Genghis Tron - Board Up The House

by Simon T Diplock

Seattle trio take volume, speed, intensity and, well, everything to the next level

"There are songs like ‘Things Don’t Look Good’- which to these ears could do for Genghis Tron what ‘Blood Mountain’ did for Mastodon- concise and creative enough to excite the band’s ardent fans all over again and more than melodic and commanding enough entice new ones to the fold."

The great thing about Genghis Tron’s previous material, from the stormcloud chaos of ‘Cloak Of Love’ to the refined, electric brilliance of debut full-length ‘Dead Mountain Mouth’, is that it has never recognised lines- not a border, not a boundary, not some dumb scene kid shouting about selling out nor any musical theologist mumbling that certain things ‘shouldn’t be done’, nothing. For their second album proper though, the band have found their way to a whole other level.

Fear not, fans of musical extremes, the Seattle Tron-trio haven’t gone soft. You’ll still get horror-screams and hardcore overdrive (‘Endless Teeth’) and what sounds like the inside of a dying robot (‘City On A Hill’). You’ll even get one of the heaviest songs the band has ever recorded in the ominous shape of the Greg Puciato-guesting ‘The Feast’. But where they used to blur the lines, they now steam right through them.

It means they’re now unafraid to write something like ‘Recursion’, the sort of somnambulist ambience that could be used to soothe even the most savage beast, and bleed it into the no-wave burn of ‘I Won’t Come Back Alive’. Then there are songs like ‘Things Don’t Look Good’- which to these ears could do for Genghis Tron what ‘Blood Mountain’ did for Mastodon- concise and creative enough to excite the band’s ardent fans all over again and more than melodic and commanding enough entice new ones to the fold. Oh and the title track is so good that it deserves a paragraph all of its own.

‘Board Up The House’, only the first track here mind, is a crushing blow that blends together wailing electronics, wall-of-noise tactics, chilly restraint, grindcore stomps and pokes at the ghost of classic rock’n’roll. Unknown elements click and whirr, synths hum threateningly just out of earshot, guitars fire up and go nuclear and Mookie Singerman (we’re guessing not a real name) casts up all manner of vocal demons before the mini-epic is done. And when the central riff here hits light speed it’ll have metal fans everywhere banging their heads clean off their bodies.

They’ve never been normal, they’ve never been dull, they’ve never been scared to take a few risks (you don’t start an electro-grind band worrying about the rules) but from now on there’s simply no way that Genghis Tron will ever be ‘just another band’. And, arriving this soon after The Dillinger Escape Plan’s ‘Ire Works’ and Between The Buried And Me’s ‘Colors’, records both that refused to bow to structure or regime, the future of heavy music appears to be in very safe hands indeed. A classic.

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