skinnypricks

High in One Eye - Skinnypricks
[noise rock, hardcore]
Recommended if you like: Lightning Bolt (but they feel too tame for you), Jesus Lizard (but they're not noisy enough for you)




















Download/stream here.

Less than 10 minutes of spontaneous, lo-fi aggression, apparently written and recorded in the space of two hours. This either is completely your thing or it is not at all, but it's free and less than ten minutes long, so make it your thing. It's surprisingly good for something more or less unplanned; there's a lot of really cool ideas going on. Especially in the drum-heavy assault and battery of "Tease" (best vocals on the EP?) or downright doom-laden "Jack-of-all-trades". Which eventually segues into 80's thrashy black metal worship before devolving into Daughters-esque dissonant riffing. But really, you saw that coming. Absolutely primal.

High in One Eye bandcamp page
(also includes another EP and a single up for free)

I'm sorry, this number is no longer in service

It's no understatement to say that Robotic Empire played a big role in my musical development, way back in the early aughts when HXCMP3 was a thing and Robotic Empire and their artists gave away MP3s with reckless abandon. They had tons tons tons of exactly the sort of thing I was looking for at the time: mean, obscure, distinctive hardcore/metalcore/screamo/grind/whatever. Circle Takes the Square, pg. 99, Circle of Dead Children and Pig Destroyer are probably the most relevant names on the [huge] list, but I ate it all up, and there were tons of under appreciated gems in the mix - Transistor Transistor, Hassan I Sabbah, Pink Razors, Stop It!!, etc. (Side note: furthermore, for some completely inexplicable reason, Robotic Empire also gave me my first songs from Isis (huh?) and, erm, Opeth. Yeah, they put out an Opeth record. Back in my day...) But today is all about Employer, Employee. Finally.



For the uninitiated - and that seems to be far too many - Employer, Employee played, uh, metalcore, sort of. But with none of the windmilling, breakdown-ing, bass dropping, chug-chugging bro-core genre tropes that have come to define that sort of music as of late. Employer, Employee play an honest-to-god fusion of metal and hardcore, taking the heavy grind of the former and slapping it across the face with spastic bursts of the latter, all the while with some borderline-mathy chops to back it all up. Some of their most adventurous material came after their full length sic[sic], on the Mother Spain & the Wayfaring Myth 7" where the opening track contains this entirely epic string quartet interlude and if your primal instinct to tear shit up is not triggered the instance that the vicious "YOU'RE GONNA DIE" scream unleashes a fucking savage every-core assault in your face, then seriously reconsider your life and how you've lived it up until this point.

Their discography LP was released yesterday after literally years in the making (I checked out their Last.fm page out of curiosity, and saw my own post from January 2007 expressing my excitement for their undoubtedly soon to be released collection) and boy was it done up in style. For $12.99 you get a clear 12" record limited to 300 copies with a pin, a patch, an insert, and a free digital copy. Seriously. I got the 7" for $5 and have never been able to find the way out of print CD, so $13 for a beautifully made piece of vinyl with tons of free bonuses is an absolute steal. Snatch that up before Robotic Empire realizes how insane this price point is.

SERIOUSLY, GO BUY THIS RECORD.

Employer, Employee - Nil or the Nile
Employer, Employee - One Count of Mutiny