Playing Enemy - My Life As the Villain
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Playing Enemy were a Seattle three-piece that called it quits in late 2006. Their final record, My Life As the Villain, recently came out on Hex. They’re a midpoint between Dischord math rock and Botch mathcore, with the enunciation of the former and the elbows of the latter. Setting them apart from the hordes of angular dissonance were big, ringing chords, which undoubtedly helped fill out the trio’s live sound. Such sustain also swathed singer/guitarist Demian Johnston’s emotional lyrics in sheets of dread. “Applause and Abuse” starts with a dead-on Morbid Angel riff before wading into a shifting thicket of odd meters. It’s like a gauntlet of ankle-high blows. This five-song EP comes in a lovely arigato pack (an eco-friendly cardboard sleeve that tucks closed in the back) with artwork by Johnston. He’s gone on to various artistic and musical projects, drummer Andrew Gormley now plays in Shai Hulud, and bassist Shane Mehling writes for Decibel and other publications.
Hex is the label spinoff of the legendary Hanging Like a Hex zine by Ryan Canavan (see Kevin Stewart-Panko’s massive zine feature in Decibel #41, At the Gates cover). My Playing Enemy order from Hex arrived with a copy of Canavan’s new zine Translate. It’s not a deluxe production like Hanging Like a Hex, but an old-school Xerox/fold/staple job. And it rocks (especially an in-depth interview with Trap Them frontman Ryan McKenney). It sent me back all the way to 1996, when I would haunt the zine section in Cody’s Books on Telegraph Ave. (RIP) in Berkeley, searching for handmade inspiration.
Buy:
Hex Records
