Dataclast Vs. The Earwigs

Blast II
(Crucial Blast Records)

Okay, maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe I just don’t get it.

I mean, I don’t like grindcore, I hate powernoise, and I’m not into metal. But what we have here with Dataclast is 29 tracks, usually around a minute or two each, that are, in essence, electronic grindcore. But not good grindcore. No, if such a term fits, it isn’t even as good as the usual stuff.

No, this is essentially the same formula of discordant double-bass high-speed drum programming coupled with noise and badly-mixed growling repeated endlessly. If there are real songs in there, I’m not aware of them.

Begin the next track with a sample, then leap back into the hard drums, static, electro-noise and growling. Yep. Repeat it again. Now twenty-seven more times.

After a while, my mind began to tune the music out by any means possible, searching for something to do other than to keep listening to the same chaotic noise, the chaos exactly the same as the track before. One must really question how much thought actually went into the songwriting and structure of all this…

By the time I got to the well-measured but uneventful atmospheric tracks by The Earwigs, I couldn’t maintain attention of any kind. I was totally numb.

I trudged through to the bitter end, mind running entirely on auto-pilot, unable to find anything that spoke to me on any level for any atmosphere or any aesthetic. All I got is a trance that several hours at the computer couldn’t break…

Something is severely wrong when your dissonance is this repetitive.

 

submitted for IndustrialnatioN Magazine #19 but cut for space