Tragedy
Nerve Damage
Tragedy Records
Tragedy lurch back onto the grid for another exhilarating D-beatdown
This just in: we live in a mighty information-rich age. We know more about more stuff faster than ever before. This seems to go triple for pop culture, particularly music. Can’t find out-of-print Gauze albums or that Napalm Death Hatred Surge demo? Just try Soulseek. Gossip about your favorite metal band? Hello, Blabbermouth.net. Need to know which guitar god is a stallion and who suffers from the Irish Curse? Direct your attention to MetalSludge.com’s world-famous Penis Chart. Then there’s MySpace, chat rooms, and bulletin boards, all of which are often updated by actual band members.
The downside to all this access is that most bands have completely forgotten how to cultivate an air of mystery. Nobody knows how to become, be, or stay enigmatic. But Tragedy does, and consequently they are legends in their own time. Lifelong scenesters from such earlier bands as His Hero Is Gone and Deathreat, the Portland-via-Memphis quartet has unleashed three of the finest hardcore albums of the 21st century and kept low to the ground. No webpage, no MySpace, no e-mail, and all self-released albums. Voila: Opening with a clarion siren and epic chordings before slamming into a perfect circle pit blast, Nerve Damage is easily the year’s most hotly anticipated DIY hardcore plate. On a recent tour, they sold out of 500 Nerve Damage LPs on fewer than 10 dates between Portland and Austin. Know how hard that is?
And not for nothing. Nerve Damage is a blast furnace of overloaded, unkempt rage, a spotlessly titrated admixture of crusty twin-guitar hardcore, unexpected melodic flourishes, D-beat bombshells, and Todd Burdette’s permanently scowling, me-against-God bellow.
I’m not kidding about the scowl—I don’t think I saw the dude crack a smile over three days of shows at Austin’s punk blowout Chaos in Tejas, which Tragedy closed, brilliantly. But hey, life is brutal, government is evil, and the only answer is to stay furious. “Do you feel it? Do you understand?” Burdette screams on “The Hunger.” How could we not, dude?
The shockingly hummable melodies of songs like “In Formation” and “Crucifier” toughen up the coal-black riffs of Burdette and guitarist Yannick Lorrain even more. The instrumental “Total Vision” opens with rich piano arpeggios before crashing into a wall of slow-burn power chords. “Under the Radar” even breaks out the acoustic guitar before stage-diving. Devoted to hardcore as a way of life, Tragedy don’t mind fucking with the formula.
That’s all part of the appeal. As with aesthetically self-confident powerhouses before them (say, Joy Division, Big Black, Napalm Death, Fugazi), Tragedy’s music and worldview feel complete, whole, a closed circle they can shrink or widen at will. They’re doing exactly what they want, refusing to draw attention to themselves. And they’re nothing less than required listening for anyone who’s ever worn a black t-shirt with white lettering in a jagged font. —Joe Gross
