Rock n' Roll Conformity

This debut Deviated Instinct LP is odd. The music itself is straightforward enough, but the album's position in the band's chronology makes no sense. "Rock n' Roll Conformity" differs from the two EPs that preceded it ("Welcome to the Orgy" and "Consolidation"). Both those EPs had a slower, darker, sludgier vibe, sounding like a cross between Celtic Frost and Amebix. This album is different. These songs are faster and more precise, and sound more like traditional UK punk and hardcore. It reminds me of a faster and uglier version of Antisect, or maybe Discharge (they tagged a Discharge cover on the end of this record).

This would have made sense if the band had continued in this direction, but they didn't. Deviated Instinct would return to their slower, heavier and more metallic direction on their next album in 1990 ("Guttural Breath"). There were some line-up changes throughout this period, but core guitarist Rob Middleton was present throughout. This makes "Rock n' Roll Conformity" a difficult album to contextualise, unless you happened to be listening to obscure UK punk in 1988 (I wasn't). Contemporary interviews offer scant insight; Deviated Instinct tended to feature in punk zines that focused more on ideology and lifestyle than musical evolution.

This album shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a backward step. This is raging, raw, angry and erudite hardcore that can compete with the best of the era. Sometimes it reminds me of fast hardcore records like Raw Power’s “Screams from the Gutter”, but with a distinctive UK style of (nasally) vocals. The tempos never reach the grindcore speeds of other UK bands from the period. The songs are short, but long enough to register as 'songs' (between two and three minutes on average). There are a couple of slower, crustier, more metallic moments. "House of Cards" is the best example and probably my favourite song here, it is an older song that had appeared on the "Consolidation" EP. The title track has a couple of mean Venom-ish riffs, and "When the Chapter Closes" opens with manic thrash metal energy. These are the best moments on the album.

The production is as fuzzy and raw as 80s hardcore punk should be. It was produced by Paul "Hammy" Halmshaw who founded Peaceville. This is one of the first records ever to appear on the legendary label. The mix is great. Everything sounds grubby and warm. The bass sounds well-formed, the guitar riffs buzz and blend from one amorphous riff to the next. The listener doesn't need to discern individual riffs because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. There are similarities with what Tomas Skogsberg was doing at Studio Sunlight at around the same time (again, using a punk basis), though it isn't as heavy as Nihilist and the emerging Stockholm death metal sound.

"Rock n' Roll Conformity" is a great album but a puzzling one. I prefer the records that sandwich it in the Deviated Instinct discography. This feels less ground-breaking than the band’s other releases, which crossed hardcore and metal ecosystems with ease. This isn’t the first Deviated Instinct record I would recommend to metal-heads; they would be better served with "Welcome to the Orgy" and "Guttural Breath". Both of those records have a darker and more dread-inducing vibe. Fans of old punk and hardcore will love this one though, no doubt.

Originally posted on my reviews blog at heavymetalspotlight.blogspot.com

Deviated Instinct aren't a band that immediately come to the lips of someone discussing British death metal in this day and age. It's a shame really, and as someone who really enjoys the things punk and, more specifically in this case, crust punk, have done for death metal over the years, I feel I really should spend some time to review some of Deviated Instinct's material. The album I've chosen to examine is their debut Rock n' Roll Conformity and at risk of sounding clichéd, it's an album which does not conform.

The twenty seven minute running time that the album possesses is a fairly good indicator of its character; the songs are short, almost always under three minutes, and the album as a whole is fast, abrasive, and at times very angry, indeed. I don't know anything like as much about crust punk as I do about metal, and by plenty of standards I don't know anything about that either, but from the onset of the album, it's fairly clear where the punk resides. The riffs are extremely crust-laden with pronounced emphasis on chords, often with little to no lead guitar at all aside from the occasional garnishing to taste. The riffs themselves aren't overused and there are usually a couple per song, which helps to make the tracks distinct without trying to cram too much into their length. The two minute songs sound like two minutes worth of music, which stops the album blending into a morass of a forgettable mess.

Likewise, the vocals carry an extremely punk edge to them - snotty, snarling, and angry, particularly in the faster, blast beat-driven sections that are heavily reminiscent of grindcore, but at the same time not quite. It feels subtly and, due to my lack of knowledge, rather indescribably different. These sections are, however, more scarce than the overtly crust-punk sections that churn and rumble, really cruising along in the way that all forms of punk seem to do a great job of doing.

Naturally, the riffs are liable to be quite simplistic in that chord-driven way punk-influenced material tends to be, but as opposed to limiting my enjoyment, I found the chord-driven approach to really hammer in the riffs into the anvil of my brain; the prominent bass, slightly haphazard playing, and the enraged, frantic feel of all of the instruments not so much trying to keep in time, but trying to outdo each other in their aggressiveness really makes for a tiring, but rewarding listen.

The album carries the flag that a lot of punk carries; you get the feeling that the musicians aren't perhaps the most accomplished on the planet, but you certainly get the impression they know how to hammer home their musical vision. It's the sort of percussive, primal album which causes the listener to breath a silent "fucking hell" after every track and certainly would have done so even more in 1988 when we weren't so jaded and desensitized to extremity in music. In all honesty, perhaps owing to my limited experience of the crust genre, I'm not truly sure where crust and death metal intersect in the album's recipe.
It certainly feels like both in some ways, but the punk seems considerably more prominent, almost to the point where I begin to lose sight of where the death metal is in the album's volatile concoction of sounds.

Of that same token, however, there's a perfectly tangible feeling of extremity to the music and a roaring, metallic, chugging heaviness present which isn't so detectable in the more conventional crust of, for instance, Amebix. The band's readiness to blast beat their way through tracks such as "When the Chapter Closes" and unleash the sort of craven, enraged, shrieking vocals an aforementioned band like Amebix don't utilize certainly puts the band's sound on a different shelf compared to what I understand archetypal crust punk to be, which is perhaps a shelf closer to an even more primitive and rough version of death metal conjured by bands like Benediction and very early Bolt Thrower, the latter of which share obvious stylistic influences in terms of their artwork.

Enough of me autistically pondering over where the album fits in the grand scheme of musical classification. Perhaps that's the musical lesson the listener should take from an album like this - it doesn't matter what it is, only that it sounds enjoyable, which it certainly does.

In my experience, I often encounter bands that I consider to sound like no other. Often it turns out to be part of a scene or niche sound other bands have that I simply haven't encountered yet. Whether or not this is the case with Deviated Instinct, I've greatly enjoyed their frantic, soaring, and venomous music. Perhaps I've written about it without any direction or prior understanding, but at the end of the day a good record doesn't quiz you on what you know. Rock n' roll conformity lives up it's name and doesn't conform to what you know. It's all the more rewarding a listen for it.