Jesus Piece – ...So Unknown | Album Review

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Century Media Records

There’s a spotlight on hardcore these days that is undeniable. Even if you’re only passively following the genre, it’s hard to avoid the hype. What’s interesting about this broader attention is that, historically, heavier music has been a much more underground style and therefore hasn’t typically attracted as many open eyes and ears. Nowadays, mostly thanks to TikTok and other social media, people don’t have to try as hard to discover art that falls outside the usual commercial guidelines of what is consumable and proven to sell to the masses. The combination of the “Turnstile Effect” and social media algorithms means that people who never would’ve previously considered engaging with the scene now have a foot in the door. To top it all off, there’s a virtually endless stream of live footage exposing countless bands to new audiences, maybe even more than the albums those bands release. All of this feels considered, understood, and taken into account on Jesus Piece’s heavy and determined second LP …So Unknown.

From the second the record starts, there is no breathing room. “In Constraints” kicks things off with vocalist Aaron Heard roaring the opening lines by himself for a matter of seconds before the full band stampedes in behind him, and things don’t let up once from there. Track after track, we’re beaten, pummeled, battered, and bruised by crushing riffs, thunderous drums, harrowing growls, and screams spitting pissed-off anthems of exhaustion and fighting through malaise. In all honesty, the relentlessness of it all washed over me with little effect the first few times I sat with the album. It goes hard. It goes very hard, but it didn’t connect much deeper for me at first. However, I know myself well enough to know I can be a hard sell. I have a joke amongst my friends where I claim that I don’t like movies anymore due to how picky and over convention I am. I didn’t dislike this record by any means, but something felt a bit distant. It wasn’t until I threw the album on while working out that things began to click for me a bit more.

What is apparent on …So Unknown is that Jesus Piece have written a conscious and active album that speaks directly to the crowds they’re playing to and will be playing to in the future. These crowds will range from the TikTok kids who are there because they saw a wild video online and want to experience it for themselves to 30-somethings like me who’ve always had a foot in the scene. I’m not going to front and say I throwdown in the pit. I can’t lie and claim I have a history of doing so whatsoever. I’ve been going to heavy shows since I was 14, but even in my younger days, I always admired them at arm’s length. I like a rowdy audience and a good crowd surf as much as the next guy, but the inherent violence that comes with a proper pit isn’t something I’ve felt compelled to experience firsthand. I’m content as a present observer. These songs weren’t written for me. They’re first and foremost written for the band members to expel and push themselves to darker and heavier depths, but they’re also clearly written to pop the fuck off live. These songs were written to soundtrack bodies in motion.

“FTBS” may be the best example of this, with its driving pace and call to “fuck the bullshit” if you don’t like what you’re hearing. Or take a song like “Fear of Failure,” whose sinister opening riff moves effortlessly into the crushing, doom-paced breakdown of the ending. There’s not a complacent moment on the record. Jesus Piece see what’s in front of them and are attacking it head-on. Every song needs to hit, so every song hits. The only real instance of any kind of reprieve is found in “Silver Lining,” a track that finds Heard ruminating on the deep love he has for his child. Even so, it would still be the hardest track on a lesser band’s album. 

I truly feel that any song from …So Unknown could’ve been a single, and that feels by design. There are countless Finn McKenty-types who will wax poetic about how “the album” is dead and the algorithm is capital G God these days but as much as I hate to admit it, they have a point. As a musician myself, I understand the reality of releasing music in 2023. Singles are king, but albums still matter, and it’s comforting to see a band understand and appreciate this. …So Unknown offers a tight 28 minutes of hardcore, and while it can feel a bit one note at times, it really grew on me even in the short time I’ve spent with it, and I am glad I gave it the time and space to do so. Putting this record into the context of physical movement really amplified my experience and has made me eager to witness it the way it was intended - in a room surrounded by a few hundred people all climbing over each other and screaming, “FUCK THE BULLSHIT!”

Christian Perez is a member of the band Clot and is always trying his best to exist gently.

