White Eyes - Beastmode

Ah, Blastasfuk Grindcore Label & Distribution! This ought to be a gleaming, ear skewering drill-bit of a release, what with this Australian label having already issued several crushers by such acts as Noisear, Lycanthropy, The Kill and Hutt, so this debut full length with German band White Eyes ought to be another winner!

Having had a brief read of their MySpace page, their influences panel suggests these chaps’ve put a fair bit more thought into their grindcore than most; rather than just lobbing in the standard touchstones or pasting up a banner or flyer flogging their latest t-shirt, they’ve cited philosophers and authors such as Foucault, Baudelaire and Nietszche, so this ought to be interesting if nowt else. Eeee, I love a bit of Baudelaire.

Thing about grindcore is, it’s been around for a long old while now, and although fuzzy riff blurs, full-speed blast and red-faced vocal chokes are of course a lot of fun, but it’s difficult to bring out a grindcore based recording that has any kind of long-lasting sort of impact these days, unless you try and do something extra special with the format. The first few examples that pop into my sagging brains include Discordance Axis, who exploded the blueprint into face-scraping shards of off-time stop dead/start fast nastiness, Cock and Ball Torture and Rompeprop, who slowed the whole thing down to a sleazy stomp and make it lots and lots of pornorific fun, Joe Pesci, who blow other ‘fast’ bands out of the water altogether, with full-pelt, full-tilt, full-power blast-attack, Libido Airbag, who added bagsful of drugs and incredibly banging beats ideal for the bop-sheds and flash tunnels...there are many others, but I can’t remember. And this is about White Eyes, so I shouldn’t need to think of any more. White Eyes are undoubtedly all about exploding the shite old formula, what with their irregular, erratic arrangements, those very frequent choppy stop/starts (or rests, probably something like hemidemisemiquaver rest, I’m not sure, I only got to Grade II), intricate blasting patterns and sickening larynx abuse, the result being an unnerving, high-speed, staccato rattle-effect, but with layers of intricacy woven into each bit and the overall structure of the thing. I always enjoy the sound of such grindcore practitioners as White Eyes, but many of us will have of course heard the same kinds of ideas put to use more than just a few times by previous bands. It’s all been done afore in other words, but White Eyes do it all over again with such focus, poise and conviction that my ears immediately sit up and pay attention.

After an ominous intro of whirrs and crackles with an overdriven sample that suggests impending terror, there begins a series of hideous, convulsive grind-spasms, shuddering string seizures causing flailing limbs of riffs to clip you round the ear over and over again, with a parallel attack brought about by ball-shattering blastbeat bouts, adding a sense bleak unease between the explosions with short noisescapes and quick bits of electronic experimentation. The vox usually come out as hysterical squawking nastiness, frequently augmented by guttural gruffness, with the effect of erupting like aural car-bombs when the two are ignited alongside each other. As stated earlier, the compositions are formed from razor sharp splinters of six-string scatter and broken-up blocks of blast shock, which may sound haphazard print, and would certainly have come across as such if attempted by lesser musicians, but the various segments are sealed together with such care and precision, the transitions between each being performed so tightly that what in theory sounds like a jumble of noise, comes across on disc as a highly calibrated performance. The doom-laden track that rounds off the album takes a completely different direction to the music which precedes it, drawing an extremely gloomy veil over the recording, but given the intense and unpredictable nature and excessive tempos of the rest of the work, the last song actually acts as more of a soothingly sludgy lullaby.

A very easy and instantly recognisable influence here is of course the work of Discordance Axis, but there certainly seems to be a sense that White Eyes wish to expand upon that, but I imagine such expansions shall manifest themselves a lot more on subsequent releases, what with several sections providing some of the fullest, most unmissable nods to the New Jersey band imaginable. Uncannily, at least in these ears, there are also similarities to the works of Northern English grindcore bands, particularly those in the Leeds region, and I was reminded of Executive Distraction Tasks, Narcosis, Reth, possibly old Tangaroa and perhaps a couple o’ bits of The Afternoon Gentlemen at their most spazztic.

Overall then, this is highly recommended stuff for those who enjoy having their lugholes injected with concentrated squirts of corrosive grindcore chemicals and ought to appeal any extreme music who favours the excitement of unpredictability and the challenge of complex song patchwork. Do listen.

July 8, 2010

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