Brutus - Slachtbeest
Yahoogroup Outer Musicers might remember a post aeons ago, after coming back late night from a concert in the bay area and encountering a Davis death metal show in the wee hours. It was dark, I don’t remember a pen being around, so I struggled to remember what little I heard, cuz there was some good stuff. It led to a purchase of an Aborted album, which I liked, even if the lyrics were worse than usual and the melodic guitar breaks were, perhaps, a little too inside. All I remember, otherwise, from that show was this Dutch band called Brutus, which should be the most hilariously obvious death metal band name to ever exist. Anyway, it’s pretty underground but in my recent little death metal jaunt, I figured I had to check it out and it turns out to be a rather decent piece. True, some of these things don’t exist like the memory does and it’s possible the megabrutal thing I heard that ended up in the purchase of this disc was something different, but this turns out to be decent nonetheless. But like Aborted, the lyrics are pretty stupid, I’ll leave it to everyone’s imagination (or perhaps translation) as to what the slachtbeest is.
Cassiber - Perfect Worlds
Cassiber - A Face We All Know
I first heard these two Cassiber albums (#s 2-3) when first starting to buy weird, avant-garde music, ironically enough, in Davis and found them pretty much inpenetrable, inpenetrable enough for 6 grades, which reflects my inability to connect with either album in any way. I’m sure there’s a litany of reasons for why these are possibly unusual or groundbreaking in a way, and in many cases they remind me more of musique concrete or perhaps something like Nurse with Wound or Current 93. Part of what I don’t like are some of the repetitive loops, although I don’t want to give the impression that’s all thats here as Chris Cutler, in particular, lays down some solid percussion work as usual and there’s definitely melodic content beyond tape sources. Anyway, I did feel the need to bump these up a bit, as well as stay with them for another listen or more, but I was more surprised that my opinions hadn’t really changed all that much. I still find them basically inpenetrable.