Review ’em All: Genghis Tron, Dream Weapon

A mountain? A tower? Maybe a ship? Regardless, there is something vaguely apocalyptic about Trevor Naud’s artwork.

Unboard the house, Genghis Tron are back.¹ It’s been a while – when the Tron told the world they’d be taking a break, it was via the medium of MySpace, and Board Up the House proved to be a fitting title for their *checks notes* 2008 (!) album.

On Dream Weapon Nick Yacyshyn (Sumac/Baptists) has replaced the drum machine and Tony Wolski (The Armed) has taken the place of vocalist Mookie Singerman. Although, sadly, this means that there’s no one in Genghis Tron called Mookie anymore (and there’s still no bass guitar), I am stoked to be hearing a new album by the Tron after all this time; they combined the extremities of metal, grindcore and IDM to devastating, hypnotic effect on Dead Mountain Moth (2006) and Board Up The House. As ever with great expectations, this could also pay out the other way; when I first heard the self–titled lead single, the lack of choppy, glitchy riffs, in favour of looping synth arpeggios, and the change to exclusively clean vocals, initially left me cold. But with repeat listens, Dream Weapon proves to be a compelling listen without attempting to be Board Up The House Part II.

Genghis Tron still have the space age, cyberpunk vibe that their name belies and that their looping, hypnotic synths provided (and continue to provide). The softer, drone–y, semi–human vocals which typified the more hypnotic sections of BUTH (I Won’t Come Back Alive being a great example) are now taken to the fore – only one part of one track (Ritual Circle) features screaming.

As mentioned, the drum machine has been chucked out of the window in favour of a human, and Yacyshyn doesn’t squander the opportunity to play some pushy, energetic lines, even reminding me of John Bonham on closing track Great Mother. The riffs feel less guitar–centric, but the songs still have a sense of propulsion, and even when it’s just a single looping synth there’s a lot of energy.

On BUTH it felt like Genghis Tron were telling a story in a very abstract way, a la ISIS’ Oceanic. Likewise, on Dream Weapon it feels like they are not quite letting you in on a secret, whilst a threat lurks just beneath the surface:

Crystal clear
Just like envy
All our skies turning green
Rising wind
Bristling trauma
Search for shelter
Heed the storm

(Ritual Circle)

This strikes just the right balance of abstraction and narrative; the artwork features ladders and stairwells, and the lopsided mountain looks a bit like a ship going down. If Dali was around, you’d definitely see him twiddling his moustache at his local Genghis Tron show.

I’m not sure that Dream Weapon is, truly, a metal album; although I tend to think of the Tron as a Hydra Head band,² a closer comparison would be Zombi’s minimalist Escape Velocity, rather than to bands like Cave In, Pelican or the aforementioned ISIS. If anything, it is more metal–adjacent, heavy without possessing the sonic extremities of Board Up The House.

Dream Weapon is out on Relapse Records now.

1. I’ve waited a long time to say that.

2. Genghis Tron have never released music through Hydra Head, they just sound like the sort of sonic mavericks who might have.

Yob Song By Song: Nothing To Win

Foster on the right. Photo credited to James Rexroad.

Yob: Song by Song is a series of articles that examines each and every Yob song in chronological manner. This one is on Nothing To Lose, the second track of their seventh album Clearing The Path To Ascend.

Whereas opening track In Our Blood rolled in like fog, gloomy and slow, Nothing To Win, much like that time your idiot cousin Earl put the tractor through the barn door again, absolutely slams in, with Travis Foster playing a rolling tom drum pattern underneath Scheidt’s tremolo picking. Drumming in doom doesn’t have to be merely perfunctory (Bill Ward, anyone?), but Yob’s rhythm section have generally taken the backstage and let frontman Mike Scheidt lead the way. Here, Foster has a moment to shine, driving forward a simple riff.

This is an excessively fast song by Yob’s normal standards – in fact, this is Yob’s fastest–ever song, avoiding the so–so mid–tempos of Ether in favour of a more engaging, high–speed charge. This momentum is maintained, with the exception of a couple of bars here and there, for nearly eight minutes, when it launches into a lurching mid–section bass drop.

Question: if it’s fast, can it still be doom metal – a defining characteristic of which is its slowness? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because tempo doesn’t dictate the quality of the music, but it’s interesting to see how delivery transcends the parameters of style – after all, the second half of Iron Man is quite fast, but no one doubts Black Sabbath’s credentials. Regardless, Nothing To Win paces the whole of the album well, sitting between the aforementioned In Our Blood and the brooding Unmask the Spectre.

Another interesting tension is that we’re two tracks into a four–track album called Clearing the Path to Ascend – a rather new age title – and this feels like quite a negative album;

Fury let loose

straight into a noose

Clearing the path to ascend? The only thing clearing a path is Earl’s tractor.

Review ’em All: Eyehategod, A History of Nomadic Behavior

Another new decade, a new liver and a new Eyehategod album. Artwork by Gary Mader and Mike IX Williams.

Cerebral music is great and all, but the charm (for lack of a better word) of Eyehategod (besides their name) is that they don’t overthink it. What this translates to is an intensity, and as with their previous five albums, A History of Nomadic Behavior is relentless – straight in with Built Beneath the Lies, it’s off the cuff with a scrappy, punk undercurrent and a grubby blues influence, fast then slow, steady then off–kilter.

Even in metal circles EHG are not for everyone, and A History of Nomadic Behavior probably isn’t going to convert any doubters. However, nor is it the same fare as their five previous offerings; whereas vocalist Mike IX Williams previously sounded like he was making noises which sounded a bit like words, on AHONB his screaming now has a clarity whilst still retaining that half–resigned, half–pissed off quality (Current Situation is a particularly good example). This is good, because the lyrics have a weird poetry to them:

Low rise grieving

selfish stagnant

culture falling

weeping horses

(The Outer Banks)

or, alternatively:

I live in a hole in the ground

I live in a hole in the ground

motherfucker

(Circle of Nerves)

Williams sure does hate a lot of things (‘Fight your way to work/fight your way to school/every day every day every day’ – Every Thing, Every Day) and the music is hand in glove with these lyrics. This is drummer Aaron Hill’s second album*, and he continues with the lopsided feel that former drummer Joey LaCaze did to make Confederacy of Ruined Lives and Take As Needed for Pain staples of the sludge genre. Jimmy Bower is the sole guitarist now, and his syncopated guitar playing, especially when the blues influence emerges, is – if you can dig it – a pleasure to behold, with Smoker’s Piece being a great example of the feel that EHG never lose, even at their fastest and most vicious.

Much like doom, sludge is easy to play, but hard to play well. Even though EHG have toned down the vocals a bit, AHONB is no point of entry into this most misanthropic of subgenres.

* Correction – this is Hill’s first album with EHG. LaCaze featured post–humously on their 2014 self–titled debut.