Altered States of America

Agoraphonic Nosebleed is one of those anomalous bands that I doubt I'll ever understand the intent and reasoning behind. The name of Scott Hull is one that is quite high up in the grind world, given his body of work and pedigree, and a project of this caliber doesn't really make a lot of sense given proper context. Whereas you could get a few pearls of wisdom from the more properly angsty Pig Destroyer, AN seems little more than whack job ranting for the sake of just letting it all out. I can't say whether that's the reasoning or not, but if this album is any indication, well...

"Altered States" presents the listener with a 100 track excursion into "blipcore" at its most pedantic and pointless. It's a dose of blitzkrieg grindcore on twenty doses of speed, with steam engine drum machinery and abrasive guitar riffs that are both for naught as they transcend being royally pissed off and into straight-up buffoonery. It's very much the "professional' (HAH!) equivalent of someone getting bored one day and just dicking around with his guitar trying to make as much noise as possible just to kill an afternoon. Perhaps this was done with a dry-as-the-Sahara sense of humor behind it, but it's quite remarkable how you can churn through so many tracks in so little time while being so dead behind the eyes. Hell, the track number in itself is probably the biggest factor on this being a joke of some kind, not unlike Anal Cunt's "5643 Song EP", and yet for all the "blink and you'll miss it" musicality there's a lot being said. Just take a look at the song titles and the lyrics sheet for greater detail; how you can spill out so many words in a second and a half is...well, it's either an inhuman feat or it just ain't happenin'. In fact, if I may be so bold, the titles in themselves are probably the best thing about this. I'm a sucker for random, dry humor as much as the next fella, and yet if this is the best I can find through any amount of digging then something's very clearly wrong. And "wrong" is the proper word.

You'll not find more worthless refuse released by a "respectable" label than this. This is an album with no value, no substance, no reasoning or argument, and above all else, no point, existing solely for the creator's own level of not giving a shit. The clamor, noise, the wildness of everyone and everything, at first glance, is admittedly funny. For about five seconds (or if you will, the first fifteen songs), then, like a switch being flipped, it instantly becomes the most aggravating listen of your life. And nothing changes from that point on; it's all a blinding rush of distortion, 1000 bpm drum machine clattering, ungainly sound effects and...vocals? Or a reasonable facsimile? Don't ask me. It goes beyond being a chore and obligation and onto a level of slave labor to sit through the rest of it when you're not even a quarter of the way through, and with no variance or change in style, performance or intent behind it, everything still so chaotic and loud, you just sink in your chair and stop caring about it, your own life, the world around you. Wait...maybe that's the point. This is meant to be pure communicable nihilism, where the creator is seeking his audience to care just as little about life as he does. Or...no, it's just trash. There we go, now I feel better.

All in all -- you know what, I don't even know if this deserves an epilogue. This is nothing. Ear-piercing, noisy nothing. It deserves the scorn it gets. Shit, even this is longer than it deserves. Stay away. Far away.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s previous album Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope remains one of the most startling and high calibre grind albums of the 21st century, cleverly combining the visceral thrill and buzzsaw guitars of classic grind with elements of modern technical death metal, and electronic noise. If that album was still relatively conventional in its presentation, Altered States Of America sees the band not just jumping off the deep end, but completing an elaborate and flamboyant diving routine before hitting the water, quote possibly while wearing a clown suit. Altered States Of America sees ANb offering their own chemically-enhanced state of the union address, and it’s very much a sick parody of the American dream. It is ostensibly the band’s third full-length, although this description is something of an oxymoron, giving the 20 minute run-time. Not for the first time, Agoraphobic Nosebleed seem to be having fun with the classic tropes of grind recordings, while also making a performance art statement. A 20 minute album, at least in this genre, is not especially remarkable. This particular 20 minute album though, features 100 tracks of extremely short duration, all contained within a single 3 inch CD. Were it not for the sheer fevered intensity of the music that comprises the album, it would be easily to conclude that at this point, ANb are having a joke at the expense of anyone foolish enough to invest in such a ridiculous artefact. And of course, they clearly are taking the piss, at least in part. However, Altered States Of America is far from devoid of musical merit, and in many ways takes their particular brand of grind to some sort of logical conclusion – once a band has released something this heavy, this fast and unrelenting, verging so close at times to unstructured noise, in many ways it opens two possibilities – annihilation, or alternatively, total liberation.

