Review: Malevolence - Relentless Entropy

I haven't felt much like writing over the past year or so.  Something I promised myself when I started this blog in 2010, was that I wouldn't allow it to become a burden like the old print version of 'Subcide Zine' did. As it happens, right now I'm feeling quite creative and motivated. There are a number of releases that have inspired me in the last while that I'd like to tell you all about. They may not be new as such, so if you have already heard them I encourage you to take another listen.  I've particularly enjoyed listening to and writing about this one.

Chris Rigby

Malevolence - Relentless Entropy (Self released)

Not so long ago I was checking out an old album by ‘Groinchurn’ called ‘Sixtimesnine'. ‘Groinchurn’ were a kick ass grindcore band from South Africa in the late 90s. When listening to it I thought "Man that was a great era for grindcore. Bands had started to develop musically. They were incorporating new diverse, intricate, interesting and engaging concepts into their music. The results being really enjoyable listening experiences." Brutal Truth were pioneers of this concept. Napalm Death had started to go down the same path and Nasum had just appeared on the scene. But where was this sound these days? Sure Napalm Death are still here and kicking ass. But Brutal Truth are over, as are Nasum, but why is there no one new doing this or developing it further?

As synchronicity would have it, after their 20+ years of existence 'Malevolence' come along with 'Relentless Entropy' to fill that gap. From start to finish it’s a consistent piece of modern grind art. It kicks off with 'Approaching Monster', an instrumental climbing intro which is later complimented by the album outro 'Retreating Monster', assumedly sequels to 'Passing Monster' from the 2007 EP ‘Eyes to See, Ears to Hear, Wrists to Slit’. ‘Approaching Monster’ leads directly into 'Digitize', a 1 min 49 second grinder focusing on our unavoidable existence of having our entire lives documented and tracked on line. Opening and closing with “Welcome unit, to the machine”, within Digitize we are issued with our serial number “3-4-4-4-8-4-9-3” which I’m pretty sure is also a clever reference to the guitar fret numbers of the riff beneath it. Then in the same tone we have 'Legalize', which talks about a dystopian future where food no longer grows and in order to survive, humanity must turn to cannibalism. Feeding on the vegetarians first, before farming thy neighbour. “The Adversary’ breaks the 3 minute mark for the first of only 2 times on ‘Relentless Entropy’. It also introduces the first section that could possibly be described as slower. The Adversary appears to be a character who is the “Anti-theist”, neither Christ nor Anti-Christ, they have come to free earth from the shackles of religion and to encourage humanity to “Think God out of existence”. ‘Transparent’, with its animosity toward the shallow nature of mainstream society, is the only song on the album where the music isn’t written by main man Daryl Tapsell, but by former second guitarist Nich Cunningham. Despite the different composer it still sits perfectly along with what sounds like a subtle nod to brutal truth played in reverse. The next 2 are short sub 1 minute grinders. The first is “Property of Satan” inspired by Daryl's tattoo.

Then we have the 23 second 'Butchered', which if I hadn’t read they lyric sheet I wouldn’t know was a personal tribute to the late Matt Hall, former vocalist of ‘Backyard Burial’, who in 2011 was “Butchered by a cunt!”

“Home brew Memories

BBQ smoking weed

Long nights of philosophy

Techniques of the scream

Mushroom recipes

Pros and cons of LSD

Some of what you were to me

Metal brother rest in piece”

'Bleed' tackles class warfare and highlights the fact that tory scum still bleed the same as you and I when you take their heads off. ‘Nothing and Nowhere’ reminds us that we’re all insignificant in the grand scheme of everything and explores the experimental grind style to a deeper level with its discordant chords riffs, before fading out slowly with various samples of scientific facts. 'Chased through the woods (with a rhyming dictionary)’ takes the piss out of immature gore themed death metal lyrics. All of which are of course rhymed. Track 11 '99942 Apophis' hits with a super heavy chaotic barrage, not unlike its namesake asteroid which is due to collide with earth on April 13, 2029. Apophis 99942 also is closest comparison to the war metal chaos that's currently coming out of New Zealand, and it comes nicely garnished with a sprig of vintage Morbid Angel. 'Human Suit’ has the most coherent lyrics/vocal and memorable chorus of the album, also the most catchy musically. It follows the life of a protagonist who becomes so disgusted with the human race they decide to murder it, finishing with themselves. ‘Idle hands' begins with a voice sample from the 1990/1 Ice T album ‘OG’ where Ice is introducing us to his new metal band ‘Body Count’. The song itself, the most straight forward metal tune, is a misanthropic view of someone who has sold their soul to their corporate job at the expense of everything else important. 'Life Machines’ is the album’s slowest and at 3:46min, longest tune. It begins with a creeping not-quite-doom riff, before ramping up the grind and death combo and Dives into slowness again briefly before finishing on an increasingly speed up War Pigs meets grindcore ending. ‘Life Machines’ spells out most directly the theme that’s been running right through ‘Relentless Entropy’ i.e. nothing we do in our lives will ever amount to anything of significance, we’re all getting older and we’re all going to die one day before eventually being forgotten. …Then the monster finally retreats wrapping up ‘Relentless Entropy’.

