LA GRITONA

DEMASIADO TONTO PARA LOS NINOS LISTOS

TORTUGA/HYDRA HEAD RECORDS

Bands are often good, sometimes great, even astounding but rarely are they important. That goes double for bands started within the last fifteen years. Sometimes though, sometimes you find a band that is important and such a band was Boston’s La Gritona.

In a nineties era where most bands were trying to copy Helmet or hold desperately to the “grunge” movement La Gritona were staking out a darker territory. Part Black Flag, part Rorschach and then infused with their own incredibly sense of song writing La Gritona were ahead of the curve by almost ten years. They released one full length and a number of singles but like most true innovators La Gritona disbanded before a mass public discovered the true power of what they were.

Now Hydra Head records has gathered all of La Gritona’s releases into a two disc set titled Demasiado Tonto Para Los Ninos Listos so that the world that doesn’t understand, will. This is the band that’s influence is still felt today and this two-disc set is the audio testament to their legacy.  Everything is here, from their initial seven-inch releases all the way to their debut album recorded by Steve Albini and the scattered things they did after that. Their sound is a pure audio nightmare of feedback, rough chords, bizarre timing and brutal structures that rip apart the human soul and lay waste to what we think music could be.

Vocally La Gritona comes from a different headspace all together. These are the ramblings of a psychopathic author who has no idea how to flush out the thoughts in his head. Imagine the narrator from Our Town handing himself over to pure insanity right before the show begins. Locked within is a story, something powerful being said but you must wade through so much information to get to it. There is a primal purity to the vocals that I have never heard repeated. If only all music could be this honest.

Don’t get me wrong - there is also humor and a nod to pop culture in what La Gritona does. I was first introduced to them via the Frank White 7”, which essentially takes the first scene between Christopher Walken and his drug gang from King Of New York and turns it into a crushing audio tornado. While the band whips this frenzy around the screaming vocals repeat the lines from the scene verbatim. One of La Gritona’s other brilliant songs is 2 Lane Black Top based on the obscure seventies road movie. There’s also “Jack Passion”, “Pigs” and the fashion assassination tune “Tiny Backpacks”.

Demasiado Tonto Para Los Ninos Listos is required listening for anybody who claims to love extreme music. You will not find a more personal, honest or brutal body of work that also manages to bridge genres without even realizing it. Happy accident or purposeful experiment La Gritona were an enigma, a band so far ahead of their time they couldn’t help but implode. If you think what your band is doing is new, inventive and bizarre then listen to La Gritona, run it up that tree and see how different what you’re doing really is. 

CRAVEONLINE RATING: 10 OUT OF 10

HORSEBACK

THE INVISIBLE MOUNTAIN

RELAPSE RECORDS

It’s hard to stress the importance of mood in music, no matter what genre. In soul the mood is love, in metal anger, in pop music general happiness. In the world of experimental and doom the mood is a harder road to traverse because it’s rarely straightforward.

On some level there is anger, some indifference, some mysticism and often just a touch of the unknown. A band that seems to excel in setting a mood is Horseback who leaves trails of mood all over on their new album The Invisible Mountain. The title tells a lot about the music because it’s hard to see, hard to nail down but has immense power that lays still.

What I mean by that is nothing Horseback do on The Invisible Mountain is right in your face, no rapid fire pokes that let you know just how fast or angry they are. What’s happening here is much more methodical and like a mountain it only moves when it needs to.

The music on this album moves more like musical pieces as opposed to songs, bleeding into each other seamlessly. This is one of those albums that compel you to hear it as one solid piece of music as opposed to individual songs. 

The Invisible Mountain starts off with the song “Invokation” which sounds like, well, somebody trying to bring something awful into this world. A slow creepy guitar line over very deliberate tribal drum patterns weave around a fuzzed out bass tone. The vocals sound more the recordings of a demon attempting to conjure the spirits of the Old Ones to walk again. The mood set out here is one of slow terror, scary music for scary times. 

From there the songs vary in range from incredibly noisy and chaotic on “Tyrant Symmetry” to a more methodic doom feel on the title track. Horseback really moves into something special with “Hatecloud Dissolving Into Nothing” a sixteen-minute opus that envelops you in ethereal soundscapes and tapestries of feedback. Hiding just beneath the surface are haunted vocal cries and another creeping slow guitar. Where as everything on The Invisible Mountain echoes mood, this is the song where it reaches its apex.

The Invisible Mountain sounds like many things, background music to twisted sex, the soundtrack to David Lynch’s brain, or the call of a creeping shadow spelling out the end of mankind. I know it sounds pretentious but these are real ideas brought up to me just from sitting back and experiencing what Horseback have to offer.

Music as art is often a forgotten thing as the business and marketing side takes a larger and larger share of it. Horseback remind us what can be done with like minded individuals all gathering to create something bigger than themselves. The Invisible Mountain is a darkly beautiful record, layered and complex it lifts you from where you and carries you away. It’s rare to have those kinds of musical moments so I was thrilled to enjoy this one.

CRAVEONLINE RATING: 8 1/2 OUT OF 10