Where they from?
San Jose, CA. I’ve written about bands from San Jose before, and whenever I do, I bring up the San Jose Sharks, who have always been the most 1990s NHL team to ever exist. They are currently only one game out of a playoff spot at the time of this writing and if they do make a playoff push it could very well be the last serious attempt at Cup contention for what is a rapidly aging core group of players. Also, little known fact: the NHL initially was wary of calling the team “Sharks” due to the supposed gang affiliation. Thanks, Tipper Gore for almost preventing us from having one of the coolest franchises in all of sports.
Why the hype?
Last week I was doing my due diligence for this column (messing around on Bandcamp) when I came across Socioclast and noticed they only had two preview tracks available and that the full shebang wasn’t coming out until Friday. I decided to listen to the two preview tracks (my therapist has been telling me to be more assertive) and was COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY with how BUTT-FUCKINGLY HEAVY this shit was. It’s like pure Assück worship but filtered through a lens of early ’90s death metal. Ugh, and that guitar tone is just, BUTT-FUCKINGLY RELENTLESS (yeah, I used the term twice in one paragraph; I failed every English class I ever had).
As a result, I found myself genuinely excited for the entire album to drop that Friday. For context, I have not genuinely been excited for an album to drop since I was 12 years old, counting down the minutes until I could hear Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water in its entirety (I failed every English class I ever had).
Latest Release?
Socioclast on Carbonized. This is just a 17-minute whirlwind of some of the most hellacious blasting intermittent by crushing, disharmonic doom that I have ever heard. The drummer’s use high velocity skank blasts remind me of Hatred Surge’s Human Overdose, which is one of my favorite grind records of all time and is a pretty fair comparison to this debut effort. This is essential listening and wouldn’t surprise me if it ended up on quite a few year-end best-of lists. And it’s only FEBRUARY! BUTT-FUCKING FEBRUARY! (I failed every English class I ever had).
