Wednesday, September 25, 2013

GRAVEBOUND - "Stabbing Contest" - Tape - 2010


   Hardcore is a large corner of the punk world that I know very little about. I leave that up to my tape blogging friend with the long beard and the full back tattoo of Willie Nelson. I just know what I like and I like GRAVEBOUND. They probably take elements of bands that people like and do things with it it that are cool and different. Some people might use words like "sick" or "brutal" to describe their sound. The philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein once famously said, "If a lion could talk, we would not understand him." This is similar to how I feel when I'm stuck near a conversation between two or more men (and, yes, it is almost always men) discussing different aspects of the world of DIY hardcore punk. I don't get the references and don't know what the other bands sound like. DROPDEAD? I'm sure they're great. I saw 'em once, but walked out after two songs. INFEST? I went to see FUNERAL CONE instead. It's not really my world, but I dip my toes in from time to time with bands like IRON LUNG, REPLICA, NO STATIK and GRAVEBOUND.
   GRAVEBOUND is the kind of shit I listen to when I want to punch my fist all the way through a cop's head into the wall behind them. It sounds a city being destroyed, taking out the posers, the sycophants and psychic vampires. It sounds like success wrapped in utter failure. It probably sounds like noisy, downtuned hardcore bands I've never heard before.
   I was in Chattanooga for (what I thought was) their last show ever (I was wrong, but they're done now), near the front of the room, I half-expected to be taken out by a room of wildly flailing men (and yes, it was almost all men), but I was wrong. The room just kind of throbbed and sweatily oozed as the band destroyed their set. They sounded about as good as a band can when they play in a 100 degree concrete box in the middle of a heat wave, but they were also one of the bands I enjoyed the most on that day that was chock full of heavy hitters. Download and destroy.


No comments: