“Leeds-based foursome Blacklisters’ sophomore release Adult is a cynical punch in the face accompanied by a sardonic smile. An eruption of sickening bile gestated for years in pools of angst spat by generations of punk, hardcore, and noise bands.” If you’re like me and don’t like clowns, this cover creeps you out.
“Have you ever wondered what happens to the music nobody listens to? It implodes. It does not even make any noise. It simply withers unnoticed, forgotten, unwanted. Then there is the music that stays: that particular strain of artistic endeavor that appeals to the masses and (sometimes) the niches and that we are taught not to live without. Locrian are the natural evolution (some may say ‘consequence’) of the Chicago scene of the late 90s where acts like Tortoise, Isotope 217, and Gastr Del Sol flourished and kept the territory safe from the dying throes of grunge.” Alex thinks this album shouldn’t be left to implode into a black hole of apathy. In fact, he seems quite taken with this experimental fusion of drone, blackness and the kitchen sink.
Neurosis has been called many things over their storied career, from sludge to shoegaze to post-rock. Alex is here to examine these labels as he reviews Honor Found in Decay. He’s a deep thinker, that Alex.
It looks as if they were all wrong. For years, critics of all sorts have assumed that punk could not, and would not mix up with the likes of those who thought that the light at the end of the tunnel is a truck coming in their direction. I mean, the nihilist stance of bands such as The Sex Pistols and Discharge, their “new luddism,” aimed at destroying and denying progress for the lack of an acceptable alternative, undeniably struck a chord in the goth camp. But, if destruction would act as a unifier, the means to achieve it were indeed on the opposite ends of the spectrum. The passive, almost fatalistic melancholy of goth clashed (sometimes in more that one way) with the actively destructive attitude of punk. Could we ever imagine that a synthesis would have been possible? Not until 45 Grave and deathrock came about in the early 1980s. Fast-forward to 2012 and what we find is a band that combines Joy Division, Christian Death and Refused. The good news is that it does it terribly well. The bad news? Well, this time there isn’t any. Simply because a band that tries to add something to the menu can’t fail. And if it does it with such angst and power, then it means that there’s still hope for angry music in this world.
