Negative 13 – Recover What You Can Review

By Dolphin Whisperer

What is a second life but a life that has just gone on long enough to find multiple waves of success? Artists at all levels that we cover here at Angry Metal Guy HQ, often, deliver their albums to the world for the love of the game—not the glitz or glory. Negative 13, as a collective of friends, reignited their passion for the game to release 2022’s long-awaited Mourning Asteri, a satisfying sludge platter full of punky energy and melancholy. And this time, only three years later, Recover What You Can arrives in a timely and timelessly snarling manner, ready to show again how friends who suffer together come out all the stronger.

It’s uncanny how textbook sludge Negative 13 hits without sounding too similar to any one big name through Recover. In many ways, their older origins play some part in this differentiation, with the inspiration from their sound reaching back equally to proto-acts like riff-churned Into the Pandemonium-era Celtic Frost1 or early post-punky Swans as it does to NOLA groove flagbearers like Eyehategod. As such, as is necessary in well-weighted doom and sludge endeavors, Negative 13 lives on the edge of amp-carved charges, finding life in a breadth of volume-driven and pedal-kissed tones. Without an abused guitar, a cranked amp, and a strained throat, Recover What You Can would not exist.

Though Negative 13 has chosen to keep Recover’s run lean, they’ve not forgotten to imbue every intro, verse, chorus, and space in between with the drag and hustle of furious riffage. An unfettered, surfy twang tramples through “The Vulture Circles” to kick off a punk-sneered ripper. A crushed and gated scrawl filters and folds into monstrous chords that back a creaky, impassioned bellow (“Horizon Divides”). And borrowing tactics from a faded The Jesus Lizard playbook, Negative 13 twists the longest cuts here with hissing feedback, near panic-level stabs, and frothing mouth mic abuse to bring heavyweight builds to emotional conclusions. It’s that tie to the heart that allows familiar marches and lockstep sways to resonate beyond the impact of loudness. Fervent cries to “pick yourself up and dust off your bones” (“The Vulture Circles”) and plaintive confessions that “I’ve been here before but it never plays out the same way” carry an earnest pathos that sews buzzing refrains to time-worn sleeves.

Recover suffers a strange fate at the hands of trim desires in that certain endings and transitions feel to be lacking that same tether that the songs hold within themselves. From the introductory “The Desolate” to quick burst “Casket Trail,” it’s not immediately apparent that the remainder of the album will skip along in a more disconnected manner as those two tracks function like a classic stage-hook blast. But starting with “The Vulture Circles” through to Recover’s close, we’re treated to an inconveniencing array of rapid-dissolve fade outs and awkward clips. An album closing with a hard stop can still have impact, but the kind of fuzzy cut that caps off the titular conclusion feels less like a swelling halt and more like turning a corner right into a wall. After repeated spins these kinds of minor stumbles settle into a strange, if learned, flow, reducing total grief. But I do wonder whether one additional shorter form jam could have pushed Recover across an even more satisfying line.

In its current state, however, Recover What You Can boasts a strong sludge performance that wields steadfast riff construction and heartfelt lyric expulsion in grooving balance. Born of a time after the genre’s inception and revived in a world far removed from its heyday, Negative 13 has remained an act discovered by happenstance—the deep (very deep) dive of a Neurosis-awakened neophyte, the Pittsburgh local who has known about them since day one, or you, dear reader, who may have seen their last output covered in these halls. Whatever the case—a curious mind of unstudied or well-read discovery—those who know of Negative 13 and long for an efficient and affective blend of doom power and punk fury will once again reap the rewards of patient and intentional output. Recover What You Can is unlikely to pull in the non-believers. To them we simply ask to listen and enjoy what you can.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Self Release
Websites: negative13.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/negativethirteen
Releases Worldwide: January 24th, 2025

#2025 #35 #AmericanMetal #CelticFrost #DoomMetal #Eyehategod #Hardcore #Jan25 #Negative13 #Review #Reviews #Sludge #SludgeMetal #Swans #TheJesusLizard

