The Music of 2017

Read the best and worst of music from the year at Independent Music Promotions.

REVIEW: "Material Control" by Glassjaw

All hail the return of Glassjaw

      15 years is a long time to gnaw on the bone. The last few years I’ve settled with the idea that Glassjaw might never formally return. Worship And Tribute, their second full-length was released in 2002 and in the time since they’ve released small batches of music and played lived sporadically. But it never really felt like a full-blown return was imminent. 

     Alas. At the end of this truly horrendous year, something worth being excited about. Material Control, Glassjaw’s third album comes for blood.

     From Long Island, Glassjaw released their debut, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence, in 2000. The only constant members throughout have been singer Daryl Palumbo and guitarist Justin Beck. They continue their discography without a glance at the time passed. Beck brings a screen of antsy staticky guitar that cuts across the speakers. Dillinger Escape Plan’s drummer Billy Rymer tracked most of the drums for the album. He adds the barreling brute force of a wrestler hopped up on steroids and asteroid dust. His rampant double-bass plays like he's chasing down a would-be robber.

      "New White Extremity" gut punches the opening seconds of Material Control. “Searching for a familiar face in my surroundings,” Palumbo sings over a harsh metal groove. It’s a welcoming start, fresh and familiar, a fuse sparkling toward a little black bomb. Next, "Shira" pelts the room with fist-shaped rocks and guitars like strikes of lightning. Halfway in, a magnetic guitar solo weaves through the wall of electric current. Fuck.

       "Pompeii" is a relentless beating. Daryl multiplies and comes in hot from all angles. The guitar digs in low and the double-bass anchors the song’s many transitions. The cool-eyed and seductive "Strange Hours" travels by way of two fingers galloping on the bass string, keeping an even drone.  The best song (so far), "Golgotha," is a baseball bat to the face. Rymer’s punishing drums land off-time, forever locked in the skull. Over it Palumbo mutters gutturally, "I'm not a betting man / if I was I'd have my money on the mule," dragging out “mule” like he’s screaming from the mud.

       Since Worship And Tribute Glassjaw haven't necessarily been dormant. El Mark, from 2005, is a three-song EP of B-sides. 2011 saw the quiet release of Our Color Green and Coloring Book--both shorties, but without any throwaways. In total you’ve got 14 songs that easily could've been cut into a proper album. Instead, the spontaneity of those releases, has served as the big slow tease, the light feathered tickle tease that would lead to Material Control. What a pay off.

source: https://imp

REVIEW: "The Next Four Years" by United Nations

United Nations Detonates

on The Next Four Years

   It's been a tough Thursday for Geoff Rickly. It's also been a tough Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Since the overdo demise of his main thing Thursday, in 2011, luck hasn't come too often.

   In the aftermath of Thursday Rickly worked in retail, lost a girlfriend, got robbed and toured houses behind the solo material he recorded as Hurricane Sandy hit. All of that churning ill will had to be released somewhere, at some time.

   United Nations is the side project Rickley started in 2005 with various members of other bands. He has revived it for their excellent, hair-raising second album, The Next Four Years.

   Immediately, the album gets right to it's intended point: to riddle the boombox with bullet holes and scream about it. Musically, it's abrasive and destructive--a siren call to society's devastation.

   Over the years, the actual members of the group have changed and been kept secret due to contractual obligations, but have consisted of players from Converge, Pianos Become Teeth, Thursday, Glassjaw and others. Rickly has always been at the helm.

   Throughout these eleven songs United Nations is in a relentless pursuit of music that combusts from exhaustion. The ceiling caves in under the weight of the album's opening song, "Serious Business," and leaves the listener to search the rubble. "Revolutions At Varying Speeds" gives a constant jolt to the brain until you start to wonder if the track is skipping or if you've fallen into some grindcore purgatory.

   Fans of Thursday's lighter side--the one that supplanted the term "emo" in the black hearts of millions--might find the album a turn-off. This is the metal music Thursday always stayed flailing on the outskirts of. It's compact, direct and in the business of crushing ear drums with mid-level blast beats.

   Rickly's pained vocal wallowing comes through his inner-Venom screams, but only barely. When he screams, he sounds like a bitter Gollum galloping through the forest seeking revenge.