Malevolence have been around for over 20 years now, and constantly get better every time I hear them. ‘Relentless Entropy’ is testament to that. It has a simple Black and white cover - Just like the best grindcore albums. It’s held together with trade off vocals from rock solid ass player Julian (I’ve known this guy since 1998 and I still have no idea what his last name is), intense drumming from Ben (also skin pounder for Vassafor) and of course the stellar guitar work of Daryl. 

‘Relentless Entropy’ is modern technical grindcore at its best. It survives and grows upon multiple listens. It will be a treat to hear what level Malevolence elevate themselves to next!

It’s a grind album you should invest in! You can do that by going to www.malevolencenz.com and purchasing it in CD, Vinyl or digital form.

Rotten Sound interview

Thanks again to Ami from The Mighty Scoop for hooking up this interview with Keijo Niinimaa, vocalist for Rotten Sound.  Rotten Sound will be playing two New Zealand Shows on April 11th and 12th.  You can find out more about these shows here. If you live in either Wellington or Auckland, keep an eye out for a free special edition of 'Subcide Zine' containing this interview. Copies will be available in all the usual places.  
In the meantime read what Keijo has to say...

1) You are playing in New Zealand for the first time this April. What can the audience expect from your Live performance? 

Well, I was in there last August with Nasum and it was really a huge surprise how similar NZ-crowd was to Finnish people. What to expect? Well, loud and furious grind-core with groove and insanity in front of us by everyone who is brave enough to enter the moshpit. Afterwards we will enjoy some fine alcoholic beverages together and laugh our asses off, because of all the good times. Having Ulcerate to play with us is going to be a huge honour and we’re actually a bit worried about the fact, that they’ll be really hard to follow in front of their home crowd… But we’ll do our best to grind your faces off.

2) Of course this is actually your second visit to New Zealand. In September last year you were here as front mate for the Nasum farewell tour. What are your recollections of that experience. What were some of the high points of that world tour as a whole? 

Yeah, just like I said already… That experience was really short because we spent only 17 hours in your exotic country, but the way we were welcomed to the venue, to the stage and to the afterparties (which we unfortunately could not do because of early flights to Japan the next morning) were simply amazing. Once again, I felt actually more home than in pretty much any other country of the Nasum tour – except for Finland, obviously..

3) A while ago I saw a Rotten Sound T-shirt which featured a picture of the “Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal pedal” with the secret setting on its dials. What does this pedal and setting mean to ‘Rotten Sound”? What will you do when you can no longer find these guitar pedals?

Ahh, well, those are the old settings (everything set to max), nowadays Mika has let off with few knobs… We have tried a lot of different things with our sound, but somehow the HM-2 and the way Mika uses it with his A-tuned guitar (darker than average HM-2 sounds, I think) seems to really work well. But that’s not all, Kristian’s Big Muff bass really adds a lot to it too and actually our bass feels like a 2nd guitar in the overall mix. Lastly, Sami is not using any triggers and tunes his drums quite low, which means that we’re playing grind with aggressive stoner-doom sound.

4) You’re touring on the back of a 8+ minute, 6 track EP titled “Species at War” EP. Could you tell us about that EP and why people should check it out?

It’s pretty much the best sounding release we have done and it shows how we sound today in studio and on stage. It’s almost like one long song. I’m pretty bad at “selling” ourselves, so, I think it’s better for you to go and check-out at least the lyric video for “Salvation”-track to hear how the EP feels.

5) “Species at War” is being touted as a stopgap EP before the follow up to your 2011 Album “Cursed”. Are you able to give any insight as to what to expect from the next album? Are there any titles or indications of musical direction you can tell us about?