Chat Pile – Cool World Review

By Cherd

Two years ago, I named Chat Pile’s debut full-length God’s Country my Album o’ the Year, at considerable risk to myself. You see, the senior partners at AMG and Sons, LLC have no love for the Pile or for the greasy noise rock/post-hardcore/sludge these Oklahoman’s produce. After submitting my year-end list, I endured all manner of verbal abuse, which would have been fine had it not been followed closely by physical abuse. A hulking ape branded a large “P” on my chest, after which a gang of masked n00bs beat me senseless. I like to think they were forced to do this, but a couple clearly enjoyed themselves. Then came the waterboarding. This wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t played Alestorm on loop as I struggled for air. Finally, I spent a month in The Hole, and when I emerged again shaking and moist with sweat, they warned me against such folly in the future. Two years have passed, and Chat Pile’s sophomore release Cool World has arrived. Wounds I thought had healed ache as if new, and I fear exposing myself once again to the roving Eye of Sauron, but I just can’t deny my love for this band. Will I risk another month in The Hole for Cool World?

For the uninitiated, Chat Pile draw their sound from the darker, weirder corners of the 90s. Over their first EPs, it would be fair to say they were a mix of The Jesus Lizard and Deadguy with Korn riffs smattered on top. God’s Country saw them get heavier and angrier, with a sludgy heft adding to their sound and lyrics laser-focused on Middle American misery. Cool World is their heaviest work to date and continues to draw from 90s noise and post-hardcore. The first time I heard lead single “Masc,” I noted the influence of Helmet. Meanwhile, cuts like “The New World” channel Red Medicine era Fugazi. There’s a more uniform sound across the album than on previous outings, one that relies on sustained rhythmic grooves and repetition. If you’re familiar with God’s Country, it’s like they dedicated the better part of Cool World to what they were doing on “Slaughterhouse.” There’s also a subtle commitment to melody and despondent vocal harmonies that cut through the harshness on songs like “Shame” and “Milk of Human Kindness.”

Cool World’s focus on hypnotic, oily grooves combined with vocalist Raygun Busch’s shell-shocked talk-singing and raging shouts pays huge dividends if you like your noise metal gnarly and apoplectic. The best material comes in the form of two song couplets, the first being “Frownland”/”Funny Man,” and the second “The New World”/”Masc.” As “Frownland” demonstrates, the punch in these songs comes partly from scraping slabs of ugly bass courtesy of four-string slinger Stin and from a production job that gives Cap’n Ron’s drums plenty of low-end. Then there’s Busch’s reliably unhinged delivery of lines like “Big world, small change, outside there’s no mercy and not everyone can hide” from “Funny Man.” It’s the kind of delivery that lets you know there’s no mercy inside, either. “The New World” finds Chat Pile firing on all cylinders as Busch shrieks “Most are dragged kicking and screaming out into the new world.” It’s the ugliest, heaviest, and best song the band has ever written. By following this with the much more melodic but no less cynical “Masc,” Cool World gives us the best one-two punch you could ask for. Busch’s lyrics have moved from the micro to the macro of human suffering, and the shift to bigger rhythms and harder grooves supports this well.

This, however, means some of the idiosyncrasies that have served Chat Pile well over the years are missing. It’s all as bleak and off-kilter as ever, but there are no truly weird left-field detours here like the humorous “Rainbow Meat” or the starkly disturbing “Dallas Beltway” from the EPs or the humorous and starkly disturbing “grimace_smoking_weed.jpg” from God’s Country. The variety in Cool World comes mostly from the melodic tracks “Shame,” “Masc,” and the gloomy “Milk of Human Kindness.” There’s even a death metal vocals segment late in “Shame” that gets the blood pumping, but I miss the songs that make you go “What did I just listen to?” This could of course mean the band will widen their audience with Cool World, since a song like “Why?” proved divisive in the past. Cool World is a really good record, but for the first time, it sounds like a record some other band could have made.

I won’t be making Cool World my Album of the Year, but it’s certainly very good and I’ll probably play it to death in the next few months. It has the best two songs the band have written so far and finds Chat Pile maturing into a sound full of gnarly grooves. That said, a touch of the old overt weirdness and humor would go a long way on such a dark record. Is all this enough to save me from another month in The Hole? I don’t know, but if I disappear for a while, you’ll know why.1

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: The Flenser
Websites: chatpile.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/chatpileband
Releases Worldwide: October 11th, 2024

#2024 #35 #AlternativeMetal #AmericanMetal #AmericanRock #ChatPile #CoolWorld #Deadguy #Fugazi #Helmet #Korn #NoiseRock #Oct24 #Review #Reviews #Sludge #TheFlenser #TheJesusLizard