Noise Pollution #14: Nobody's Bathing
A few years ago I was approached to do a primer of sorts on the crust punk genre for this site and there were a few emails back and forth and it just sort of got pushed aside and forgotten. I went through a tear of a few years really diving into crust in my personal listening, it had become the only genre close to harsh metal that I gave any kind of fuck about for a bit, one of those listening phases that you expect to only have as a youth (I was in my thirties). I was planning shows based around the vicinity of indie record stores I knew stocked shit I was searching for. Seeing Extinction of Mankind was a bigger drive to get me to Maryland Deathfest than seeing Nocturno Culto in person with Sarke. You get the idea.
(To be fair, he didn’t really seem to want to be there and there are dozens of Darkthrone songs I’d rather hear over “Too Old, Too Cold” anyway.)
My first real introduction to the crust was picking up a used CD copy of Deviated Instinct’s Definitive Instinct at my local record store, Acrat, solely because it was on Peaceville and I was obsessing over My Dying Bride, Anathema, and Darkthrone and figured the label was one to be trusted. For whatever reason they reminded me of Coroner, at least the front end of the collection, probably because they’re particularly riffy. I was 16, who fucking knows. Regardless, I enjoyed it and dove into the rest of the discography and the related (and sorely under appreciated) Spine Wrench material.
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Fast forward ten years and I was doing a show in Kouvola, Finland. I was taken to a shop there in hopes of digging up some old Finnish death metal gems when I found the Deviated Instinct discography on vinyl, which ended up making the trip across the ocean with me. Another item that made it into my bag was a beat up CD copy of Amebix’s Arise!. I’d only really ever read about them, seeing a lot of comparisons to Venom etc., so I figured I’d give it a shot. Cut to five or six years later and I somehow drunkenly cornered their vocalist, Rob Miller, at their reunion show at the Trocadero probably slurring at him the story I just typed out. Amebix became a very important band to me, which I’ll probably get to down the road here. Their song “Nobody’s Driving” inspired the title of this piece.
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Jokes work best when you have to explain them.
It seemed like every summer I was spending more cramming into hot basements and unventilated venues to witness another Disrupt clone absolutely destroy me. I hadn’t felt this open to a genre in years, just letting wave after wave of it crash into me. Maybe it was the scorching hot venues coated in the dense fog of poor hygiene, but I caught myself going to shows of bands I’d only seen patches for, just out of curiosity. I’d never done that before and haven’t since.
I could sit and go through the list of crust giants and do a true primer for the genre, and one day I just might, but really I just wanted to talk specifically about a few bands. The truth of the matter is: you probably are already familiar with Doom, His Hero is Gone, Antisect etc–the majority of what I’d present as some kind of crust mixtape that I’d use to introduce you to the genre if this was high school in the 90s and I was failing miserably to get your panties off. So, after that preamble, I wanted to spout off a bit about three bands in particular, two of which I’ve got years of listening history with and the third is a new one to me that just completely hooked me in.
If you’ve had the misfortune of following any of my writing the last decade or you’re somehow forgotten to delete me on Facebook you might have picked up that I’m a big fan of Halifax’s Napalm Raid. They might be the only regret I have about not going to this year’s Maryland Deathfest (though I saw enough videos posted of the lady micturating on that gentleman’s face to really feel like I was there with you all). One listen to “Why?” off their 2012 Mindless Nation LP should fill in the blanks as to…ahem…why.
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Napalm Raid know how to write a fucking song. It’s not just loud and aggressive for loudness’ sake. They manage to craft anthemic music without sacrificing any of the venom that makes crust a compelling genre in the fucking first place. Plus the vocals are just fucking inhuman. I abhor hyperbole but it sounds like he’s going to fucking explode.
It’s been five years since their last recording, 2017’s Wheels of War, fucking caved in my eardrums. Hopefully it’s not another five until the next one.
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A few weeks ago I saw Hasan from Ripping Headaches post a link to a band with an unassuming name with the description akin to “Tom G Warrior’s Amebix,” which is a lot of words I’ve got an emotional attachment to in the same sentence. The record was Cainsmarsh by Rigorous Institution, and it might be the best record of 2022.
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Cainsmarsh might be the closest thing to what fans of Amebix were hoping Sonic Mass would be, at least for your initial few listens, but it really opens itself up the more you dig in. Elements of black metal and even some dungeon synth start to creep out. Vocally your first impression will be The Baron, but I’m catching bits of Arioch or Aldrahn’s performance on the early Dødheimsgard stuff. Triumph of Death if it were on Arise!. You get the idea. It’s a compelling record that really surprised me and I’ve done my due diligence to pass it along to as many people who might agree.
As a side note, if anyone has their The Coming of the Terror EP at a reasonable price, please get in touch.
For the third band I’ve struggled over who would be the focus. I wanted to touch upon a band I felt was unjustly overlooked and a few popped into mind. Behind Enemy Lines, Anthrax (UK), but I settled on Cress.
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Cress straddle the line between anarcho/crust and SPK-esque industrial, a bit in the style of Mid’s post-Deviated Instinct project Spine Wrench that I mentioned earlier. Cress very openly wears their politics on their sleeves, in the proud tradition of the last few decades of the UK anarcho scene. While they’ve only issued a few recordings over their three decades (including a killer split with Doom that remains high on my wantlist) every single one of them is challenging and fucking excellent. I have never understood why this great band isn’t mentioned in the same breath as the pantheon of UK crust.
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To tie this whole thing up in a nice little bow two shows that I missed that remain high on my list of regrets are when Cress came through the States seven or eight years ago but I couldn’t miss work, and when Napalm Raid played literally a ten minute walk from where I first moved in Richmond but missed them by a matter of days because the same fucking job needed me to stay an extra few days in New Jersey. The job? Cleaning medical facilities, mostly a prostate cancer center, where it wasn’t uncommon to find piles of human shit laying around, sometimes with blood, just in case I ever questioned if dropping out of college was a bad decision. Rigorous Institution is supposed to play in Richmond shortly, as a part of their East Coast run, so I’m hoping to break the streak there. See you again in two, where I reflect on Father’s Day. It’ll be a scream.
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