We have about 20 new songs, but I haven’t started writing lyrics to them yet… It’s going to be a grind-core album, but probably a bit more diverse again than Cursed or SAW is… Probably we’ll use the rest of this year to write more songs and to pre-produce all of them before we decide which ones will be on the next album. So, it’s way too early at the moment to say anything that concrete.

6) For 2013 you’re embarking on a pretty intense World tour. Could you please tell us why youhave chosen to do this. What are you hoping to do that you haven’t on previous tours?

We didn't have a chance to tour that much last year and there seems to be quite a lot of possibilities for us to play shows now. We also like touring a lot and this somehow fits our 20 year anniversary.

7) Word association time. What do the following things mean to Rotten sound:

- Napalm Death - Influence

- Obscene Extreme – Best party in the world

- War - Wrong

- 99% - Not done

- Veggieburgers – Once a week treat

- Stereo Drinking – Fun as hell

The next 4 questions are from Rotten Sound Fans who were asked to contribute to this interview via the punkas.com forum and Subcide webzine facebook page:

8) What are your thoughts on Scion A/V and corporate involvement in grindcore? [Tim Punkas]

Well, one could think that Toyota corporation is not the coolest companion to work with, but when they help bands to tour and they also made it possible for us to support Carcass back in 2008 by sponsoring us, we are the wrong people to criticize them in any possible way. I also think that Scion is good at bringing cool ecological vehicles to US, where most of the people need a car.

9) Why does the guy on the cover and video for 'Exit' wear a paper bag on his head? It seems pretty impractical, considering a paper bag could just fly off at any time - for instance if he had to make a run from the police - and in any case he kills himself with a shotgun, why did he bother concealing his identity if they're going to find his body and eventually be able to identify it via DNA testing or distinguishing marks if too much of his face is missing? Had he previously committed a crime he had every intention of getting away with or was he suicidal in the first place?. [Logan Muir]

Haha, good thinking in there… The bag represents the way that society and some corporations treat human beings as faceless, expendable resources. This poor fellow has realized, that his only way out from his misery is this “Exit” at his office.

10) Why do most of your song titles only contain one word? [Dan Birrell]

My English is too broken to have longer titles on stage… More seriously: I started to think about song titles a lot more when we did Murderworks album and my process has been pretty straight-forward since that album: I write the lyrics and pick up one word, that describes the song in a best possible way.  I've done a few exceptions over the years, like “Sell Your Soul”, “Western Cancer” and I've even invented fake words like “Corponation”, but otherwise this seems to work pretty well as long as I remember to avoid the words I've already used.

11) What was behind the decision to move from Relapse to Season Of Mist? [Craig Hayes]

We didn't move, we wanted to change our label in Europe. Relapse is still doing the rest of the world and this same setup is going to continue with the next album too. Main reason was that Relapse was lacking distribution and promotion in few major European territories, which have been pretty good for us before when we still were with Spinefarm. But Relapse is doing really great job in North America and they can also keep our releases available for all other places. Season of Mist has been already really impressive with “Species at War”, but I believe that the next full-length will be a lot better way to measure their success over here.

12) Thank you for your time. Any last comments?

See you at the shows!

NASUM Interview

Thanks heaps to Ami of The Mighty Scoop for hooking up this interview and also to Jesper and Anders of NASUM for taking the time to answer these questions.  NASUM will be playing in Auckland later this month (See below poster for details), so if you live in New Zealand and are thinking of going, don't waste this one time opportunity to catch this awesome band got get your tickets ASAP!!!

GET YOUR TICKETS HERE

1) You are playing in New Zealand for the first time this year (21 August 2012), what are your expectations of that show and your visit? What can the audience expect from your Live performance?

Jesper: Well, uh, a bunch of really fast music very loud? You know, what we do isn’t anything that hasn’t been done before – it’s five guys who scream and make a hell of a lot of noise whilst engaging in on-stage frenzy. I guess as with all live brutal music, it’s about being there in the moment and being sucked into the energy that comes out of the performance, for band as well as audience. Nothing I verbally try to describe will do the shows any justice, you just have to be there. Nasum has a big bank of songs, and on these shows we’re playing our best stuff and pushing the envelope a bit further, making everything harder, faster and more frantic than we thought we could. As this is a farewell tour, we have this last chance to prove that Nasum is and always was non-compromising, oppositional and deadly serious about grindcore. Also, going to NZ is obviously special for us – it’s close to Antarctica for fuck’s sake! Antartica is definitely a grindcore continent. Also, Ulcerate will open for us. Gotta love Ulcerate. Hopefully there will be a local grind band on the bill too.