In reality, while far from the conventional albums that it might be compared to, Altered States Of America is not exactly 100 discrete tracks. While it’s true that the album does contain a multitude of miniscule songs, almost as if the listener is looking at grindcore through the lens of a powerful microscope, there are also longer sections which function as separate movements of a single piece of music, or ambient interlude. The album covers many of the same touchpoints as previous record Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope – pornographic sex, extreme violence and enough drugs to fuel a South American civil war, but, as indicated by the title, the emphasis this time round is very much on the pharmaceutical dimension of that particular trifecta. If Woodstock and Altamont represented the end of the hippie dream in a haze of marijuana and bad acid, Altered States Of America is the American dream turned sour 40 years later. The water supply is contaminated with hallucinogens, and humanity is turning on itself against the backdrop of a lysergically-animated landscape, slowly circling the drain before the final descent into oblivion.

Prior to the first thematically linked suite of songs, Altered States Of America actually commences properly (after an annoyingly difficult to find track 00) with a solid slab of grind, following a more traditional compositional structure, a track which would not be out of place on their less outlandish album of 12 months previous. Running to very nearly an entire minute, ‘Spreading The Dis-Ease’ is very much the ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’ or ‘2112’ of this particular record, and gleefully careers out of the traps, courtesy of a rolling, almost swinging groove riff, which recalls prime Nasum or even Terrorizer, albeit featuring a drummer sporting a pneumatic drill in place of a pair of sticks. This is followed by ‘Ark Of Ecoterrorism’, which continues the unexpectedly gentle descent into the acid-fuelled madness of the majority of the record, consisting entirely of an infectious mid-paced mosh section, which would undoubtedly spark an energetic pit if played live, for the 13 seconds that elapse before it concludes. Presumably, these tracks are the sound of Agoraphobic Nosebleed waiting for the drugs that they have imbibed to take effect, because from track 3 onwards, the remaining 97 tracks pass by in a nauseatingly psychedelic blur, as if the listener were force-fed mind-altering narcotics, before being strapped into a centrifuge and spun for the remainder of the album.

As a succession of micro-blasts hurtle by, ANb alternate between grind played at the kind of manic velocity which transforms it into formless noise, and shards of something that is recognisably heavy music, riffs and breakdowns occasionally emerging through the static to make a brief impression, before the listener is overwhelmed by the noise once more. The classic metal twin guitars of ‘Guided Tour’ raise a wry smile, as does the spidery thrash riff sported by ‘Ten Pounds Of Remains’, while ‘Honky Dong’ displays the mind-boggling dexterity of Dillinger Escape Plan, and ‘Removing Locator Tooth’ answers the admittedly not oft-asked question of what Nile would sound like, were they to channel their labyrinthine technical modalities into 6 seconds of white-hot grind.

The first set of connected songs (the track divisions are essentially relevant for administrative purposes only, and also, one assumes, for pushing the overall track count to a round century), concern the Tokyo subway Sarin attacks, perpetrated by adherents of the Aum Shinrinko cult. Under the provocative (and, it has to be said, reprehensible) heading ‘Free Shoko Asahara’, 14 tracks are occupied by a soundtrack of drones and power electronics, over which distorted vocals intone portentous lines such as ‘”Japan’s Aum doomsday cult / that masterminded / the fatal nerve gas attack / on Tokyo subways / considered spraying the drug LSD / from the sky”. Given ANb’s determination to shock and offend, the extent to which they truly endorse the cult’s chemical weapon attack which injured thousands of innocent commuters is debatable, but one assumes that they do at least align themselves philosophically with Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg, in their enthusiastic advocacy of the merits of strong psychedelic drugs. Regardless of whether or not the listener chooses to partake in such activities or not before experiencing this album, the churning noise and scattershot approach to grind that Altered States Of America represents is likely to render the listener unsettled, confused, and not a little exhilarated.

