Richmond chaotic hardcore band Black Matter Device announce new LP (stream a track)
Richmond’s Black Matter Device (who are fronted by Infant Island associate Michael Toney) will release new album Autonomous Weapons on April 22 via via Dark Trail Records, and lead single “Sewer Slide Pact” is a totally chaotic offering of grindy, mathy, dissonant hardcore, and it truly shreds. Listen below.
Tracklist
1. Man vs Man vs Machine
2. Blood Splatter Ink Blot
3. Meat Computers
4. Sesame Street Sweeper
5. Sewer Slide Pact
6. Dungeons and Drug Dealers
7. Y’all Wanna Play This?
8. Jay Dino Dies
9. Mutually Assured Uncertainty
10. Coffin Flops
11. God Knows And He Ain’t Tellin’
12. Concrete Nose Dive
13. Snuff Film Actor’s Guild
14. Gender Mountain
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25 Chaotic Hardcore, Mathcore & Sasscore Albums from the 2000s That Are Seminal Today
Black Cat #13 – I Blast Off! (2000)
The Sawtooth Grin – Cuddlemonster (2001)
Racebannon – In the Grips of the Light (2002)
The Blood Brothers – March On Electric Children (2002)
Orchid – Orchid (aka “Gatefold”) (2002)
Since By Man – We Sing the Body Electric (2003)
"We sing the body electric/Sickness says hold on/Would you like to dance, dance, dance?"
That's how Since By Man open "A Kid Who Tells on Another Kid is a Dead Kid" (probably an Over the Edge reference but not a Nation of Ulysses cover), with Sam Macon raising his voice to a harsh shriek on "dance, dance, dance" and totally embodying flamboyant hardcore in the process. That line also gives this Milwaukee band's Revelation-released debut LP its title, and -- for a subgenre that prides itself on shamelessly verbose poetry -- it makes sense that a band would name their album after a Whitman poem. Throughout We Sing the Body Electric, Since By Man deliver a shapeshifting soundscape that bounces between melodic math riffs, clean-sung hooks, and bludgeoning metalcore, sounding like a cross between The Blood Brothers, Botch, and Poison The Well (who Since By Man guitarist Brad Clifford later joined). It's often a fast, frenzied, constantly-in-motion record, but it sets itself apart from dime-a-dozen mathcore with a few atmospheric, slow-burning songs that veer closer to Jupiter-era Cave In. I don't know if this particular album is a big influence on the current punk scene or not, but it sure sounds like it could be; it combines a lot of different sounds that have been coming to prominence in recent years. Some parts of this album sound like early 2000s post-hardcore in a nutshell, but other times it feels genuinely ahead of its time.