Anders: The question is: what can we expect from the audience? If I don’t see one Orch stagediving, I will be very disappointed!

2) Your website has a gallery of peoples Nasum Tattoos and mentions that you have seen a lot more since you’ve been on the Farewell tour. What other unique things have you experienced on the tour? Please describe a few highlights.

Jesper: Well, it’s a bit like coming home from the war I guess. The band has been away for a long time, and just like coming home after a long time you don’t really know how things have changed. We knew there was some anticipation, but that it would be like this was overwhelming. How much Nasum has meant to people kinda took us off guard, and the lengths at which people go to see this is humbling. In LA, there was an entire family – mom, dad, two sons and a daughter - who had all travelled from Peru to see us. In a Czech fest we played there were a bunch of grind dudes from Saudi Arabia who knew everything about the band and had travelled there to see us. Stuff like that. Also, the sheer energy in the crowd at some of these gigs is pretty massive too. Can you imagine looking out over a hall at the Maryland Deathfest filled with of 3000+ people and every single person is moshing like mad. Or standing at Hellfest in France playing grindcore – this underground thing – in front of 10000 people? Insane. I am baffled every time. We never experienced shows like this before.

Anders: Although the huge stages and massive crowds are good for the ego, it’s the little things that stays in my memory. Like when we played a bar in Ventura, California. When we got there I was almost angry at the size of the venue. I thought: “Why have we been booked to a place where you have to set up your stuff on the sidewalk OUTSIDE of the club as there is virtually no space inside?” But after wolfing down a few pizza slices in the kitchen and seeing some of support bands go mental, our show turned out to be one of the most intimate and crazy things I’ve done. It was one hundredth the size of the crowd at Hellfest but very fun.

3) How did you make the choice to have Keijo Niinimaa from Rotten Sound on vocals for the Farewell tour? How is he working out? What was the main reason for a farewell tour?

Jesper: We fumbled around with a bunch of suggestions that felt so-so for a while, but noone really felt perfect. When we finally actually thought of Keijo it was like ”aw, hell, he is the obvious choice, how did we not think of this immediately?” We wanted the person to fill this role to have a great voice and be an awesome performer of course, but also, importantly, that he would have a closer connection to the band. We’ve all known Keijo for years, his own band Rotten Sound has opened for Nasum on a few tours, and they also recorded in Mieszko’s studio when he was alive. So he was a friend of the band, of Mieszko, he has a great voice and vocal range, and loves Nasum on top of it all. We are obviously happy that he wanted to do it.

Anders: One important thing to notice is that Keijo doesn’t do just Mieszko’s vocals, he does mine as well. On the first two albums I sung a lot, but live it was all covered by Mieszko – so the fact is that Keijo is actually doing something closer to the albums than what Mieszko did back in the day!

Nasum 2012

4) Shane Embury and Barney Greenaway of Napalm Death both cited hearing Nasum, and Inhale/Exhale in particular, as a definite turning point which helped them to rediscover grindcore and thus led to the recording of 2000's acclaimed Enemy of the Music Business.(Terrorizer #140, Spring 2005). I imagine this would be an honour to be referred to in that way by these people, but what do you think Nasum did differently that refreshed the Grindcore sound?

Anders: I believe the history with Napalm Death started with Barney wearing an “Inhale/Exhale” t-shirt in a video. That was unreal! And then we heard the stories and as some point I even heard something about the grindcore-unfriendly Mick Harris though “the band on N was quite good” after receiving a bunch of albums from Relapse, but in all honesty that can very much be a creative memory. Honour isn’t strong enough, it was baffling to realize that the band that inspired us to 90% when the band was formed a) knew about us and b) liked us so much that they claim WE inspired them. It still is quite sick, although we have a friendly relationship today. Anyway: I think there are a few reasons to Nasum’s success: 1) We have always been very serious about our grindcore, from the very beginning. Although some of the early – and late lyrics – perhaps didn’t have that political edge that is so closely connected with the band, we never fooled around too much and especially not with the music! 2) Once we started to add our own touch to the sound, leaving the quite strict form based on our sources of inspiration, we got a clear identity quite fast. We brought groove to grindcore and kept the doors open to other genres solely to pick inspiration, not to turn into some kind of mixtape circus act switching styles within the songs. 3) We put a lot of effort into the vocals and especially the vocal patterns, and thus creating real and memorable songs.

