Narrows

Description

NARROWS

Spread out across both the United States and two continents, Narrows exists despite geographical inconveniences for the sole purpose of creating devastating noise. Though outside obligations will most likely relegate the live Narrows experience to a truly rare event, the shared need to exorcise their collective demons fuels the trans-global project. Dave Verellen (Botch, Roy), Rob Moran (Unbroken, Some Girls, Over My Dead Body), Ryan Frederiksen (These Arms Are Snakes, Nineironspitfire), Jodie Cox (Tropics, Rohame, Bullet Union), and Sam Stothers (Makeout Boys, Quarantine) are busy men with busy lives. The Narrows project is not meant to define and drive their individual lives. Rather, the band serves as a respite; a rare opportunity to escape; a vengeful howl from the basest corner of the psyche. In those rare moments when the five men find themselves in the same city, the quintet seizes the opportunity to combine their disparate talents to craft their unique brand of aural malice.

The debut 7" by Narrows is a first taste of the witch's brew concocted by these underground alumni. Anchored by a minimalist punk framework and elaborated by squalls of angular guitar noise, the music is simultaneously beguiling and dissonant. Helmed by Verellen's signature roar, the resulting compositions owe as much to the early hardcore pioneers as to New York and London's post-punk founders. Terminally bleak, counter-intuitive to the standard rock paradigm, and at odds with everyone, Narrow's debut is an angry slab of nihilistic abandon.

Retox

All that matters in the grand scheme of things is the band is not directly comparable to what has come before them. But if we must: RETOX is an outcome of stagnant and boring western culture, as well as the self proclaimed counterculture, which has slipped into a sea of pointlessness. The band manages to detach themselves from what one might consider a promotional paragraph trying to explain what is not really important to the band themselves; such as a list of influences – they are influenced by much more than music, but more so by the world at large. The band has no goal for what the future holds. Sonically, the band’s crude and primitive aspects make sense in this day and age. The band is a reaction to the world that the members and their comrades have lived in: shitty childhoods, bureaucratic frustration, and the overall justification of continuous war. That sensibility coupled with a modern artistic delivery, the music is educated as well as furious, and most importantly, blurring genre lines of punk, hardcore, thrash, metal and whatever else seems fitting to the critics. RETOX features members of some grand dick-sucking accomplishments, acts such as The Locust, Head Wound City, Holy Molar, All Leather, Some Girls, Swing Kids, Cattle Decapitation, Struggle, The Festival of Dead Deer, and The Crimson Curse.

EARLY GRAVES formed in the Bay Area in early 2008 and have since released two full lengths, both on Metal Blade Records' imprint, Iron Clad Recordings. The band's sound has been described as a mixture of old school Swedish death metal and American hardcore punk and have drawn comparisons to Napalm Death, Carcass, Tragedy and Testament among other.