Full of Hell & Primitive Man – Suffocating Hallucination | Album Review

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Closed Casket Activities

Finding comfort in expressions of grief, anger, pain, and disgust has become commonplace in the modern era. It isn’t a comfort that evokes feelings of peace, necessarily, but more so a sense of understanding and even community. The world we’ve been sentenced to inhabit has been gutted by capitalistic greed, and society is being consumed by corporate, political, and religious zealots. Bigotry and hate flow freely from the mouths of these cretins, often to roaring applause, and any sort of resistance is violently snuffed out by militarized cops who stand for property over people. It’s difficult to trust your own blood these days, let alone your neighbors or a stranger. Metal bands Primitive Man and Full of Hell capture that tension and the overwhelming dread of modern life within the pummeling walls of disquieting noise and aggression on their collaborative album Suffocating Hallucination.

It’s easy to let the noise of it all wash over you and not dig deeper. That’s a lot of what I love about it. That overwhelming wall of noise is part of the comfort. It’s all so massive. Experiencing it live, really feeling it, is like immersion therapy. But to leave it there is to miss the bleak, poetic despair of the lyrics. You won’t be able to decipher what’s being said without having the words in front of you. However, following along as the album unfolds truly enhances the experience and allows for that understanding, or commiseration, to be reached.

“Today a cherub, whose hand I held, spit in my face,” opens the record and sets the unflinching tone of what’s to come. For five tracks that span over half an hour, Primitive Man and Full of Hell conjure chaos through vocals, riffs, percussion, and noise. While this sonically feels more in line with the towering doom metal that Primitive Man are known for, Full of Hell’s contributions are undeniable on every track. This is most clear on “Bludgeon,” a 25-second grinder that acts as a perfectly placed centerpiece with the lyrics reading, “Nothing to hold on to that has not been killed from being set free.” The effort to effectively communicate such emotions often goes unremarked when discussing bands of this ilk, but I’d be remiss not to shine a spotlight. I cannot read lines like the ones above and not feel a punch to the gut that forces me to reflect. The world is a horrifying place for a lot of people right now. Someone you once knew and loved is now unrecognizable in their hate and delusions. The government is actively suppressing the existence of trans people. It’s endless. It’s suffocating.

“Undefinable suffering: punishment built for the spiritually blind. Crushing weight of nothing. Now a gift to all his children, the absence of non-existence. Worse than hell.”

My history with both Full of Hell and Primitive Man began in 2017 with the respective releases of their albums Trumpeting Ecstasy and Caustic. At the time, I was engrossed in the emo scene, but I’d cut my teeth on hardcore/hardcore-adjacent bands, so wading into these grindy, doomy waters wasn’t uncommon. While I was open to and familiar with plenty of music I would deem as “heavy,” I can pinpoint my first listen of Caustic as a turning point in my life. I’d never heard anything quite like it. I’d certainly never heard anything that was heavy in that way. The music was ginormous and punishing in a way I’d never experienced before. The vocals were guttural shrieks straight from hell, with the lyrics and artwork matching the barren, dilapidated ruins in which the album exists. This isn’t heavy in a fun way. This is devastation expressed through the loudest, darkest sounds imaginable. Once the door was opened, there was no closing it. I was hooked, and it didn’t take long for me to shed my skin and return to the heavy realm I grew up on, only now it was meaner, bleaker, and heavier than ever before. 

And rightfully so. Caustic, as well as Trumpeting Ecstasy, felt urgent upon their release as a spotlight was shown on the struggles of life that hundreds of thousands of people endure on a daily basis in 2016 with the election of Trump (at least in the States, specifically). Hell, in my personal life, 2016 is the kickoff year for a mountain of strife that would fall upon me and my family. I didn’t intentionally seek out meaner, bleaker, and heavier music, but when I found it, it connected like nothing else. I hadn’t cognitively processed or addressed my afflictions when I dove into modern death/grind/doom/metal, but the feelings it pulled from me were palpable, and the power was undeniable. I was converted. I had found my church.

