Corpus Christi

I have to admit that the only reason why I checked this outfit, I don’t know how many years back, was that I was expecting to hear some expertly-stitched bizarre progressive thrash along the lines of Mekong Delta; I mean, those Oriental monikers are invariably tied to some outlandish stuff music-wise, right? Unless you take the road more travelled like the Manilla one, use the opportunity to become big in Japan by sharpening your blade in Tokyo, or make a short stopover in Hanoi to rock the night before wrapping the Far East trip on.

It turned out that this act’s style wasn’t moulded with the same lofty creative, classical-oriented visions in mind as the ones of the mentioned Germans, but this batch were anything but an ordinary, banal one. Although I was a very big Skrew fan at the time when I came across them, I had no idea that this was the band from where Adam “Skrew” Grossman had started his journey to metal stardom. The man was just a guitar player on the debut which was a hysterical, schizoid amalgam of thrash and hardcore, a wild not very bridled affair that still contained several stylish, off-the-beaten-track decisions.

Grossman was also handed over the mike for the album reviewed here which was a much more seriously executed affair. Well, serious can be a speculative term here as the guys play around with various possibilities the ones from the beginning coming close to the progressive/technical thrash roster with the nervy jumpy title-track and especially with the twisted shape-shifting “Turn of the Screw”, this great tribute to Henry James’ ghost classic nearly grabbing the Mekong Delta guys for their tuxedoes’ pockets. Such intricate shredding doesn’t quite become the norm later, but if we exclude the heavy ponderous, not very eventful “Golden” there aren’t any glaring flaws to be come across, the band bringing back some of the more technical flair on the appropriately-titled hecticer “Schizophrenic” and the multi-layered progressive, also broodingly oppressive “Ordinary Madness”.

The end is preserved for experiments like the Heart cover of “Barracuda”, sped-up here and energized to galloping proportions, with Grossman (must be him) coming out with very surprising clean high-strung vocals, abandoning his dominant mean quarrelsome, semi-declamatory delivery. A not very heralded turn of screw… sorry, events which goes on with “Sour Born”, an interesting albeit very non-thrash related piece with echoes of Killing Joke (think “Extremities, Dirt…”, above all), a spacey psychedelic ride which proto-industrial flair bodes at the metamorphoses to befall some of the band members’ subsequent careers.

This last cut is the only tie to the Skrew repertoire, think mostly the relaxed epitaphs that Grossman and Co. used to throw in as a finishing touch to their albums; the riff-patterns here are less linear and not as pronouncedly sharp which shouldn’t be a surprise having in mind that it was only Grossman who was handling the guitar duties (the second guitarist from the debut was gone) compared to the triple guitar attack spearheading the Skrew endeavours. The band surrendered themselves to the thrash idea and definitely had the requisite skills to come up with something nearly as complex as, say, Forbidden’s “Twisted into Form” or Blind Illusion’s “The Sane Asylum”. The thing is that this wasn’t the guys’ most urgent agenda; again they were playing around with influences and nuances, not willing to stop on a particular one for very long thus producing something which should appeal to wider fanbase as the thrash-prone one may lose focus near the end with barracudas and other strange creatures thrown at them. And this is probably the reason why the name Angkor Wat very, very seldom comes to mind when people discuss the classic thrash scene; two full-lengths released in quick succession was pretty much a norm back then; without the proverbial third instalment, and without any clearly drawn boundaries between genres one could only achieve that much…

but then the Skrew saga started, and Grossman and the bass player Danny Lohner had another, much more successful run all the way to the end of the 90’s. Skrew remained the most thrash-oriented bunch of the industrial freighter, refusing to fully shed their origins even on the divisive “Angel Seed”. How much the band’s chosen stance owes to the Angkor Wat repertoire, that is open for debate, but one can’t argue with the fact that the guys did have a fairly good ground to hone their weapons here for their future exploits. Both outfits are fully operational at the moment with the new Angkor Wat chapter happening without Grossman’s participation; shameful and perhaps even sinful if you think of it, but whenever there appear screws loose on that machine I’m sure the guys are very well aware of who they’re gonna call first to fix those.

Contrary what you might think upon initial exposure to "Indestructible: Innocence 1990", Angkor Wat had not become a knockoff of Celtic Frost's "One In Their Pride" or Ministry's A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste. It's one of those 'hey, look at us we're pretty open minded guys who like to fuck around' situations where the intent was probably a lot more admirable than the result. But, no, Corpus Christi, titled after the band's own home town, is more or less a direct continuation of the sound off the debut When Obscurity Becomes the Norm...Awake!, but the songwriting had been tightened, and the guitars in tunes like "Turn of the Screw" and "Anne Marie" had taken on a more surgical nature with melodic mute pickings that are simply far more pleasing to my ears even if they don't ultimately configure into great songs. In other words, this is partially the more directly 'thrash' of their works, but it arrived a bit too late in the grand scheme of things, dicks around too often, and compared to late-cycle masterworks like Artillery's By Inheritance or Kreator's Coma of Souls, it's a paltry and nearly pathetic example of its form.

But, hey, at least they were on the road to self-betterment, and tunes like "Ordinary Madness" or the bludgeoning "Schizophrenic" with its filtered vocals actually walked the border of being interesting. As with the debut, you do get a fair amount of variety in the construction of the riffs, but that doesn't always lend itself to strong overall song composition. There's a superior flow once you get past the intro, and plenty of meaty and chunky mid-paced rhythm guitars for you to start up a mosh to, but then you get to a piece like "Sinking" which lumbers around like a special needs antelope separated from its herd, and Corpus Christi becomes very quickly derailed. Bass is still a strong component, but a bit muddier here than the debut. Drums are natural and reflexive, especially when hitting grooves or cadences (like in "Golden)". I like the glittering acoustic guitars that inaugurate "Ordinary Madness", especially when joined by the atmospheric electric melodies, but even there they might have worked better if infused through more of its considerable seven and a half minute bulk. However, on the downside, "Sour Born" is almost like they were testing the waters of an entirely different style, a driving and noisy rock piece which I'd place somewhere between Neil Young and Sonic Youth...really fuckin' weird, to be honest, and doesn't work in context with most of the songs leading up to it.

Also...the cover of Heart's "Barracuda" with the higher pitched vocals is entirely out of place, and it ensures that the tail end of the album is impossible to take seriously, even if the trotting of the rhythm guitar is duly chunked up and driving, and the bridge sort of atmospheric...listen to Chastain's version which feels far more natural. Corpus Christi also suffers from a few other quirks like the occasional, terribly lame attempts at cleaner vocals. It sucks, because when the Texans are doing their own thing, and they're 'on', this proves the better of the two full-lengths. Some better riffs, and some lyrics with depth (like on the title cut). If only I could pluck out the five best tunes that sound like Angkor Wat and turn them into an EP, this might top When Obscenity Becomes the Norm...Awake! in quality, but the plurality of strange missteps and failed attempts at self-realization and originality cock everything else up, and this is probably of no interest to any thrasher without a penchant for masochism or a deliberately ironic sense of humor. No wonder they handed their resignation letters in, because this basically amounted to a a career crucifixion. Clearly they wanted to move on to greener pastures...and a few did, to industrial metal acts like Skrew, and ironically Ministry and Nine Inch Nails (so the intro here was a bit of foreshadowing).

-autothrall
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