The second set of interconnecting tracks is the centrepiece of the album, a succession of tracks detailing the band’s own 12 days of Sodom. Unsurprisingly, this is lyrically an exercise in outrageous, and frequently abhorrent profanity, and musically the tracks are virtually indistinguishable – a drum fill, a couple of seconds of warped grind, and garbled vocals screaming frequently nonsensical tirades, the most amusing of which take aim at the rather pious Boston hardcore scene exemplified by the excellent, but easily mocked, Hydrahead Records. As the twelfth near-identical song ends, it is not difficult to wonder whether Agoraphobic Nosebleed have simply concluded that due to the fact that it exists primarily to evoke an instantaneous and visceral emotional reaction to primal noise, and to evoke that same reaction every single time, musical variety in grind is ultimately redundant. And if that is the case, then why not simply release an album that endlessly repeats the same 5 seconds of noise, ad infinitum? The joke here is very much on the listener, however much they believe they are laughing along with the band.

After abnormal service is briefly resumed with ‘Poland Springfield Acidbag’, the remaining 10 minutes of Altered States Of America oscillates between light-speed grind, and sheet-metal noisescapes. No song lasts for long enough to merit the description of a highlight exactly – even as the listener is forming an opinion on ‘For Just Ten Cents A Day…’, which is the sound of Slayer filtered through a building site, or the odd amalgam of drum ‘n’ bass and Cephalic Carnage-style schizophrenic death metal of ‘Neural Linguistic Programming’, or even the laughably unfathomable grind brutality of ‘Shotgun Funeral’, several more songs have been and gone, each filled with complex rhythmic ideas, overwhelming programmed drums, and monumentally heavy guitars. It’s a whirlwind of noise, and no amount of repeat plays can commit more than a few seconds of the album to memory. To do so would require a level of repetition which simply cannot be found on an album that is predominantly comprised of songs that are over more quickly than the average Olympic 100m final. Arguably though, this does give rise to one of the more interesting facets of the album – almost every time it is played, it is experienced differently, as the ear alights momentarily on something previously unheard or overlooked amid the unrelenting and unremitting maelstrom.

It is, perhaps, a relief when the anti-climactic closing track ‘Placing A Personal Memo On The Boss’s Desk’ completes an album that is less considered musical statement, and more a succession of hands entirely constructed from extended middle fingers. Although Agoraphobic Nosebleed apparently hate everyone, it is difficult not to conclude that they reserve their harshest loathing for their own listeners, such is the endurance test that they subject them to. And yet, Altered States Of America is grimly fascinating, a drug-addled freakshow that it is impossible to tear one’s eyes and ears from. It is not unusual for metal, particularly traditional heavy metal, to take as its lyrical and conceptual theme the heroic crusade of the courageous warrior, standing alone against impossible odds, armed only with a longsword, and the strength of his convictions. Musically, the triumphant heroism of the music is designed to match this image. Agoraphobic Nosebleed, on the other hand, are the sound of this warrior slowly realising that humanity is doomed, before making sure of it in a blaze of machine-gun fire, and finally turning the gun on themselves. This sound is sometimes staggeringly impressive, sometimes forgettable, and sometimes even painful and irritating, but perhaps it is the sound that we deserve.

First published here:
https://alifetimeofmusic537956501.wordpress.com/2021/02/28/agoraphobic-nosebleed-altered-states-of-america/

I notice that this album has yet to be reviewed here by someone who truly loves it--so allow me.

Let me be clear: I understand that there are more reasons to dislike this album than there are to like it. It's abrasive, it's deliberately unmusical, it's completely absurd. Often the instruments are impossible to discern from one another, let alone to understand as far as melodies go. It's the kind of music that has to be heard loud in order to be understood, meaning that in order to really appreciate it you run the risk of making your ears bleed. It's not the kind of thing that can be comfortably added to a playlist and shuffled, nor is it the kind of thing that really had song-length album standouts (although I can actually think of a few I'd mention.) Basically, it's a hard sell. The ultimate hard sell.