Primitive Man and Full of Hell have both been at it for over a decade, and they’ve been prolific from the get-go. Since their albums in 2017 alone, Full of Hell has released two LPs, a collaborative album with The Body, an EP, and a split with Intensive Care. Primitive Man released an LP, two splits (one with Unearthly Trance and one with Hell), the Steel Casket demo, and the Insurmountable EP, which is longer than most albums, including Suffocating Hallucination. Through their output, they’ve consistently proven that they seek exploration and collaboration in their work. Both bands began with more of a straightforward approach and have evolved over time to the behemoths they are today by incorporating more harsh noise and experimental soundscapes. The two crossing paths for Suffocating Hallucination is a logical pairing. They’re at the height of their powers and firing on all cylinders making the album tight and ripe for repeat listens. Passages like the hypnotic ending of “Trepanation for Future Joys” and the instrumental “Dwindling Will'' showcase how well their sensibilities meld together and how they’re still able to be a looming giant without utilizing their entire arsenal.

Since finding them years back, both bands have continued to draw from the well of brutal inspiration to exhilarating results, and their first collaboration together is no different. I’m curious to see how this union rubs off of the two bands in their solo efforts moving forward. What’s evident is that connection through dissonance can yield frighteningly compelling results. There’s a lot to be found within all the noise. The anguish is communal, and coming together in shared desperation can produce captivating art if only you take the time and dig a bit deeper to understand it. 

Christian Perez is a member of the band Clot and is always trying his best to exist gently.

Xiu Xiu – Ignore Grief | Album Review

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Polyvinyl Records

Whether one wishes to acknowledge it or not, grief touches us all. It can happen in an instant or years down the line when you least expect it, but it’s going to take you by the hand, or by the throat, and force you to confront life after loss. Grief is unbothered by time, plans, and ego and often materializes on a whim, silently informing our days. It’s subtle and abrasive, ambiguous and comprehensible, and painfully common. Your grief is not special. Your pain is not unique. Your suffering is universal. The heavy malaise that accompanies grief and how it rests on the spine of those it visits is palpable when listening to Xiu Xiu’s brooding and brilliant new album, Ignore Grief.

“You did this to yourself, is all they will choose to remember.”

If you’re familiar with Xiu Xiu, the landscape this album inhabits is not new, but the territory that is explored here is honed and focused in a way that feels fresh. It is at once exhilarating and truly unnerving. Previous albums like Angel Guts: Red Classroom and Girl with Basket of Fruit come to mind when reaching for touchstone comparisons. Both of those albums are dark, cacophonous, and confrontational in ways that keep most at arm’s length. Ignore Grief is no different at face value, but as the album unfolds, something feels darker, more sinister, and unrelenting. 

“Why do I happen to me?”

Xiu Xiu has always had a reputation for being shocking and pushing boundaries, whether that be lyrically or sonically. Their work has undoubtedly warranted those descriptors, but I’ve always struggled with any notion that it is shock for the sake of shock. It is unlikely that there are many passing or casual fans of the band, so the authenticity of the material should be evident at this point. Jamie Stewart has helmed this project for over 20 years and mined deep within himself (and the lives of others) to unearth and confront the macabre tales that we all wish did not exist yet we all experience. The fact that he’s still striking gold is both exciting as a fan of his art and heavy as a human, acknowledging that grief ripples forever. Always has and always will.

“You aren’t the first person to leave me stuffed in a trash can. I am not the first person you have stuffed in the trash.”

The opener, “The Real Chaos Cha Cha Cha,” sets the tone, quickly pulling us into what feels like a haunted house. I swear this track, the ending especially, evokes all the emotions that the film Skinamarink was trying to elicit and does so in a fraction of the time. (I’d like to note that this is not a dig on Skinamarink. I quite enjoyed that film.) Longtime band member and key collaborator Angela Seo takes the lead on vocals here for what I believe is the first time and does so for half the songs on the album. To say her contributions here are crucial is an understatement. The back-and-forth between Angela’s and Jamie’s vocals from track to track makes for such an absorbing experience. It creates a riveting energy that kept me engaged throughout my repeated listens. And that’s the kicker about this album. It’s horrific, bleak, and suffocating, yet I found it endlessly listenable. If that says more about me than the album, so be it. My grief-stricken being needed something like this. Hail Xiu Xiu for delivering.

