Showing posts with label Crucial Unit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crucial Unit. Show all posts

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Fuck Electrons, Protons Are Posi!


 I've already posted their split with The Waste, so here's Crucial Unit's first 7". 
"Premium Iced Tea" starts off with shrieking, wailed, frantic vocals over sick thrash-punk-core. Blast beats and circle pit inducing drums with funny and well written lyrics. Crucial Unit is sort of like crossover and sort of like thrash metal and sort of like fastcore. This style is very much a product of their geographical environment. The Bay Area, Oxnard, LA, Hunington Beach, etc. all have sounds very much regional depending on local culture, economy and the other stuff that makes punx angry. The first song presented is one with old school hardcore mentality, writing a song with the band name in the chorus. Most good hardcore bands end up doing this for some reason.The Unit also uses another hardcore staple that Spazz likes to point out, the use of  "GO!".
The band has all their material available on their website, which is fucking awesome, and DIY and punk and more cool then most bands that aren't Cellgraft. You see all kinds of bands with songs to stream on Myspace, Facebook, Bandcamp and all that cool shit but not many straight up give all their material away. This kind of promotion only gives me desire to actually purchase their albums. "Premium Iced Tea" has an awesome cover for example. Besides the metal text denoting the band name and the required speed to play the 7" it appears to be exactly what the record title tells you it is. Punks being clever? Never happens, certainly not now.

Baby. I don't wanna make out, I just wanna CIRCLE PIT!

Monday, March 7, 2011

March Thrash Madness!

 With lots of thrashing happening here, I might as well keep it up. I'm exclaiming this to be March Thrash Madness! I'll try to do only thrash and crossover all of March. I even had this INSANE inclination to wait until March Madness hits and taking the final (x) teams and posting bands from their corresponding states. We'll see how lazy I get and how many drugs I can do first. Haha. But onto the music!
 Here's a sweet split from Municipal Waste and Crucial Unit. Municipal Waste you should be quite familiar with since Dave Witte has played drums with them for a few years and Municipal Waste were fore bearers of that "modern thrash revival" we had. Thrash never died, it just went back underground. Regardless, they're a super D.R.I. influenced crossover style thrash band. That's a good pick up reference, but I hear a lot of hardcore influences on here. A couple of breakdowns even. Not slams, this isn't death metal.  Fast, sloppy drum fills. Fast talk/yelled lyrics. Fast punx guitar parts. These guys are the line between fastcore and crossover. A few more BPMs and they cross that line. The newer material is longer and much more thrash-tastic. I prefer the shorter crossover songs on their early material a la this split 7". I really love the samples they use as well. Some people aren't too keen on them, and they're missing out. Really adds to the atmosphere for this band.  "Born To Party" also appears on the "Art of Partying" LP in a varied form with lots and lots of gang vocals. I also want to note the sweet band Poser Disposer got their name from MW. Cheers.
 Crucial Unit play short, fast thrash. Straight up. Their singer should maybe be in a power violence band, but it's interesting over the thrash. One thing making them interesting is the Macabre influence. It's much more prevalent here then on the "Moshzilla" 7". I just don't hear enough Macabre in sweet bands. The other non-Macabre aspects of their music are fucking fast and chaotic hardcore punk thrash. Crucial Unit like Municipal Waste have fun lyrics but some of their tongue-in-cheekery is done with political motivations. I love this lyrical style because it doesn't get boring. It's like those lines you quote in movies over and over before your band samples them.


"It's circular. Round. Circular. Circle. With the music. The flow."