Black Army Jacket
Closed Casket
Black Box Recordings 004
If Black Army Jacket are remembered for anything at all, it’s for being one of the dozens of bands drummer Dave Witte has passed through, including Human Remains, Discordance Axis, Melt-Banana, and currently East West Blast Test (his collaboration-by-mail with No Use For A Name’s Chris Dodge) and Municipal Waste. Witte is probably the greatest blast-beat player alive, a guy who manages to inject a surprising intricacy into a genre that all too frequently dissolves into mere bash-and-screech.
In addition to pounding the snare like a nail-gun set on full auto, Witte gets to play in a surprisingly groove-like manner for the first 14 tracks of this disc. Black Army Jacket didn’t reflexively take their grind to the same extremes that Discordance Axis, Circle of Dead Children, or Benumb explored, though they were certainly capable of sending listeners into moshpit spasms. They were a little more old-school than that, as influenced by Discharge as by Napalm Death. There are quite a few ear-catchingly punky riffs here, and many of the songs are slow enough that thrash-trained listeners will actually be able to decipher the lyrics, if they so choose.
Closed Casket is a gathering of 50 tracks from demo tapes, split EPs, compilations, and previously unreleased recordings. (The first seven songs on the CD, probably its greatest selling point, were supposed to be a 7” on Relapse Records back in 1999 or so, but the band broke up before that could happen.) If you’ve heard their 222 album or their split CD with Hemlock, both still available shockingly cheap on Amazon, or if you’ve always meant to check these guys out, or even if you just need one more memorial snapshot of late-90s underground East Coast grindcore, this disc will make you happy.
aw shit, this looks fantastic!! Thanks for hipping me to this stuff.
Posted by: marc at September 27, 2005 5:46 PMLast time I saw Dave a few months ago, he showed me his newest tattoo: "fast" written in Japanese near his ankle. Most appropriate tattoo I've ever seen. I also remember the other year at a Melt-Banana gig he had "play faster" (if I recall correctly) written with an ordinary ballpen on his snare drumhead. Ah, the joys of velocity. A great drummer and a great person.
I'll have to swing by the Relapse record shop in Philly and pick this one up asap. I finally checked out a few Discordance Axis albums recently, great stuff. The East West Blast Test disc is a monster, my favorite of any Witte recording I've heard. I recommend that one to anyone who wants something more creative and unusual than the idiomatic grindcore/metal/hardcore of other projects like DA and Burnt by the Sun.
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at September 28, 2005 8:27 AMBurnt By The Sun's Live At The Relapse Contamination Festival EP is better than any of their studio efforts (though their final album, The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good, is pretty pleasing). There's a second EWBT album on the way on Ipecac, by the way, with lots of guest stars including Yakuza's saxist Bruce Lamont on one track.
Posted by: pdf at September 28, 2005 10:52 AM>>>Witte is probably the greatest blast-beat player alive
oh phil...actually probably not. however, witte does have short hair which seems to make statements like this come forward more often from non-metalhead.
i saw witte perform with melt-banana about 4 years ago and wasn't impressed. he wasn't bad, but i found his performance to completely lack any sign of emotion or feeling. it was precise to the point of being bland, not to mention that i don't find his drumming to contain much in the way of nuance as it is.
if anybody actually wants to hear faster/better blast beats check out john longstreth from origin/angelcorpse, war metal barbarian j.read, the drummers from foetopsy/brodequin/pustulated and about a million others.
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Posted by: weasel walter at December 11, 2005 6:47 PMFlo Mounier from Cryptopsy I would recommend for blast beat drummers.
Posted by: Tanner at December 12, 2005 2:44 PMFlo Mounier from Cryptopsy I would recommend for blast beat drummers.
Posted by: Tanner at December 12, 2005 2:44 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................