadays.
They have death metal vocals, thrashy rhythms, abrasive noise guitars with occasional snatches of doom. Most importantly there’s no fancy guitar solos and they say what they have to say in a minute or two. And the music is brutal and honest, real and passionate, uncompromising and aggressive and interesting without being pretentious or ponderous.
This is metal a punk boy like myself can wrap his ears around. Come to think of it, all the adjectives I use about them also suits the best punk music as well.
I suggest you wrap your ears around it as well.
(Slimedog)
