Bastard Noise / The Endless Blockade

Bastard Noise / The Endless Blockade: The Red ListThe Red List (2010)
20 Buck Spin

Reviewer Rating: 2.5

Contributed by: GlassPipeMurderGlassPipeMurder
(others by this writer | submit your own)
Published on August 17th 2010Noise and grindcore, noise and grindcore: go together just like early Warsore. This I tell ya, brother... The Red List, a split between Bastard Noise and the Endless Blockade, does it in a totally different way, though. Everything is much more controlled and orchestrated with hypertechnical rhyth.

Noise and grindcore, noise and grindcore: go together just like early Warsore. This I tell ya, brother...

The Red List, a split between Bastard Noise and the Endless Blockade, does it in a totally different way, though. Everything is much more controlled and orchestrated with hypertechnical rhythms and an electronic ambience that moves from annoying to punishing with various shades in between.

Bastard Noise is a side project of powerviolence pioneers Man Is the Bastard on the cusp of their 20-year anniversary. Often joined by guest musicians, their five contributions to this split are solely the work of Bastard Noise main members Eric Wood, Bill Nelson and Danny Walker.

"Movement Two" is the best Bastard Noise track, a violent, noisy, but technically sound instrumental that twists and weaves with complex time signatures in between all-out hammering hardcore. "Fallen Species" is a pretty cool progressive hardcore song that manages to stay fresh even at seven minutes while the lyrics convey a rather bleak outlook, as they do on most of the tracks: "Dead nucleus! Inside the worm chamber / Applaud disease, make it flourish with each breath / Scanners are among us now / Mind wars to the death! / Resist blackened greed / To all mutants on their way to death." The rest of the songs are either too long, or have too many obnoxious vocals like "U.S.A. Today" which is essentially sputtering white noise and Gollum-like growls. "Mutant World of Shame / Underworld" is a fairly good technical-grind-hardcore track, but the vocals are a little much to stomach at times.

Toronto, Canada's the Endless Blockade provide three tracks here. One "14+ minute modern power-violence epic" and two remixed tracks. The "modern power-violence epic" "Deuteronomy" is for the most part what one would expect, with plenty of blast beats, heavy, sludgy parts, but with quite a fair bit of noisy noodling in between the straightforward beginning and ending. "Advanced Directive" is an extremely abrasive remix that sounds like a long powerviolence song that was chopped and screwed by Paul Wall. But it's still better than the remix of "Model 49 Rebreather" which is literally nothing more than 15 minutes of the same monotonous static. How it qualifies as a remix I have no clue.

If you're a slave to noise, tech-grind, or extremely drawn out powerviolence, there's probably plenty to like on The Red List. But most readers probably won't find much to salvage from this niche release of underground extreme music.

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Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not respon sible for them in any way. Seriously.

GlassPipeMurder (August 19, 2010)

there isn't much on this release i would call 'hardcore.'

thus_spoke_sean (August 19, 2010)

The Endless Blockade are one of my favorite bands, but I did not really enjoy this release. Too much noise for my own taste.

The Paul Wall remark is very fitting for that song.

However: "The Red List, a split between Bastard Noise and the Endless Blockade, does it in a totally different way, though." ....That, is not a sentence.

slowstupidhungry (August 19, 2010)

Actually I misread your comment. So I retract the "fuck you." But you are still very obviously a freshcut with little to no knowledge of underground hardcore. For whatever that's worth. Who cares

slowstupidhungry (August 19, 2010)

Whoa, gotta love it when ignorant douches get insecure and make blanket statements about what people "pretend to enjoy." Fuck you.

Tudor (August 19, 2010)

That's your assumption, and exactly why this review is garbage.

GlassPipeMurder (August 18, 2010)

Should have been done by someone who at least has a basic grasp of the grind/noise/power electronics scene. Not that this album is all that great, but I would respect it more if it came from a reviewer with some comprehension or a frame of reference.

cool, well pass the word along to 20 Buck Spin that they should consider sending their promos to someone other than me. personally, i think most noise is a waste of disc space and i'm not going to pander to the 2% of punknews readers who are into it by pretending it isn't.

Tudor (August 18, 2010)

Bullshit review.

Should have been done by someone who at least has a basic grasp of the grind/noise/power electronics scene. Not that this album is all that great, but I would respect it more if it came from a reviewer with some comprehension or a frame of reference.

outbreak (August 18, 2010)

14 minute long powerviolence song? I thought long for powerviolence was anything over a minute

GlassPipeMurder (August 18, 2010)

i like bands like the Locust, Converge, Nasum, Melt Banana...plenty of abrasive bands.

it's the pointless(?) noise that really kills my buzz on albums like this, and the main reason why only half of this album is listenable (hence the 2 1/2 stars).

wentz_equals_death (August 17, 2010)

i understand the idea of target audiences, and that maybe punknews is stereotyped as endorsing one type of punk in general, but i'd like for these reviews to be less dismissive of our tastes -- you can just say "i'm no authority on this stuff, but this is what it sounds like" (which you did and i appreciate) and get rid of "if you like this stuff you'll like this stuff" because that is kind of obvious.

for what it's worth, i now listen to bands like the locust, torche, arab on radar, boris, melt-banana because of this site so we're not all beard-wielding HWM disciples (they're cool too of course)

iamgodsongs (August 17, 2010)

this doesn't read at all like a 2 1/2 star review.

i am pleasantly looking forward to listening to this.

Lawnday (August 17, 2010)

I'm not sure why it's a bad thing for a niche album to be a niche album. Some of the best Bastard Noise material in recent memory, as well as the new LP. Also pleasantly surprised by The Endless Blockade.