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This Is Boston?

April 10, 2007

May I take a moment to pitch the local scene? When I was getting into music during the early 90s, Boston was not a metal haven. Hardcore crews delight in maiming people at shows scared promoters into banning all heavy music from the citys venues. The areas big riff-ed exports were Sam Black Church, Stompbox, Tree, 6L6. They were an alternative-leaning bunch, all trying to be ambiguous, all owing one sum or another to Helmet. As a general rule the home team was not very blood-thirsty. Things are different today, about 13 years later, in the wake of Converge, Shadows Fall, Hydra Head Records, the metalfest in Worcester, et al. There are a zillion bands with double kick drums and a thriving market for dismemberment-soundtrack music, anything with grizzly/murderous/mythic imagery and industrial strength tones across the hardcore/metal/noise pie chart.

I only just got to hear the Hirudinea/Watchmaker split CD, released last year on Watertowns own Bestial Onslaught Productions, as the label is rapidly becoming too kvlt for things like proper distribution. Its an impressive bit of fallout from Masss boiling-over dark side. These are very similar bands in some ways, avoiding easy classification as metal or hardcore but pushing the essence of both through a filter of grating atonal noise and a physically aggressive performance standard (the strings and other vibrating surfaces sound like theyre getting ripped at high speed). Fairly young dudes with elephants memory-sized record collections, synthesizing connective tissue between divergent shit like Godflesh, Order From Chaos, Cro-Mags, Voivod, and a ton more.

Watchmaker has been the subject of a steady stream of hype in Terrorizer Magazine for a long time now. Not an insane amount of hype volume-wise, but a more continuous and maybe even more exaggerated hyperbole stream than is usual for that press avenue. The basic premise is that they never rehearse, and improvise all their music in a fit of thrashin studio rage. Trademarks of hardcore, thrash, black metal, and noise rock crop up then recede again into a static tide consisting of a million little impact noises. The standard for acceptable Watchmaker music arises from a balance of how hard the instruments can be attacked, versus how closely the band can keep time without thinking about it too much. They literally make little time-pieces, stress-fueled mechanical endurance tests that theyll gleefully declare arent for everybody. Its definitely cool, but despite the difficulty of critiquing improv-music, to me this isnt their most personable work (worst symptom: vocals hovering in layers, as opposed to the up-front alone and maniacal presentation on debut Kill.Crush.Destroy). And shit, if aggression versus physical exhaustion and the threat of total derailment is the whole point, rather than musicianship or compositional skill, why not just make a watch yourself? Id like to try smashing a hole through my kitchen floor with a fire extinguisher while screaming about what it takes to be zestfully clean. Itll be pretty brutal I think. Maybe Steve Austinll produce! Nevertheless, Malignant Memory Hole is a rush, as are all their tunes, if they catch you at the right moment.

Hirudinea are relatively unknown outside the Boston area, maybe because they waste a lot of time writing songs. Their material is more calculated in a lot of ways. They want to explicitly tell you some things, the desire to communicate horrible realities extending right down to a more controlled, reverb-y production job and halfway decipherable black metal vox. Their tracks are heavily-wrought compositions, complex logical sequences of riffs and time changes with a fuckload of blurry dis-harmonies saturating everything. Theyve taken certain facets of old-school hardcore and purposefully distorted them: emphasizing the traditional repetition/variation of a short rhythmic motif within a death-grinding framework, hacking gang-shouts down into one drowning voice that moans things as if from a dream-state, things like "for Ill give my life to Him," and, "you fuckin suck!" Those intermittent vocals, plus the weird drum sound, samples and Godflesh-ian bass tone, have me thinking of early Scorn somehow turning back into a more evil, war-torn version of themselves as Napalm Death. Gotta give it up on the side of craftsmanship between these two bands, cuz thats where imagination has room to manifest. Tons of promise, tons of fury and a surprising amount of brains here with Hirudinea, as leadoff track "This I Command" demonstrates. But Watchmaker is a force to behold too. Both bands deserve credit for salvaging components from a musical past that maybe never was, and pushing forward without a trace of nostalgia.

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Matthew Altieri | 8:00 am