I'm not even going to pretend that this is "the point of grindcore." There's plenty of grindcore out there that's, by and large, highly musical and rhythmically satisfying--Brutal Truth comes to mind, or even Scott Hull's other band, Pig Destroyer. What I will say, however, is that this is the point of this album, and that to have an album that is so wholly and completely designed in such a unique fashion is something that will just work for the right kind of listener. The kind of listener who likes to hear whatever the fuck you've got, but the crazier the better.

This album is just like candy to me. The album actually has an overall structure that's fairly fascinating when taken on the whole, with different sections of the album being discrete musical suites, often grouped together by style or, in some of the more challenging parts of the album, grouped together by topic of screamed vocal outburst, often with either no discernible musical backing or at least no normal musical backing. We're also treated to a chaotic suite of harsh industrial beats, a more groove-oriented section that takes cues from hardcore and features much more ordinary riffs, and many sections that can best be described as sound collages. Much of the album is noise--but it's organized noise, and there's nothing wrong with that.

It's really, really not for everybody. It's the kind of album that you just have to allow to wash over you--you're not going to pick up many clear individual riffs (although when they do come through, they're a startling relief from the chaos of the overall experience,) and you're going to have a hard time humming along with the tunes. This is grindcore at the very fringes, but there's a rewarding musical experience to be had here, it's just the kind of musical experience that comes with a lot of challenges to surmount and oddities to witness. Especially if you understand the references? It's a whole different kind of experience.

I'll try and write a whole review for Altered States in less time than it takes to listen it. What a challenge.

If you tried to describe grindcore to a friend but they had never heard it before this is probably what they'd imagine, just 20 minutes of slopped together blast beats and snare rolls done at a speed only a machine could produce while guitar zips in and out sporadically. It leaves all the conventional structuring and tasteful composition at home instead striving to be a bench mark of anti-music ideals, and in that endeavor, its hard to imagine a band that's done it better than the boys and girls of Agoraphobic Nosebleed.

There are however two hurdles between that 100% and my justifications for such a high score. Firstly I actually don't listen to full albums all the way through much unless its brand new or I'm writing a review and with the average song here being like 20 seconds long it doesn't exactly lend itself to playlists very well. Any time you want to listen to this you're looking at listening to the whole thing, no pieces, no highlights, no mandatory tracks to skip, take the whole thing on one dose. Secondly, you can't hear the guitar half the time, the drum sound is raw and tight but completely dominates the mix, sonically its a thin hair away from basically being "drum solo and screaming, the album", not because the presencs of other instruments is lacking, but because you simply just can't hear them.

Now that this band has been finally accepted into the metal-archives, it is high-time for me to review one of the most difficult albums I've had to wrap my head around, I'm a big-fan of grindcore in general in small-doses, however that won't help when approaching this album. I've listened to weird music before, hell, harsh noise is one of my favorite non-metal genres. But this album, is in a strange universe of its own and therefore mundane comparisons and daily criteria won't do this attempt justice.

What we have here is an unholy amount of short tracks which sometimes blend into each other perfectly and other times just randomly placed without much forethought. There is little musical work here to be completely honest. Most guitar work played on this album is mindless chugging, power-chord progressions and some random note playing on occasion, This isn't the only offender on this album, however, Alas, this full-length is plagued by tracks of spoken word, which range from political statements, to utter and complete hokum. The drum-machine on this album essentially kills ever other "musical", and I must emphasize that I use this term very loosely,l element which could have had some impact had it been well-arranged.

Unfortunately, the overly-synthetic sounding drum-machines vary from super-fast drum-rolls or stupidly mechanically-fast blast beats which murder the guitars, bass and vocals due to them being mixed too loud. The vocals are just dirty screams which leave almost no impact on me as a listener. Since the god awful drums are always going at full speed, I can't really force myself to concentrate on the vocal performance of this record. Whatever this potential could have been, the band as a team, failed to employ any wits or apparent dedication towards releasing a decent enough product.

This album to me, comes off as trying too hard to fit into a place where it doesn't belong. This band should have tried to actually write any sort of music rather than the senseless noise they put out on this album. I fail to see any reason why anyone would want to listen to this piece of pretentious void, avoid at all costs.