“In my secret heart, torn asunder, I wonder why?”

Jamie sharing vocals is actually something the band has explored before. Their previous album, 2021’s OH NO, was comprised entirely of duets with people that Jamie credited for supporting him through an incredibly trying period of his life. Anglea was one of those people, and their track “Fuzz Gong Fight” is arguably my favorite track from the album. Listening back, it really previews just how well Ignore Grief is going to work, even if the focus and subject matter are vastly different between the albums. “This is a record of halves,” reads the opening of the album’s press notes. It goes on to detail how half the songs are an “attempt to turn the worst life has offered into some kind of desperate shape that does something, anything, other than grind and brutalize their hearts and memory within these stunningly horrendous experiences.” A noble effort, for sure. The other half is fiction, drawing from the tradition of old rock’n’roll “Teen Tragedy” songs. It all blends together in a hurricane of discomfort… But storms can be relaxing, right?

“A body that invites violence.”

Anglea also takes the reigns on the pulsing “Esquerita, Little Richard,” which repeats the album title over a disquieting beat before slowing down to a dreary synth line that draws to mind the feelings of the early work of Harmony Korine. The album truly feels cinematic, but that word doesn’t quite capture the whole picture. The cinema Ignore Grief strives for is more in line with the Dogme 95 guidelines, David Lynch, and found footage horror rather than the grand pageantry the descriptor typically evokes. At times, it feels like this record is something that shouldn’t be listened to. It’s raw. It’s bleak. It’s honest. It’s a pure expression of empathy only achieved through lived experience. There is understanding and a chance at peace in the sharing and admission of pain. There can be peace, but not without reckoning.

“So much pressure to feel joy or even say joy.”

The production on display here is pristine. The textures and layers of sounds continue to reveal themselves, and to call this Xiu Xiu’s “jazz” album wouldn’t be a stretch whatsoever. The brass and woodwinds shine whenever they're present, and are thankfully quite present throughout. Whether it be in the patience of “Tarsier, Tarsier, Tariser, Tarsier” or the frantic patterns of “Pahrump,” every instance scratches an itch. I’d be remiss not to note the percussion as well because Xiu Xiu is now a trio with Jamie and Angela enlisting David Kendrick (Sparks, Devo) to take over drums and percussion on the album. He’s a righteous fit, making himself a welcome addition to the freak rhythms and dark sonic soundscapes we’ve all come to appreciate from the band.

“A black hole is everything a star longs to be.”

The album closes with “For M,” an 8+ minute song sectioned into five parts that really encapsulates the breadth of the overall experience. It doesn’t get quite as pissed as a track like “Border Factory,” but consider it a true denouement. After everything the album drags you through, it still made me write, “Horrible - horrifying (Pt. III) - really unnerving” in my notes. That was all while drawing a complimentary comparison to the trudging pace and style of Bohren & der Club of Gore. There is so much to unpack and chew on. They’ve crafted one of their most urgent, moving, and present albums with Ignore Grief, and like the well of grief itself, the depths of this album will continue to be explored and discovered as time ticks on.

“What is your fondest wish?”

Xiu Xiu tapped into something with Ignore Grief, and it certainly tapped into me. When I speak of the universal nature of grief, I obviously speak from experience. We all have experience. I had a stroke when I was 24, and I lost my father the following year to a traumatic brain injury when a tram derailed and struck the vehicle he was in. These things, among many others, overwhelm and isolate me with their everpresent weight, but what I feel is not exclusive to my experience. My grief is not special. My pain is not unique. My suffering is universal. The heavy malaise that accompanies grief’s cyclical nature is palpable, and when it’s captured and presented in a way that proves there is understanding and proves there is life after loss, even through the constant strife that life piles on, that courage deserves recognition. Ignore grief all you want. It’ll be there when you’re ready.

Christian Perez is a member of the band Clot and is always trying his best to exist gently.

