yeah, i don't think this is grindcore, either. noise rock, maybe. it reminds me of late 80s ministry and early 90s nine inch nails - enough that i'm willing to call it industrial music. but it's really punk rock, first and foremost...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7b2LlbvAwQ
deathtokoalas
well, it's true. those "drill 'n' bass" beats spliced with guitars are 100% late 80s ministry, and they're really the central aspect of this disc. the difference is that ministry sampled the parts with synthesizers, and melt banana are using samplers in their floor pedals. it's really very much the same thing, from a compositional standpoint, and using quite similar technology.
listen, everything has a precursor. i used to think mid 90s download was utterly unique and virtually without influence. then i heard some collages by morton subotnick from the late 60s.
this doesn't take anything away from the disc. it's a creative record, and it's really unique in the existing musical climate. but, it has been done before, and quite some time ago at that.
i'd actually love to hear an industrial revival sound like this, rather than yet another skinny puppy knockoff. despite the technology not being exactly new, this is still quite forward thinking...
Matei Aaberg Kristiansen
ure right,this is not grindcore at all.It's just noise rock/experimental rock
deathtokoalas
personally, i think just about everything labeled grindcore is absolute rubbish. i was actually really surprised by how good this disc is.
AgentAlloy
Their earlier releases are more grindcore. They have been moving away from the genre since cell scape.
deathtokoalas
yeah. their earlier work is unlistenable garbage. that's why it was so surprising that this is so musical.
Matei Aaberg Kristiansen
if you want to know how grindcore sounds like search on yt : Exhumed-Gore Metal
deathtokoalas
no thanks.
nuke97
I read your response to Warpaint also. I like how you break down bands.
Caleb Richardson
I also like that. It's not often that I can find myself agreeing with someone who analyzes music. I thought ministry was a bit of a stretch but i do understand where features of both bands overlap. as for melt bana, i've always liked them. grindcore is not the best genre but it has it's gems.
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deathtokoalas
it's very clearly heavily influenced by reznor's broken/fixed and further down the spiral period, which had a lot of contributions from foetus and coil. you probably weren't born yet...
Dalton Swayze
I doubt they're influenced by Nine Inch Nails. They're not even somewhat industrial. Belive me, I am very familiar with NIN. When I was an angsty teenager in middleschool they were my favorite band. But this is nothing like NIN at all.
Caleb Richardson
If your speaking of the sound of this album specifically, I agree this doesn't sound like NIN to me either. However, it obviously does to some people. I couldn't even think of anything this really sounds similiar to. As for wether or not they we're influenced by NIN, we could totally just leave it up to melt banana to cite their influences and until then we will not know! I also, love these silly squeaky vocals.
deathtokoalas
i was somewhat obsessed with nin from about 94 to 99 or so, but due to the incredible level of abstraction and musicality and not due to the "angst". angst was the smashing pumpkins. nin, at the time, was pure anarchistic industrial noise-rock, reinterpreting the agitprop of 80s industrial through a filter of traditional music theory. there's like three "angsty" songs in his work before 1999. i did grow out of it, but it had more to do with the quality of reznor's work collapsing. if he were to release something with the same abstraction as his mid 90s work today, i'd be sure to listen to it (thing is, both members of coil are DEAD). i still listen to those records...
you can't talk about any kind of noise music released after 1995 without taking reznor's influence into account, especially the remix and soundtrack work. the quake soundtrack remains a landmark in the drone genre. and, even if the best work was done by outside artists (foetus, coil, aphex twin), those remix discs stand up better than virtually anything from the period, perhaps excluding the material that came out of the very tail end of dwayne goettel's life.
the combination of very fast punk drumming, sampled guitar riffs (i know melt banana samples in real-time on the floor, but it's the same process) and unusual sound effects was developed by ministry (land of rape and honey, mind is a terrible thing to taste) about 88-89 and picked up heavily by reznor on broken and bleeding into the downward spiral (although tds is really a pompous prog rock concept record. you're not supposed to take it seriously. it's exploring a character that is self-destructing.). melt banana have integrated some synth and drum influences from the later boredoms sound, some gazey influences (who knows from where, but it might be boris) and also maybe some pop influences from early synth-pop like devo, but it's the same basic formula that ministry came up with and is a direct conclusion of that thought process. you couldn't really plug anything here onto an existing ministry disc, but it comes off mildly as a transition disc between twitch and land of rape and honey, although the song structuring on this record is more organized and elaborate - bringing to mind reznor's work. there are multiple passages on the disc that bring to mind songs like "wish", "last", "gave up", "march of the pigs" and "happiness in slavery".
how one defines "industrial" is a contentious question. no, this isn't much like throbbing gristle or einsturzende neubauten. but, neither were ministry or nine inch nails. maybe a better term is cyberpunk, which is mildly interchangeable with industrial but not synonymous to it. there's an argument that fucking sonic youth were cyberpunk, right? concept records about gibson novels and whatnot.
but if you're going to define something - cyberpunk or industrial or something else - as "fast electronic drumming with glitchy electronics and catchy/raunchy guitar riffs put together in a punk rock fashion" than that something includes all three of the aforementioned bands.
you need to be careful when you ask bands for influences. it's a marketing thing. they'll regularly flat out lie to you. i do it, too. i don't cite tears for fears very often :D.
Caleb Richardson
you dont say??? *downloading tears for fears discography*
deathtokoalas
there's a certain brilliance in their early work that is very much worth exploring, it's just that it's not socially acceptable to drop them.
Nicolas Adjignon
Melt Banana sounds like Melt Banana.
Meyepadwe
What?
deathtokoalas
search for ministry - the mind is a terrible thing to taste.
it's not identical. but you can clearly hear that this comes from that, through whatever intermediaries.
Meyepadwe
I've seen you before on a different vid.
deathtokoalas
i don't want to read the thread. was it this thread where i pointed out the heavy boredoms influence? but it's still very, very close to late 80s industrial music, just with more of a major key new wave style slant...or maybe a goofy white zombie carnival sound...
oh. yeah. i'm all over the place.
