By Kevin Stewart-Panko
The vinyl section of hellbound.ca is suffering a review shortage and while our discussion and review of these latest releases from Baltimore’s a389 Recordings won’t get this little bit of online real estate swinging like a 70s key party, it will at least take it off the proverbial life support of the past few months. Egads! There’s a certain amount of analogy in that metaphor as these two bands, as solid, serviceable and enjoyable as they both are, aren’t going to be the ones to set the world of extreme music alight.
Of the two, Tupelo’s Seraphim is balls-out more conventionally brutal with a sound that flirts with a post-apocalyptic, mid-period Neurosis, the southern-ish swagger of pre-major label Mastodon and maybe a little of Celestial-era Isis for good measure. Even though they’re referencing a definitive time and (fucking classic) place of extreme music’s developmental timeline, they still add enough of their own discordant edges and time-and-tempo fuckery to make their three song offering worthy of repeat spins. Full-length to come before the year’s end.
Cleveland’s Gluttons, on the other hand, are a much more direct and to the point, though the idea of being on any kind of straight-and-narrow is completely foreign to these dudes. “These dudes” include one James “Human Furnace” Bulloch of Ringworm on vocals and guitar and if shitbag society needed to fill a quota, this trio’s four-song 7” could do so without breaking a ball-sweat. Songs about drinking, fighting, skating and sluts set to a meaty mix of grizzled guitars, sandpaper vocals and perpetual D-beats will get any and everyone headbanging and beer hoisting. This is an undeniable and proven scientific fact and Gluttons dig the musical hooks in with arrangements and riffs that have no business being this catchy and a sense that everything could collapse in a pile of broken glass, inside-out condoms, broken noses and beaten-down cops at any moment. Seriously, they may be playing shit that’s been recycled a million times over between the bookends of Discharge and Disfear, but mark my words, get Gluttons to play the next Michigan Womyn’s Festival and watch the hairy legged circle pit break out. Full-length also due before 2011.
(a389 Recordings)
Rating: Seraphim – 7.0
Rating: Gluttons – 8.0
