Tenderizor – Touch the Sword

Tenderizor
Touch the Sword
Sicksicksick Distro/Band Camp

Albuquerque is a weird town. I mean, it’s this small city of like 500,000 people, in the middle of a desert, at the base of a mountain. When the wind blows, you can’t see shit because of the dirt, and everyone is totally laid back or totally crazy (I haven’t decided which yet). Still, it’s pretty much like most cities I’ve been in over the course of my life, except, smaller. There’s no train system, only one indie movie theater (that I know of) and all the clubs that book national touring acts of the punk/metal/post-whatever persuasion are owned and operated by one dude who I suspect knows very little about music. Albuquerque is not unlike other scenes though, because it does have a very rich and awesome DIY scene going on. It’s a city of very excited people not content to let other scenes and hipster shit tell them what to do. Instead, the people do it themselves, in a true, unencumbered way. It’s totally beautiful.

I threw out a plea to musician friends to send me records on the Facebook place and Raven Chacon came through. Dude knows I am broke and unemployed but that music is central to my being. And so he provided me a complementary listen to his latest band Tenderizor’s project. And this shit smokes. Touch the Sword is just evil, thrash filled, guitar shredding madness. If you grew up on heavy doses of Iron Maiden, Anthrax, Metallica and Megadeath and don’t think that listening to that stuff is “cool” in some New York hipster ironic way, but actually enjoy some thrash metal, Touch the Sword will slay your face.

Vocalist Steve Hammond must first and foremost be praises for his amazing, classic wail. He’s got the whole King Diamond thing down, but isn’t afraid to get a little grit and growl going. Which comes in handy during the speed thrash/breakdown run of “Rockweiler”, a song I assume is about a mythical rock music listening dog. Metal is not known for the greatest pronunciation in the vocal/poetry department, but that matters very little because Hammond delivers the demon howls in the amazing upper register.

The guitar play on this album is awesome too. With three different guys handing off or handling the guitar parts, we get a great deal of technical shredding. And though clearly these guys have studied all the various scales necessary to play metal, it sounds totally dirty and classic. The trudge riff opener of “The Falconor” gets the foot stomping, hand planting, agro, steady mosh quivering in my bones. We’re talking some total rock god worship type offerings being laid down. The song slows slightly for a Metallica inspired, extended guitar solo that my 12 year old self would have gotten lost in on repeat. But where the metal lords of old would wallow, endlessly in their own ego, Tenderizor understands the power of song and that a sonic punch can come in confined packages. The song riffages and solos speed back up and the steady beat continues as the great bird soars above, looking for it’s next kill.

Metal is such an odd genre. It’s one that truly has grown leaps and bounds over the forty plus years it has spread evil and despair upon the earth. The shredders shred harder, the songs get faster, the guitar sounds get more crisp and slick, you can actually hear bass parts, such as here on the instrumental “Bitch Corrector” (a possible instrumental ode to dog breeding if “Rockweiler and “Pitbull” are any indication). And yet, the genre continues to be looked down upon by the masses. Oh sure, USBM bands are getting a bit of press in lofty, lefty, sweater wearing NPR, but that’s only bands from Brooklyn, who are masters of guitar and art, but seem to forget how to rock. Metal music, even though it takes steady, dedicated practice and finesse to pull off is still, at the core, about rocking THE FUCK out. And yes, the inherent geekdom and fantasy aspects may make grown men look like total dorks, incapable of adult conversations, but Metal is smart, imaginative music, even in it’s darker elements.

Tenderizor have not forgotten this. They aren’t necessarily blazing new trails, but paying homage to their roots. They do all of this with excellent results and never get too full of themselves. Touch the Sword is awesome in it’s metal powers. No doubt, Albuquerque has a killer metal scene, in no small part do to this band.

(Tenderizor plays Kosmos in Albuquerque with Acid Mothers Temple (Japan) on Monday, May 23rd. Guitarist/Bassist Raven Chacon tells me they will be performing their entire set on Casio SK1′s!)

Busdriver Blew Up Albuquerque

Look, it’s late and I just got back from this show. Yr getting this post about this show because I’ve been really lazy writing content for this here blog thing you’ve all come to know and love. I think it shows. My rant on Katy Perry’s Tits was pretty weak for a college graduate whose focus in the Arts of English was primarily on the fucked up things our culture does. Speaking of which, Busdriver is from another planet all together. Whatever high-wave frequency he is receiving, he is spitting out with equal force. He’s a one man jugular gymnast with a penchant for tweaking out on some Roland Machines that make me wish I knew how to use this awesome, but mystical MPC500 that I recently purchased. The thing lays next to my elbow, taunting me every time I type this nonsense on the fricking internet.

So yea, Underground Hip Hop is amazing. As the photos will attest, this show was intimate beyond measure. I mean, punk/diy on the floor shows are always available for close contact, but when the performer has a microphone, a pedestal for his machines and himself with no instrument to keep one at bay, it gets crazy. Also, kids are cuddly in Albuquerque. Personal space is not totally an issue all the time, so I’ve noticed so far. Maybe it’s because it’s a scaled down city that everything else is scaled down as well. Though I did go to a warehouse show over the weekend that I failed to bring my camera to or had enough interest to really write about the bands. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yea, Busdriver, he’s this dude from Los Angles. When he was waking around the venue he looked more like a professor than a rap artist. I can’t really describe his music, dude has a motormouth on him, the words he spits are indecipherable most of the time and he’s a loose cannon.

