Virgin Mother prep 4 collab releases (stream 1 ft. Frail Body & Number 12 members)
Virgin Mother is the project of Seb Alvarez, who also leads the Chicago mathcore band meth., and he’s gearing up to release three different EPs and one LP this year, each a collaboration with different artists and each a different style of music. The first is Marrow, which Seb made with Nic Kuczynski of Frail Body on bass and Jon Karel of The Number 12 Looks Like You and The Sawtooth Grin on drums, and Seb says this is the heaviest of the four releases. That’s not hard to believe, as these three songs find him and his collaborators offering up a mathcore/noisecore fusion that unleashes a total assault on the eardrums. Each track is under two minutes, which is all they need to leave an immediate and lasting impact. Seb says:
Marrow is the first of three EPs and one LP that I plan to release over the course of the next few months. Each EP has entirely different personnel and branches off into different genres between each release. The entire project, titled Mourning Ritual, has taken me around five years to complete. Each release is reflective of different phases of my life, a topic I found extremely challenging to dive into as a writer. While I have written about personal experiences occasionally in past bands, this is the first time I really attempted to dissect myself. Topics range from my childhood to issues with addiction to mental health to whatever the fuck was drowning me at the time of writing.
Marrow is by far the heaviest of the four releases and features Nic Kuczynski of Frail Body on bass and Jon Karel of The Number 12 Looks Like You and The Sawtooth Grin on drums. Nic and I have been friends for a long time and we’ve wanted to work together in some capacity forever. Working with Jon was a dream come true for me as he was a major influence when I began drumming as a kid. For me, this is sort of a callback to the first meth record, The Children Are Watching, as it follows a similar formula of being as abrasive as possible in under 5 minutes.
I am beyond excited and petrified as fuck to begin releasing this project.
The EP officially comes out Wednesday (5/4) via Reader Advisor Records (pre-order), but a full stream premieres right here:
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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.