CENTRALIA

Car Bomb- a play on words? A delicious pun? A tasteless joke? yes. yes. and yes (to some). This band never fails to amaze and captivate me, what with their technical avant-noise leanings. They definitely took a page from the Gorguts "obscura" tome and borrowed some of the script. Now I don't want to claim that Car Bomb are in the same league as Gorguts, but they would be like a more tame version. I love the dissonance on display here, the harmonics, the scraping riffs and just overall disarray and chaos. This is not for your average metalhead. It pays to have listened to a good helping of nineties-era noise acts. I also hear a good deal of early Today Is The Day (Willpower)... in the angular riffage. The great thing about this release is that these noisemongers took a plethora of influences ranging from Meshuggah to Aphex Twin, Naked City, Autechre, Slayer, Dillinger Escape Plan and just devilish cacophony and filtered it through standard guitar/bass in terms of melody. This is hardly conventionally melodic though (at least not in terms of "pop" or predictable, bubblegum nonsense). They took these conventional instruments and coaxed, nay, absconded and conjured up the following monstrosity: metallic drill-n-bass meets power electronics married to 20th century classical through a scrap metal compactor. Originality is rare, and this band certainly has its influences (hence, no band is original, but may have a unique sound to warrant individuality in a watered-down scene), yet they gave it a fresh overhaul. I don't go through song by song, I look at the whole album as a listening experience or even a trip through someone else's imagination/nightmares. This stuff is as scathing as it gets. Recommended for fans of forementioned bands, styles and other experimental acts like Gnaw Their Tongues.... simply great. It's a grower for sure.

'Centralia' - Car Bomb (6/10)

Often, my judgement of whether a piece of avant-garde, or experimental music is good or not relies largely on the implication of intention. In shorter words, that basically means that even if the music sounds random or jarring at first, if there is a code to crack, or at least that the things I am hearing weren't left up to chance. With that being said, may I introduce Car Bomb, a mathcore act from New York that builds their sound around random, jerky song structures. Running back to my first point, their album 'Centralia' is a work that could well have been one of brilliance, but their use of ideas passes me more as being thrown together, rather than something that was properly thought out and organized.

I acknowledge full well that mathcore is 'not by thing', and that this review is coming from someone who is more of an outsider to this sound than anything. Regardless, Car Bomb is a band that seems intent to throw as many different ideas and sounds into their relatively short album length as possible. Much of these ideas revolve to schizophrenic guitars, and harsh, throaty vocals buzzing around. Comparing them to more well-known acts, this is much like what a band like Psyopus or The Dillinger Escape Plan does, though Car Bomb's sound is arguably more eclectic. Although I cannot enjoy the dissonant, 'harsh' moments of this band too much- they sound jarring and thin to my ears- there are experiments done with the guitar that make them at the very least interesting. Guitarist Greg Kubacki is the star of this band, getting adventurous with distortion feedback, and making a host of strange sounds with his instrument by the time the album is done. Car Bomb also throws some mellow passages at the listener to break up the chaos. However brief they might be, the diversity by itself is interesting.

It is the eclectic, sporadic nature of the band that keeps the band most interesting. However, their strength is also their greatest weakness. While I enjoy the constant flow of ideas that Car Bomb keep assaulting the listener with, the actual way these ideas are structured is frankly underwhelming. A perfect example is with the few ambient post-rock moments that are scattered throughout the album. The chaos stops, and the listener is treated to some graceful atmosphere and quiet work that sounds like it is building up into something dramatic until- the same chaos again. Car Bomb almost seems too dedicated to the neverending madness that they forget to properly use a great idea when they get one. Instead of jabbing at the listener from as many angles as possible from start to finish, it would have been much more effective if 'Centralia' had featured even a few sections where they let a couple of these ideas flourish and be fully developed. Instead, what we are left with is a flurry of short, rhapsodic ideas that touch at excellence, but it never feels like any of this is organized properly.

Formed on Long Island, New York the mathcore band CAR BOMB didn't waste any time crafting a totally obnoxious fusion of metalcore bombast with progressive rock complexities. After a couple demos, the quartet of Michael Dafferner (lead vocals), Elliot Hoffman (drums), Greg Kubacki (guitar) and Jon Modell (bass) set out to create the loudest and most abrasive musical output they could muster up and on the debut CENTRALIA which was named after an utterly doomed town in Pennsylvania that was abandoned after an underground mine fire, these hyperactive and over-imaginative freaks pretty much succeeded.

Mathcore is a challenging and difficult listening experience for sure. Absolutely everything is wrapped with the sonic equivalent of barbed wire and only accessible for those with Ankylosaur armor, however it is impossible to dismiss CAR BOMB as mere noise makers no matter what your musical proclivities happen to be. This is a serious band that as over the top as it may be, engages in highly nuanced and sophisticated slabs of iron plated metal music that excels at an equal ratio of bombast turned way past 11 and unpredictability calling its bluff and upping it one hundred and elevenfold. The results are enough to wake the dead and to kill the living.

While mathcore got its start in the New York based Lethargy all the way back in 1992 with Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor in the mix, the most irritating subgenre of metal has become, well, even more irritating as time goes on! Yep, it's all about maximizing the most extreme forms of music and taking them even further, EVEN further than the comfort zone of most self-proclaimed metalheads. Add a heaping mix of progressiveness to the mix and you have something that will instantly suffocate the uninitiated and make all the non-open-minded ones of the world instantly run for cover as this stuff is the equivalent of a nuclear attack in the musical world!

With tags like technical, complex, heavy, aggressive, dissonant, energetic, manic, uncommon time signatures, dark, hateful, pessimistic, misanthropic and arhythmic, you know you're in for one heckuva ride with CAR BOMB. Clocking in at a merciful 32 minutes, CENTRALIA is a non-stop metal bombast ride through extremely aggressive sonic assaults. The music is relentless as pummeling guitars, bass and drums are accompanied by the most hardcore screamed vocals that Dafferner can force out of his throat. Not overly far from what bands like Behold The Arctopus and Psyopus have to offer, CAR BOMB maintains its own distinct sound that offers a scant few moments of reflection with soft clean guitar passages but more often than not pummels the hell out of your senses with an incessant supply of start / stop guitar riffs decorated with unusually complex time sigs.

Graced with track titles such as 'Cielo Drive' which refers to one of the locations of the morbid Manson Family killing sprees, you know what you're in for with this brutal beast and at this stage CAR BOMB was merciless with one brutal arrhythmic assault after another and for that i am completely enamored with this completely anti-commercial display of aggressive and energetic parade through bombastic riffs and incessant orotundity. Every musician on this one is at the top of his game and as far as the most brutal extremes of mathcore without the complete surrender to atonality, then you can't go wrong with CAR BOMB's excellent debut album CENTRALIA. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. Don't close your eyes, sunshine. You might be in the wrong CAAAAAAAAAR! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha