Stream 2 chaotic grind tracks from the new Thin / The Wind in the Trees split
NYC mathcore/deathgrind maniacs Thin are following up last year’s great split with Vixen Maw, Wallowing, and Slabdragger with another split, this time with The Wind in the Trees, a new-ish band featuring Dave Gill (ex-The Heads are Zeros and No Note). The split comes out digitally on March 11 via Twelve Gauge, with a vinyl street date set for June 17, and we’re now premiering one song from each band: Thin’s “I Don’t Go On Walks Anymore” and The Wind In The Trees’ “Eons from Mortality.” Both are pulverizing, chaotic songs that fall somewhere under the grind umbrella but really don’t fit in neatly anywhere. They both do a lot in a short running time, and they both rip.
Speaking about the split, Thin’s Ashley Levine says:
When The Wind in The Trees dropped their A gift of bricks from the sky EP in early 2019, we knew this was a band we wanted to connect with, somehow, some way. Guitar player David Gill’s reputation already preceded itself, from his work with the now defunct The Heads Are Zeros, a band that we also loved. The way TWITT honed raw, crusty mathcore in this new incarnation left us floored, with few other bands to compare them to. Asking them to release a split with us was a no-brainer, as was Twelve Gauge’s decision to add TWITT to the label’s roster. With COVID interrupting and altering all that we knew, our collaboration with TWITT has given us a chance to continue pushing ourselves creatively, while living with so much uncertainty.
And Dave Gill adds:
We met Thin in 2020 and were blown away because their set blended really intense technical playing with brief moments of traditional folk and ragtime music, which just isn’t a combination you experience at a metal show. It was almost subversive and it stuck with us for the rest of that tour. The pandemic shut down the entertainment industry soon after and we holed up in a warehouse to write a new record since we couldn’t play shows or travel. When Thin asked us to work on a split together it was like the planets aligned because we were able to collaborate on a release with kindred spirits and also find a home at Twelve Gauge. These pandemic years have really isolated bands from friends they’re used to seeing on the road and working with Thin on this release brought us a little closer to that feeling of normalcy.
The Wind in the Trees are also prepping a new full-length for Twelve Gauge, so stay tuned for that and stream the two singles from this split below.
Thin and The Wind in the Trees are also touring together, starting on February 17 at NYC’s Trans-Pecos:
Hey ya poops! Us and @TWITTBaltimore could use some help landing a gig between Missouri and Tennessee on 2/24. Any leads or just spreading the word is much appreciated 🐸 pic.twitter.com/AX0l0jgkwK
— Thin (@thinshred) February 10, 2022
Tracklist
1. Thin – I Don’t Go On Walks Anymore
2. Thin – Feeding Your Best Friend His Last Meal
3. Thin – Swear to Dog
4. Thin – He Was a Friend of Mine
5. The Wind In The Trees – Eons from Mortality
6. The Wind In The Trees – Thoughts Entombed by Gravity
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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.