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March 28, 2024, 10:47:30 PM

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Show Me The Body

Started by The Mollusk, February 09, 2021, 10:21:18 AM

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The Mollusk

This isn't a thread for posting photos or videos of industrial noise/doom metal group The Body! Don't do that please! I already know what they look and sound like (and it's great)!

NYC three-piece SMTB are ostensibly a hardcore punk outfit, but there's so much more to them than that. I would say that they're among the innovative new wave of heavy rock groups who are strongly concerned with embellishing a classic sound with dense layers of sonic texture, experimenting with production methods and collaborative community projects (actually, very similar to what The Body does!) to push the limits of what an act can achieve whilst operating under one primary banner.

Resultantly, SMTB are a fucking ace band and I was thrilled by them as soon as I started listening. I mean, structurally their songs are awesome - great snarling beasts that skulk around your periphery, lashing in at you with gnarled claws, pinning you down in the dirt and roaring with hot, wet jaws an inch from your face - but the production completely elevates this stuff to another level entirely. The bass is so thick it sounds like it's being ripped out of your stomach. The drums are like being booted in the head by a horse and shot in the face with a paintball gun at the same time. The guitars and vocals cut like rusty electric turkey carvers hacking off your arms and legs.

As with a lot of hardcore, their music owes a lot to hip hop, and what this band's doing wouldn't sound out of place on a playlist with modern envelope-pushers like Earl Sweatshirt, Death Grips and Vince Staples (and it doesn't surprise me to se they've collaborated with people like Denzel Curry and Moor Mother). When it's not ripping you to shreds, it's surly and contemplative and poetic, dark and brooding with disquieted sadness. For something so rain-soaked and jagged, this music can be really fucking beautiful.

Honestly can't get enough of this. Go listen to their album Dog Whistle. It's only 28 mins long and deserves to be heard in full, preferably at a big volume.

Dirty Boy

Yeah, this is pretty good. Not really feeling it like you do judging from your impassioned write up, but i'll listen to it a couple more times before i make my mind up. Getting a bit of a Daughters vibe.

I don't listen to a lot of recent hardcore punk because so much of it lapses into that screamo/metalcore nonsense i'm not fond of, but do you know Gulch? It's a bit 'tattoos and circle pits' i s'pose, but i like and it doesn't hang around for long.

I know you said not to mention The Body, but their new album sounds fucking evil.

Johnny Textface

Halogen is a decent track. I need to listen to more stuff.

The Mollusk

Quote from: Dirty Boy on February 10, 2021, 06:35:06 PM
Yeah, this is pretty good. Not really feeling it like you do judging from your impassioned write up, but i'll listen to it a couple more times before i make my mind up. Getting a bit of a Daughters vibe.

I recommend their first album "Body War" as well, it's equally as short and sharp with the same diverse approach to sound design. Some of the tracks on that record have a big Death Grips vibe.

The reason I'm so excitable about their music is that it genuinely sounds refreshing, and that's very hard for punk to do almost 5 decades after its inception (that is, without having a punk aesthetic but sounding like something else entirely, whereas SMTB are more a straight-up hardcore punk band than anything else). The sonic abrasion of their sound is not simply "noise for the sake of it", it's artfully considered and the jackknife turns they veer throughout on their albums are well calculated, so as not to merely feel like a handful of songs but more a 30-minute piece that I want to indulge from end to end every time I revisit them.

I get strong vibes of The Mentally Ill, Crass and Swell Maps in their sound too, as far as vintage punk is concerned. TMI went for sounding as messy as shitty as possible and I think there's a core value of that in how deliberately haphazard and chaotic SMTB can often sound. Crass of course experimented with sound collage and tonally they were always interesting (if, admittedly, a little repetitive) with their sputtering militant drums and noise-backed poetry reading. Swell Maps were just kids having fun who managed to make one of the best post-punk albums ever ("Marineville") with their freewheeling experimental racket which playfully dipped its toes into goth, krautrock, noise and no-wave with zero pretension.

SMTB combines these standards and creates something that is vibrantly nihilistic in its outward demeanour but heavily embodies the love and unity of the hardcore scene and creates something that, more than anything else I've encountered in a while, could sufficiently be labelled cutting edge contemporary punk rock.

I think with bands like this (and, yes, The Body!), it's important to consider the sound design at use here which a lot of people are casting off as "hipster music" as a triggered defence mechanism. This isn't hipster music, it just defies the norm and it's forward-thinking and sadly that upsets a lot of people. For me, the distinction is clear: It stands to reason that as the world around us becomes uglier in more unimaginably complex ways, the sound of the music kicking against that should become equally as complex, multifaceted and brutal to boot. SMTB are right on the front line of this rationale and it brings me great joy to exist in an ugly world alongside them.

boki


The Mollusk

SURVIVE EP is out now and it kicks like a fuckin mule.

1. Rubberband

2. People On TV

3. Survive

I really really like this band.

axel

Looking forward to hopefully seeing these guys live again at some point.
Saw them at Corsica Studios a couple of years ago and they were immense.

The Mollusk

Yeah I read that one of their last UK shows was at Moth Club, can only imagine how much they tore up that little crevice!