Rat Trap – “Holy Law”
Now, a rat has different connotations.
To me, the first one I think of, is quite pleasant. Meaning the rock club that I frequented in my early days. In a dungeon of a basement with flies living in the desolated, destroyed toilets even in the winter while the steroid pumped up Italian disco boy bouncers pummeled patrons eyes out in the alley. And real rats crawled under the bartenders legs while people drank “Rat Brew” the remains and dregs of any unfinished beer from the night before. While the staff ripped off the bands for money as the congenial doorman Mitch, without a voice box, placed his electro-machine to his throat and a metallic croak of “That’ll be a five dollar cover tonight, boys” floated out toward your drug soaked mind.
Ah, yes- good times!
It also means a snitch and snitches get stitches! But like the word punk means bad things but ultimately means the best…
Well, rat is a word like that and Rat Trap is this band, and a very good one, at that.
(In the sixties movies with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, there is always a black leather jacketed biker gang- who looked like a cross between punks and beatniks- run by Eric Von Ripper and the gang is called “The Rats.)”
Rat Trap describe themselves simply as a “hardcore band, Boston based, pissed and poor.” Which is fine, but they also have rhythms, half the time, that you could easily head-bang to and frequent metal sounding guitars and vocals that are screaming in an almost black metal way. I describe them in style as a band, that I see now often and like so much, that have equal parts of punk, hardcore and metal.
Let’s give a listen.
“Buried In It” after a drum roll, is enveloped in a thundering sludge of metal debris. Then the vocals enter like an irate Medusa, with snakes full of venom shaking off her skull, like a Rastafarian hyped on meth not weed. “I am trapped like a rat/ No end to this fucking maze/ I am trapped like a rat/ I cannot escape this crippling daze.” The music explodes, occasionally, into a hardcore diatribe which is quite awesome. Clenching a vise like grip on our ears to spew their venomous expulsion. “I am stuck in a world of shit/ I will die buried in it…I live it shit and I will die buried in it.” Won’t we all? This is an awesome, powerful, passionate, intense song of truth.
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/01 Buried In It.mp3|titles=Buried In It]“Waste” starts with slashing, metal chords answered by growling grumps of bass. The metal groove moves along- like Motely Crue- just a bit more ominous, deadlier. “I do this for myself/ Not for anyone else/ Carrying this weight alone/ Struggling to atone.” Some grinding chords leads us to a thrash/ hardcore blast. “Don’t call me your fucking brother/ Just move along you fucking clown.” The song spirals onward, like a face splayed across a broken windshield of a car crash scene. “No one cares about your problems/ They manufactured anyway/ You are scum.”
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/02 Waste.mp3|titles=Waste]“Wageslaves” starts out with some sustained guitar chords and a rockin’ beat that tells you, in a metal/rock way, that maybe some Guns N Roses is at hand what with the chuggin’ guitars and pounding beat. But when the vocals come in and the intensity is increased, you get the feeling that something more potent is on the musical menu today. “Wageslaves, always bringing me down/ Everyday I work like a fucking dog/ I didn’t know that money would become my God…So I slave away/ I slave away.” The guitars keep chuggin’, the drums keep pounding and another great song is done.
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/04 Wageslaves.mp3|titles=Wageslaves]Some propulsive drums and heavy guitar chords leads us into “Venomous Rhetoric,” with the vocals carrying a vicious bite to them. “I would rather fucking suffer/ Be nailed to a wooden cross/ Than kneel to a God I don’t believe in…You’re spewing hate speech/ Painting it as a “Holy War.” This is a slashing, bashing onslaught of venom- passionate and precise. This song careens through highways and canyons with passionate vocals and heavy pounding music. “I don’t like anything I see/ Your world is not the real thing, just fantasy/ We’re all fucked.” That’s all true, but I like everything I hear in this song.
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/05 Venomous Rhetoric.mp3|titles=Venomous Rhetoric]Rat Trap is not like a band I would’ve seen, would’ve played The Rat in 1977. But then again, the bands who played there then we’re cutting edge for their time. I saw bands like The Replacements, The Dead Boys, Big Black, Butthole Surfers, UK Subs, The Fall.
And though Rat Trap doesn’t sound like those bands- this is 2015 not 1977- bands like Rat Trap, Ancient Filth, I am become Death are all cutting edge for the moment now.
I don’t want to relieve the past by seeing bands that we’re in their prime twenty, thirty years ago. I don’t want to see The Descendants or Black Flag, The Replacements or The Dead Kennedys.
I’d rather see bands that are in, or close to, their prime right now who give me the same chills as those old bands. Those old bands are not the best bands of the moment, the present. Their time has passed.
But it could soon enough be Rat Trap, we’ll have to wait and see.
(Slimedog)