Narrow Head – Moments of Clarity | Album Review

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Run For Cover Records

Growing up, I was raised in a pretty conservative home, and more “extreme” forms of art were often tricky to explore. I often had to find bands that toed the line with songs I could play without frightening my parents while still scratching that heavy itch. The most effective route for this was ensuring the bands I wanted to listen to were Christian, or at least marketed as such. You see, the lack of a parental advisory sticker wasn’t enough. Linkin Park didn’t cuss on a proper album until Minutes to Midnight, well after my tastes had changed, but even still, I was not allowed to listen to them because their lyrics were deemed “too depressing.” Fair enough, I guess, but the point stands. I had to do the work to find music that I enjoyed and was permissible.

There’s been somewhat of a resurgence of bands settling into massive riffs and hazy, spacey vocals. The reunion albums of Quicksand and Hum, in addition to more recent efforts by bands like Fleshwater and Soul Blind, have been stirring up waves of wistful, reflective nostalgia within me. It's been comforting if a bit tough to nail down. I hadn’t been able to pinpoint exactly what about that sound had been affecting me so much until a passage on Narrow Head’s latest LP, Moments of Clarity, where the feeling became palpable. 

After eight tracks of driving shoegaze riffs (with plenty of 90’s alt and pop sensibility thrown in for good measure), the one-two punch of “Gearhead” and “Flesh & Solitude” kicked in, and I realized that this is exactly what my thirteen-year-old self loved and sought out. This kind of stuff is how I got to where I am today in both the music I create and consume.

From the opening strums of the loose strings on the grungy (and then pummeling) “Gearhead” to the harsh vocals and the chaotic last minute of “Flesh & Solitude,” the album becomes a different beast. A beast that I greatly appreciate as it allowed me to connect to a self I don’t consciously spend much time with. This isn’t the first instance of heaviness like this, though. The moody and crushing “Trepanation,” while not in the exact same vain, darkens things up in the first half of the record before shifting to the stoner’s pace of “Breakup Song,” a track that evokes the openness of a classic Doug Martsch cut mixed with the Pixies. 

The darkness permeates throughout even the less intense tracks. The thematic opener, “The Real,” feels both biting and earnest, with the chorus asking, “How good does it feel? / To be you / To be real” It brings to mind the aforementioned Hum reunion album Inlet in the best ways. Through infectious songs like the title track and “Caroline” or the palate-cleansing “The Comedown,” Narrow Head have crafted a cohesive collection of songs that really move with intention and weave a portrait that is reflective yet uninterested in dwelling. It certainly has highlights but is best digested as a whole. Sonny DiPerri’s (NIN, Protomartyr, My Bloody Valentine) production is stellar, and taking the record in from start to finish truly allows it to reveal itself, especially on repeated listens. There’s a lot to admire.

It’s often funny to recognize the steps you’ve taken to end up wherever you are. It’s comical that I consider P.O.D. to be the band that got me into heavy music, but it’s true. Their album Brown was instrumental in getting me into bands like Blindside, who led me to Underoath, who led me to Norma Jean, and so on and so forth. Hell, Brown honestly still holds up today. Tell me this track doesn’t fit perfectly in the current state of heavy music. A little bit of now, a little bit of then. Everything’s connected. As a kid, my search for exciting yet parentally palatable music led me to scour lyrics sheets and connect the dots of like-minded bands. While I’m no longer concerned if an album is considered depressing or if they say “fuck,” I’m mindful of the intention and the piece as a whole due to the necessity of paying attention to all the details. 

The sonic territory in which Moments of Clarity exists is familiar but fresh in the melding and execution. This is one of those stepping-stone albums that allows the depths of heavier music to be explored without pushing the listener too far out. It’s both catchy and introspective while also not shying away from being aggressive with walloping clarity. Narrow Head is part of an ilk that looks to the past, both externally and internally, in order to forge ahead and craft a future they wish to live in, and the results they’re yielding make it a pleasure to be along for the ride. 

Christian Perez is a member of the band Clot and a rabid record collector.