Girls that Grind
This is word for word taken from Grind To Death and reposted with permission of Alex Layzell. To tell the truth it looks better on their page, go look at it there!
It is with great delight that I finally resume the Girls that Grind mini-series, for those of you who missed the original half a dozen posts, the Girls that Grind series aims at bringing to the foreground praiseworthy bands that feature the fairer sex to highlight their ongoing and exemplary contribution to the realm of extreme music.
Today’s Girls that Grind post will be centered around three graduates of the ever reputable To Live A Lie Records, with that in mind you know straight off the bat these bands are mandatory listening and are likely to be no strangers to your listening regime.
(A quick note regarding matters of canon, unlike the other girls that grind series whose banners are essentially their logos, the first two bands were somewhat harder to find logos for, so their banners are a personal amateur attempt to give them a banner to keep the structural norms of the series.)
RIP Deathrats, short-lived, but whose output is by no means short of greatness. In their 2 year stint of output, the band put out 2 7″, Deathrats in 2009 and Give Up in 2011 both on To Live a Lie Records and both immediately procured Deathrats with well deserved underground fame. Their fast and aggressive breed of angry hardcore is worthy of going toe to toe with some of the gilded home hardcore heritage, of which Washington D.C can boast some highly influential and impressive acts.
A must listen to band, who would comfortably slot into the listening schedule of hardcore and powerviolence fans alike.
I am pretty sure Calgary’s Rape Revenge have stumbled across a new threshold of indignation; their outburst of seething rage is just a fraction shy of breaking down into an outright haemorrhage of animalistic fury. This is mostly attributed to the compelling vocal tantrum which repeatedly and without rest spews out a boiling mix of anger and bitterness, never has the voice of feminism been charged with so much wroth. The heaviness and integrity of their music is only matched by their hard line moral mantra predominantly centered around feminism and sexuality, but also entails other aspects of liberalism, veganism and possibly the promotion of a straight edge lifestyle (a guess given their Myspace name was xRapeRevengex). Although a vocal dominated affair this 3 part girl to 2 part guy quintet 3 guys to one girl quartet on the instrumental front offer some serious sonic intensity, adding a remarkable amount of fuel to the fires of rage that powers and defines their sound. Not only one for the books, but one to add amongst your personal favorites.
Not as hot tempered or irrational as the name Curmudgeon may suggest, these Boston based purveyors of powerviolence are all about the attention to detail rather than notions of sonic brutism. Their music is highly engaging, and employs a vast number of dynamic developments to give their release that unique yet stern comfort to it. Things that give this band a departure from traditional power-violence throws, include the more comprehensible vocal employment, the progressive flow and coaxing of slow and fast tempos, and an all together avoidance of the all too familiar Infest/Crossed out worship that is seemingly becoming a “must have” qualifying value amongst much of the talent out there. Its biggest success is that their music is engaging on all fronts: rhythmically, atmospherically and lyrically, a multi-layered experience well worth the plunge.
