Wallet Chaingang [Weekly Mixtape 224]

Nequient | LUGOSi | Your Spirit Dies
Rats Will Feast | Burner | Haggard Cat
Pretty Mouth | Legbiter | Sock | UNCULTIVATES
Karate Steve | Still In Love | Cathari
Detach the Islands | DOTGIFFROMGOD
Orphan Donor | Boneripper | BEAR
If I Die Today | Employed To Serve | Bitter Branches

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The Blind Surgeons Operation Interview

Andrew Cleveland should be familiar to readers of this blog by now - he was the guitarist for DoC faves Pretty Mouth. The last time I talked to him was just before the release of Pretty Mouth's final album The Endless Mistake. Since then, he's joined Canadian thrashers Mad Trapper and resurrected his old project The Blind Surgeons Operation. I e-mailed some questions to check in on the Operation.

Pretty Mouth - The Endless Mistake

So here it is, the last album from the volatile madhouse that was Toronto's Pretty Mouth. The Endless Mistake is frustrating for all its flashes of brilliance, and the glimpses of what may have lay in the band's future if their unique style of misanthropic noise had been given time to fester. Alas, their time is up.

On previous albums, targets included religion, big business, and middle class privilege; this time, the primary target seems to be the idea of the song itself, at least in the established punk rock way. There's nary a recognizable chorus, and the band seems to go out of its way to frustrate listeners by hitting a nasty groove and then yanking it away to punish with feedback and noise. [Guitarist Andrew Cleveland loves feedback as much as Greg Ginn loved hitting all the wrong notes.] While hardcore has been slowly transforming into death metal in its pursuit of a heavier sound, Pretty Mouth maintains the chaos and unpredictability of the genre, channeling the ghosts of Daughters and Deadguy (two other bands, it should be noted, that also combusted before their time).

Vocalist Lance Marwood alternates between screaming and...well, not singing exactly, but a more tuneful kind of yelling. Clearly a guy with a lot on his mind, he sounds like a sidewalk preacher who wandered into a recording studio before heading back out again to yell at people waiting for their bus. It works for the most part, though the song "Decisions" goes on for longer than it should. This is a band that did its best work in minute-long bursts; by comparison, a four minute spoken word piece starts to feel like Sabazius.

The title track features the indictment, "There's too many girls and not enough women; there's too many boys and not enough men." Add to that: There's too many followers and not enough risktakers. And now there's one less. RIP Pretty Mouth.

The Endless Mistake will be released September 8th.

Pretty Mouth on Facebook

Pretty Mouth: The Last Interview

Pretty Mouth were one of the first bands to send me music, and also one of the first outside of South East Asia that I interviewed for this blog. Their unruly take on hardcore was a welcome relief during a period when few bands seemed willing to take chances, and I looked forward to every new release they sent my way as an excuse to act like a crazy person. Sadly, I learned recently that my Canadian BFFs are calling it a day. But before they turn the page on this chapter of their lives, I asked guitarist Andrew Cleveland to share his thoughts with me.

Pretty Mouth: Fears

In good news for enthusiasts of feedback and chaotic hardcore, Pretty Mouth are back with their new release Fears, to have their way with traditional song structures the way a couple of hillbillies did with a quivering Ned Beatty. With two songs from their previous cassette release ("Apotheosis" and "The Joke"), Fears is very much in line with the Pretty Mouth oeuvre up to this point.

The band have refined their attack since I first encountered them on Men of the Tie, Men of the Cloth, Men of the Lie. Though "refined" may not be the best way to describe this evolution; their love of noise is still very much on display, but used in more deliberate and jarring ways. On songs like "Bridges" and "Demons", Fears swings like an ether huffer on a skiff, hinting at a newfound affection for groove. I can't help but think of Greg Ginn, and what he would have done if he had grown up on hardcore instead of inventing it. The result would have sounded an awful lot like Pretty Mouth.


Near the end of the release comes "Nights", a spoken word piece about black magic in India, offering the listener a brief respite without relieving the tension. It's strange to hear a band as politically and socially conscious as Pretty Mouth build a whole track around witchcraft; but as singer Lance Marwood says, "everyone's on that upside down cross dick these days."


With few exceptions, the tracks on Fears zip past in under two minutes. My one complaint about Pretty Mouth in the past was that their releases weren't longer, but I've since changed that opinion. After 10 minutes of my earbuds feeding this into my brain while I walked around town, I was crazed and bug-eyed, scaring tourists and locals alike. God knows what another 20 minutes would have done.

Pretty Mouth are back. Best to keep all sharp objects locked away.


Pretty Mouth - ghosts from YOSH Photography on Vimeo.

Fears is released on 30 October 2013.

Pre-orders are available through Pretty Mouth's Big Cartel and Bandcamp pages.

Find Pretty Mouth on Facebook.

Fuck This Place: A Mixtape

This place by Adrian Sol on Mixcloud

O Canada! A Canada Day playlist

Bandcamp [Mini] Picks: Pretty Mouth, Homolka, Human Cull, Total Combined Weight

...a special mini-edition of Bandcamp Picks, where I talk about some shorter releases that stood out to me, but didn't fit in with the regular column for one reason or another.