Some other dudes also played. This duo called Dark Time Sunshine came on and they made heads turn like crazy. Zavala was the guy turning all the nobs, playing with the laptop and hitting the pads on the MPC1000. He knew what he was doing and though the sound was unbalanced, it still rattled the small amounts of connections left in my brains. The guy on the mic, his name is Onry Ozzborn. Apparently he’s in Grayskull and has a new solo album that just came out called Hold on For Dear Life. They were pretty sick and got the crowd way hyped.

Ceschi is a one man killing machine. I was a bit scared when he pulled out the acoustic guitar. I totally had some Everlast flashbacks, but it was all okay. He was actually pretty good with that guitar/rap style but mostly he played to backing tracks on his Mac. Yea, I wish I had more to say, but I am tired, my cats are acting up and that’s freaking me out because one of my neighbors keeps complaining about noise and even though I put some padding down, some how, these idiots are still loud. Anyone want two cats? Fuck man. I can’t deal with this bullshit. I’m trying to chill, do my thing and be a quiet neighbor and these assholes are messing up my shit. It’s not right. They never acted like this before either. Are there like kitty kat downers or something I can give them? I hate living in an apartment.

Anyway, that’s about it. Some local dudes also played. They were okay, but they need to get their shit together and realize that an iPod is a poor man’s excuse for a backing track. I mean, the damn laptops in hip-hop are bad enough, but at least they usually carry decent sound cards. That’s just my thing though. It was all good. I enjoyed it. Now I have to get some sleep. Later Albuquerque and the rest of the world.

You can see more photos from the show at my flickr page here, or two the right of the screen there pops.

Sabertooth Cavity – En Lak Ech

Sabertooth Cavity
En Lack Ech
SickSickSick

For the past two months, I have been spending my time in unemployment purgatory trying to crack the Albuquerque, DIY, fuck bar culture music scene. It has not been an easy task to say the least. There are several obstacles I see that prevents Albuquerque, nicely placed between Phoenix and Texas, from thriving. Most importantly is a civic government that is both conservative and paranoid creating a lot of obstacles for young people to see music. Most bar venues are 21+ and often offer free entry with no cover. This prevents kids from seeing local and touring DIY bands, thus not eliciting grand ideas of  creating one’s own scene. Further there seems to be a rather manana type attitude in the belief that everything will happen later. There seems to be a want, but not a drive in a scene that seems fairly fractured.

I wrote earlier about a space called Small Engine, which seemed promising. I haven’t quite cracked it’s purpose yet, as they only seem to offer a monthly show. But behind that scene are some interesting, local artists who are, in some capacity as I have yet to fully realize, creating their own world. Sabertooth Cavity is a band that seems connected to this collective. And after being a band for nearly six years, they have released a blistering, debut album, En Lak Ech.

Maybe the manana attitude pays off around here. I admit, I have a serious OCD problem. I’m from the land of instant gratification, but a lack of such gratification is not present upon the multiple listens. In fact, I am kind of pissed off at myself for not going to see them on Sunday night at Small Engine. I had some shit to do, but if I had been less inclined to embrace this laid back culture, I might have been able to do both. But such is life. It was in fact the curiosity of the band and the space that led me to their bandcamp page for a PAID DOWNLOAD (yes I actually paid for some music in my unemployed state of existence) of said album. It’s pretty awesome.

The music contained on En Lak Ech is pretty fucked up and funky as shit. Sure, in between saucy space rock jams, this quartet laces the recording with noise interludes of feedback and horn playing, but when they lay down the groove, watch out your ass doesn’t start inappropriately shaking in public. This music has bottom, it has soul and swank, even in its hyperactive child, full on rock throttle. Center track “Duke City Shuffle” may be have a squelching layer of guitar buzz on top, but the foundation is sex drenched bass and drums at frantic speeds. It’s chock full of 70′s bravado funk and a bit spastic like some prog-rock hybrid. But it’s tight as all hell. The slight buzz/hum of Saxophone underlying in the extended riff session that brings the song to a close is such a perfect little flavoring. “Pisachi y Diablerist” has some total Bad Brains type action going on in the opening guitar parts before Sabertooth Cavity just sorta spazzes out, brains and blood all over the place, feet slipping in the violence.

This is the kind of shit I’m looking for. I don’t write about this because music is an academic pursuit. I don’t lay it all out about what I am into because I think I am cool. I’m a fucking nerd, on the outskirts of normal, functioning society. It’s what separates me from my modest, middle class upbringing. If I spent any of this energy on the pursuit of self-preservation, concerned about the maintenance of my future, I wouldn’t even be in this city. But lets face it, all these words are about how I am a dork, looking for the next fucked up fix. Sabertooth Cavity are the type of band I want to be into, that a scene can be built around. This is where it’s at. Now if it could just happen a little more often.