BUTCHER MIND COLLAPSE - Sick Sex and Meat Disasters in a Wasted Psychic Land

Butcher Mind Collapse is, in a nutshell, a summary of three homegrown acts (based in Jesi, in the province of Ancona): Lebowski, devoted to a post-punk-inspired noise-rock with small dissonant electronic inserts, almost a linear version of Reznor's industrial neuroses ("Per lei giovanile bellezza"; self-released, 2007), Guinea Pig, devoted to a noisy, fractured post-hardcore in the San Francisco mould ("Guinea Pig"; Psychotica, 2005), and Jesus Franco & the Drogas, whose self-produced 2007 demo evokes a mix of Les Claypool's no-sense and the depraved rock'n'roll of the MC5. Guitarist Riccardo Franconi comes from Lebowski, guitarist and saxophonist Nicola Amici comes from Jesus Franco, and from Guinea Pig come guitarist Giampaolo Pieroni (who becomes the drummer in Butcher) and second guitarist Jonathan Iencinella (now Butcher's full-time vocalist).

Butcher's first EP, produced by Mattia Coletti of Wallace, is a clever take on the most lascivious and dissociated spazzcore, but it's above all on "Sick Sex" that the formula comes into focus. Over its scant twenty minutes, "Holy Weekend" immediately stands out for its rapid epileptic discharge of riffs as elementary as they are brutal, voodoobilly rhythmic fractures, demented vocals and shard-like dissonances, all under the banner of total harmonic instability. "Cunt Face" is the worthy continuation of that instability: strident cow-punk, rhyming chatter in the style of Captain Beefheart, an almost satanic "Oi" chorus and sonic sprays from the flamenco guitar flourishes in the background.

"Devil With Tits" seems to expose a White Stripes blues-rock riff dipped in hydrochloric acid, with dissociated vocals that drag everything into the damaged garage-punk refrain of early Royal Trux, exposing a genuine lack of semantic articulation (not just instability). "Monkeys Don't Suck" and "Nazi Chicken" hijack the hardcore gospel in different but related ways: the former tortures an acrid riff at supersonic tempo with tears and fractures worthy of Erase Errata, the latter veers toward the grimmest registers of Black Flag, except that much of the guitar passages don't articulate riffs at all, but vomit putrid dissonances.

"Goddess Dustman", the most intricate piece, actually germinates from a macabre dance of drums, and is paraphrased by sardonic Marc Ribot-style guitars, Waits-ian chants and a house-of-horrors mood. "Pop-A-Luma" recovers the hostile guitars of Big Flame and the goliardic speedcore of the Dead Kennedys, before mutating into a hard-rock rhythm and returning to new, senseless variations.

Above all, it's a paradoxical bullet of a record, a small ritual that has the gift of skill and the scar of recklessness, yet gives the illusion of moving slow and cathartic so as to let you appreciate all its ugliness: stylistic, rhythmic, harmonic. It manages not to desperately grasp at the lifeline of easy invention (an almost automatic mechanism, in these cases) and instead holds together through the coherence of zigzagging structures and harmonic scaffolding bordering on heresy. Produced by Ragno (Giulio Favero, formerly of One Dimensional Man, Teatro Degli Orrori and Putiferio) and Giovanni Ferliga, mastered by Maurizio Giannoti, artwork by Refo. Co-produced with: Valvolare Records, Marinaio Gaio, Sweet Teddy and Dizlexiqa.

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15/04/2008