In a world capable of producing bedroom recordings of pristine sterility, it is refreshing to hear music that sounds dirty, cheaply recorded and above all vibrant!
Fuck knows where Crusher come from because I can’t find their Facebook, but they purvey the kind of Blackened Thrash that is 98% energy 2% thought and personally I wouldn’t change that ratio one iota! As unsyncopated as carpentry it surges headlong from start to finish with a thoughtless but totally fulfilling momentum.
The riffs, though simple; both in layering and outlook are played with the kind of gusto that, should it ever be bottled would trade hands on the-silk-road for huge amounts of currency. The fuzz-box effect, used almost exclusively throughout could be easy employed on some kind of surf punk album but its application here is absolutely appropriate. Fast and choppy with a teenagers notion of complexity, it is guardian of the kind of riff that gets young lads in trouble with the police; highly motivational, and with elbows that nudge and suggest and encourage wrongdoing!
The drums are well played without over complicating the issue and recorded with a delightfully flat tone which firmly sticks the middle finger up to ‘Superior Drummer’ and its digital ilk. Which is just fine by me! Their rendering is so drenched in sweat that just listening to them will make you stink.
Oh wait, I’ve found the FB page, they’re from France. Both bands are. And they don’t give a fuck.
Then in the middle the bands share 2 tracks, one live and the other a studio recording. Which both sound quite like Crusher so I’m assuming they won a coin toss or a wank off or something.
So onto Mercyless. They play Death Metal. Old School Death Metal. In fact its so old school its still in short trousers and a short sleeved shirt, probably with a Morbid Angel shirt on underneath. The recording is if anything, even more lo-fi; with several solos sounding like they were recorded in some kind of toilet. A fact which makes me delirious with joy in the same way watching someone chop down a huge tree with just an axe would.
They have more layers to their music than Crusher and as so are not quite as responsible for Youth justice problems in Provence as I imagine Crusher are. But there is a purity to their Death Metal which is almost totally absent from almost all of the scenes in the Us and most of Europe, most of which have moved in a progressive direction. The closest that Mercyless come to progressivism is using reverb. They have a nice line is tempo changes which they never over complicate or congest.
Both bands have vocalist who sound like they smoke a lot, which only adds to the griminess of the whole aesthetic. Which is fucking great. I’ve been to festivals in France several times and no doubt have walked past several members of both these bands and I can see them in my minds eye now: Three-Quarter combat shorts, excessive chain-age securing a wallet, head partially shaved and a partially dressed girlfriend following behind, semi-obscured in the clouds of spliff smoke, as they both search for a place to piss.
Its just that kind of EP; filthy fucking dirty and unadorned by anything that anyone could remotely call bullshit.
If you say you like metal and you don’t find this the slightest bit entertaining then, oh I don’t know, accidentally, brutally cut your head off whilst combing your hair. Because you probably don’t like metal and at least dying that way will give you the most metal of Deaths. Which will probably get written about. By bands like this!
– John Whitmore
Links: Mercyless Facebook // Mercyless Official Website // Purchase