   The raining down of rockets quiets only for brief interludes. "F#A#$" pulls the listener in close for the only long-lasting moment of calm on the record. The guitars lull contemplatively, pushed along by a forceful drumbeat, before turning back to the singed sounds of depravity.

   The project has been apt to court controversy, most obviously by sharing a name with a certain powerful intergovernment agency (who is not pleased). They've also bastardized iconic album covers, making them their own (The Beatles smoldering in flames walking down Abbey Road for their self-titled debut; a near-exact replica of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols for their four-song EP, Never Mind the Bombings, Here's Your Six Figures.)

   The music on The Next Four Years, and of United Nations, is a direct reflection of the frustration felt in dealing with, and conceding to, the arbiters of inaction in the United States government. It hardly matters any more which side you're on.

   As the album fades from the onslaught, the final thing we hear is Rickly shouting over the sound of a gavel knocking on a piece of wood. "Changing parties / Changing minds," he shouts on the closing track, "Music For Changing Parties." Between each line, a voice mutters, "Always the same."

Key Tracks: "Serious Business," "Revolutions At Varying Speeds," "United Nations Find God," "F#A#$"

source: http://imp

††† / Color Film at Santos Party House, 2/12/14

Three crosses for ††† at Santos Party House, Feb. 12, 2014.

If, in the late 90's and early 2000's, you dipped your music tastes somewhere in the dip of where punk and metal met, last Wednesday night may have seemed a bit strange. Two side-projects of veteran frontmen of the stage played a packed Santos Party House: Chino Moreno, of Deftones, played with his new group, ††† and opening was Color Film, fronted by Daryl Palumbo, Glassjaw's nutcase vocalist. Each act an extension of their primary group, but each standing strenuously on its own.

Color Film, Palumbo's second side-project since Head Automatica, shambled onto the stage. Their songs were quick, tight driving post-punk. Richard Penzone, previous collaborator with Palumbo, shredded his guitar. Palumbo scratched and clawed his way through the set just as he's always done. The hand not holding a microphone almost constantly pumped the air with a fist. He's a Grade A maniac on the stage, staring outlandishly, cartoonishly at the crowd, in a state of childlike awe. 

Palumbo and Color Film drummer during set.

The band was loose, clearly still kneading the songs into shape, but what they left behind was promising. Last year they released Until You Turn Blue EP, but the songs in their set, "52 Minds," "Bad Saint" and "Small Town" might turn up on their upcoming full-length debut, Living Arrangements. 

Three lighted crosses at the back of the stage were bathed in color as the full five-piece live version of ††† hit the stage. Moreno, as usual, lastly emerged from the dark to rapturous applause. The crowd always swoons for the guy in whatever form he's appearing in and it was no secret he was the guy everyone came to see. 

The group's debut self-titled album was released the night before, but already, every word Moreno sang had an added echo from the crowd. Clearly, he was overjoyed to see the big turn out. On stage everyone was in sync, often breaking into big grins. Moreno was flanked on either side by his co-conspirators on the album, Shaun Lopez, from Far, and Chuck Doom. 

Their foreboding grooves translated perfectly into the live room. The atmosphere was amped. The entrapment of "†elepa†hy" turned the place into a Gothic dance-hall. "Bi†ches Brew" was a hallowing out of the brain with swervy bass poking the frontal lobe, turning clockwise. The cool trip-hop of "Blk S†allion" made it to the live stage for the first time and the stutter bass stabs of "†his Is A †rick" slapped up against the wall.

Lopez stood to the side, jet-black hair combed over, fiddling between a keyboard set-up and playing chiseled psych guitar licks. Doom, who Moreno called Dr. Doom when an audience member asked who he was, played the bass like a wet dolphin, always dipping forward, looking like souped up King Of The Hill character.
††† abandoned the stage briefly, returning for a moody rendition of "Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazzarus and finishing with "†he Years." As they dispersed for the final time the glowing crosses left the audience mired in a trance.

Chino Moreno (center) performs with ††† last Wednesday at Santos Party House.

READ ALSO: Chino Moreno puts the haze in the chamber on ††† debut