5) Where might Nasum have been today if it weren’t for the tragic death of Mieszko Talarczyk? What might have happened in the 7 years since the 2004 boxing day Tsunami?

Anders: It’s totally impossible to say. In a best case scenario we would be still alive and have another 4-5 records in the catalogue, but in a worst case scenario we would have disbanded by some other reason and never seen the 20th anniversary. Nobody knows. In 2004 we did our first headlining tour of Europe and felt a “break” coming and we had some slight plans to go into the studio and create something spontaneous on the spot, but that was the only plan we had when things went down the shitter.

The Late Mieszko A. Talarczyk
"Mieszko never had the chance to be a hero or a survivor. He most likely died in the first wave.
I do know that the last thing he did was to protect his girlfriend so in my eyes he died as a hero." - Anders 

6) Tell us about “Coldworker” and “Burst”. What are they and why should we check them out?

Jesper: Burst was a band that me and my friends started as kids, and which gradually grew from a crusty punk band to a hardcore band to end up as a pretty brooding, progressive metal band. Burst was the reason I had to leave Nasum about a year prior to Mieszko’s death – the band started touring a lot more and grew gradually, and I felt I couldn’t handle two touring bands. As much as I love Nasum and always had, I had to make a choice. We made a bunch of albums and put them out through Relapse Records, and I am thoroughly proud of them. It has nothing to with Nasum or grindcore, rather it is more melodic in the melancholy sense, and slightly more experimental and metallic. Check out ”Origo” or ”Lazarus Bird”.

Anders: Coldworker is my (only) band, that was formed in February 2006 and so far has released three albums. I had about a year off from most musical adventures and eventually started to look around in my hometown for new people to play with. I found a few, and then some more and the ball got rolling quite fast. Coldworker is a death metal band. Someone once described us as “if Cannibal Corpse was from Europe” and that’s a good description. We like the American style of riffing but most certainly have an European edge to our sound. Coldworker hasn’t tour that much and up until now never really been judged on it’s own terms. There are ALWAYS comparisons to Nasum in the reviews, which is totally annoying and unfair as the only connection is me. For more info and samples and stuff, visit coldworker.com.

7) Would you ever consider continuing the current line up after the farewell tour, perhaps under a different name? Why?/Why not?

Anders: No. There are many reasons. The biggest one is that we have other bands that more or less waits for the Nasum thing to be over, and we need to get back to “normal life” and continue where we were. Another reasons is that whatever music this new band with same line-up would play, people would scream for Nasum songs and then we’ll just be Nasum under a new name playing Nasum songs and that, if anything, is milking it. So that’s out of the question. I’m not ruling out the possibility that some of us meet again for a project or something, because we play well together, but as of now we will not continue in any shape or form.

8) What is the future of Grind core?

Jesper: Grindcore will probably always exist. I don’t think it could ever be widely popular, but then that isn’t the point. This is a subgenre of a subgenre, and the oppositional nature of grind will probably keep it alive and healthy in the margins of the underground. Three ”new” bands I like are Magrudergrind, Wormrot and Massgrave, and I hope i’ll get new hope for the future when we go to OZ and NZ and see the local supports get jiggy with it.

9) I saw that you played a show (or some shows) with my good friends ‘brutal truth’. How were those guys on stage and in person these days? 

Jesper: They’re awesome. Fuzzy and scuzzy, but awesome and sweet. I can’t believe fucking Brutal Truth (and Dropdead!) opened for us in the US. 

Anders: To be completely frank, they are not “Extreme Conditions…” Brutal Truth anymore, but on the other hand they haven’t been that for a long time. Brutal Truth today is one big “fuck you” finger up the butt on… well, everything. They are super cool though, and Danny Lilker is quite the entertainer. You hardly have a boring time when he’s around.

10) Anything to add in closing?

Anders: Thanks for the support. Early on in this interview you asked about our expectations, and once the tour and show is done we will share our thoughts and if the expectations were met or not, as we have an ongoing tour blog at nasum.com. Check that out, and thanks again for the support!