Various Artists
Noisecore: Volume 1
(X Sight)
For awhile when I was in college, I was into the hard-ass techno. I listened to a lot of gabber and whatnot and for awhile I bought stuff that bordered or punished industrial music in style and and substance. A lot of the stuff that I ended up listening to wasn't that good, and eventually I completely grew out of the phase, but I've still always had that side of me that enjoyed a ton of distortion over the beats, harsh noises, and wicked samples.
Recently, I've heard a lot about a new generation of hardcore techno artists like Doormouse and DJ Tron, and not only their hard-edged music, but their antics as well (like throwing raw meat at the crowd during a rave). The side of me that figured it would suck always won out, however, and I never really tried very hard to get my hands on something. I wondered how far things had really progressed since I'd been so into things about 4 years back. Recently, I ran across this mix disc at a fairly reasonable price and it had all of the above mentioned artists on it, so I dropped the cash and decided to take a gander at the new generation of hardcore techno artists.
Just looking at the opening four tracks on the disc, I knew that things were going to get down to business in a hurry. After the swirling, sample-laden "Intro," Doormouse warms things up with the tracks "Puke" and "Cum" before really tearing things out with, "Piss." The titles are funny in their juvenile humour sort of way and I'm not sure whether to take the hardcore shtick seriously or not, but considering that the very next track is called "Shit," maybe I shouldn't. After the straight-beat madness and body-fluid infatuation of the first 5 tracks, things slide into sort of a breakbeat with Sarin Assault's "Kutabase Hardcore." Some of the best tracks on the disc are the 1-2-3 punch of tracks by label-owner Joey Jupiter. After the bouncing, acid-tinged "Omega 9" (which was also the first release by the X Sight label, by the way), he gets even more wigged-out with a super-fast acid line in "Degenerate" and "Omega 10."
After a noise interlude by Doormouse himself, DJ Tron makes his first appearence on the disc with the simply named "Hell." Forgoing a beat, the track is instead a whirling mess of sampled screams and industrial machinery noises. Doormouse again pumps things up over 200 bpm with his track "Lambass" before DJ Tron returns with "Pray For Death." After a beginning that is sort of like the other track, a completely brutal beat comes into the mix that hovers somewhere between 180 and 240 bpm. Also sprinkled with odd b-movie samples and screams, the track is not only a dancefloor nightmare, but a speaker-huggers dream. The track closes out with several tracks of industrial noise sans beats before 8bit closes things out with a self-titled track that slams the lid on the disc.
Basically I got what I was expecting from the disc, which is hard beats, some strange samples and an overall sound that simply overwhelms before I can sit through the whole thing. Whereas most of the older stuff I've heard was more geared toward the dancefloor, much of the music on this mix dabbles in noise and experimentation with non-standard beat structures. It's definitely no walk in the park and you have to be in a certain mood to listen to it, but if you're feeling a tad aggressive and feel like dancing and possibly hurting yourself while doing so, this is probably the perfect soundtrack.
Rating: 6.5