First up, Apotheosis, the new single from my Canadian BFFs Pretty Mouth, features two new songs ("Apotheosis" and "The Joke") as well as live versions of those same songs. Since this is Pretty Mouth, you can expect some angry, discordant hardcore that's busting at the seams with noise and vitriol, and not be disappointed. The live versions feel a little tacked on, but are a nice indication of what you're in for should you find yourself in front of these guys. Another great release from what's quickly becoming my favourite hardcore band. The four track EP is available as a "name your price" download.



Similarly, Toronto's Homolka (containing members of DoC faves eyeswithoutaface) channel their rage into noise and vice versa. Their latest release is a split cassette, and a good introduction to their political, in-joke heavy, power violence/grind. Between Pretty Mouth, eyeswithoutaface, Homolka and the Blind Surgeons Operation, it would appear the Kids in the Hall have misled me about Canadians.



On the other side of the cassette, the UK's Human Cull contribute one long song titled "Cities Become Graves." Despite their stated interest in "Blastbeats & Blastbeats & Blastbeats & Blastbeats," the majority of the 13 minute track is spent punishing the listener with the same three chords in an extended doom section. And let's face it, in the world of grind, there isn't a better pairing with the extremely fast than the extremely slow. The split isn't available as a stand-alone download purchase, but a digital download is included when you purchase the cassette, which is available through Goatprayer records for ₤3 plus shipping (or $4.58 plus shipping, according to Paypal). It's extremely limited (25 copies according to Bandcamp), so if you're interested you better dive on it now.



I've mentioned The Co-Main Event podcast before on this blog, mostly to make up for how much I rip off CME's Ben Fowlkes. But as much as I enjoy the podcast, it never really made any sense to keep plugging it on this blog, since it's about mixed martial arts and only of tangential interest to heavy music fans. So imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered that Fowlkes' co-host, MMA writer Chad Dundas, is in a hardcore band called Total Combined Weight. There's only one track on their Bandcamp page, and it's not for download or purchase; but it is pretty fucking sweet. Gargantuan, even. You can tell these guys grew up loving Ian Mackaye; this easily could have been on a Dischord compilation back in the day (maybe it's not surprising that Total Combined Weight do lots of Minor Threat covers). No idea what form this release is going to take or how to purchase it; their Bandcamp page is pretty barebones, and their Facebook page isn't much better. But if Total Combined Weight put out a full release, rest assured DoC will be all over it.


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Pretty Mouth Interview

One of the more interesting - and irate - hardcore records I heard in 2012 was Pretty Mouth's Men of the Tie, Men of the Cloth, Men of the Lie. Considering the incendiary lyrics, I figured this was a band that had a lot to get off their chests. I fired off ten questions to the band, and vocalist Lance Marwood did not disappoint with his responses. Strap yourself in, dude's got something to say:

Pretty Mouth: Men of the Tie, Men of the Cloth, Men of the Lie

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a member of the Canadian band Pretty Mouth ("Four dudes who want to fucking kill you and everyone you know"), who asked if I was interested in reviewing their new release Men of the Tie, Men of the Cloth, Men of the Lie. I'd never heard of the band, and am pretty ignorant of most things that aren't Swedish or death metal; but I figured sure, why not. While this might set a terrible precedent for lots of bands to send me free stuff to review, as a dedicated metal blogger and underemployed scrub, I'll have to take that chance.

Coming from the land of Nomeansno and Voivod, I guess it's to be expected that Pretty Mouth (great Deliverance inspired name, BTW) would throw out the rule book and go their own way. Standard terms like "crusty hardcore" or "power violence" don't do them justice. I can't remember the last time I heard hardcore that sounded this dangerous and unpredictable. Nails? Coalesce? "Damaged 1?"

Noise isn't just a tool for Pretty Mouth; it's their raison d'être. At times it seems like the band is on the verge of imploding amidst all the screaming, feedback and blastbeats; this is what crazy people hear in their heads before movie theatre shooting sprees. Three songs explore their title theme ("Men of the Tie", "Men of the Cloth", and "Men of the Lie"), spewing bile and fury at big business and organized religion. It all gels together on "Men of the Lie", which swings like Botch without all that pesky math getting in the way of the carnage. Elsewhere, on the song "Tabula Rasa," when vocalist Lance Marwood snarls "We are satan's cunt, just a mercy fuck...We are the fallen/We are the forgotten," 90% of modern black metal is made to sound like empty posturing.

But at barely 5 minutes (minus intro, outro, and a noise interlude titled "Choose Hate" that samples Hell on Wheels), it's over way sooner than it should be. Clearly Pretty Mouth are a band with a unique take on hardcore; I would have liked to have heard where else their fury takes them. I can't imagine them being this merciful in the live setting. Maybe they had a movie screening to rush off to.

Men of the Tie, Men of the Cloth, Men of the Lie is available through Pretty Mouth's Bandcamp page.
Find Pretty Mouth on Facebook.

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