Dave Chamberlain

The musical term hardcore has been thrown around more than an old bar rag during the past twenty years.

At first, it meant one thing: punk rock or metal (depending on your point of view), played with extreme speed, brutality and aggression. But the word mutated, and hardcore went on to describe everything from intricate math-rock to early drum `n' bass. Just like everything else, though, it's come full circle. Venomous Concept--a loud-rock super group of sorts that boasts Buzz Osbourne of the Melvins, Shane Embury and Danny Herrera from Napalm Death and Kevin Sharp from Brutal Truth and more recently Damaged--takes the idea of hardcore and sets the clock back to the beginning.

Venomous Concept's "Retroactive Abortion" (Ipecac) puts the depth of hardcore punk into a pot and mashes it up into what the band calls "outlaw punk"; from the first track, "Weirdo," to the kiddie-punk-bashing "Rhetoric" to the record's final atomic bomb, "Braincrash," every second exemplifies the three-chords-and-a-cloud-of-dust idea. Thanks to modern technology, the distortion levels produced by Osbourne and Embury more closely resemble the low-end rumble of Napalm Death than that of the early eighties hardcore bands, but the idea of playing at high speeds, screaming instead of singing and clipping the drums at a ridiculous pace remains.

The stroll through the past/update on a sound resulted from simply talking through the idea. "It was kind of a looking-back thing," explains lead singer Sharp, who's based in Chicago. "I'd talked on and off with Buzz about it for years. Last year I went out on the road with Napalm [Death], and in the process of hanging out late and talking shit, Shane was like `I've got all these old riffs,' and I told him that I'd been talking with Buzz about doing a record. A few phone calls later, it was sorted."

Bands, like most artists, rarely go backward. As an analogy, imagine modern-day, bald-headed Ron Howard going back and playing Opie from Mayberry. So along those same lines, it would seem difficult for the members of The Melvins, Napalm Death and Damaged to go back to the music of their youth. "What, you mean in terms of the world of difference with the heavily complex stuff I've been doing?" Sharp responds, steeped in sarcasm and with a hearty laugh. "Seriously no. It's kind of like riding a bike. I'd been doing that kind of stuff since before I got involved with Brutal Truth. It's like putting on an old, comfortable pair of shoes."

The band took five days to record (in Los Angeles), and then debuted the material at a jam-packed Double Door last Valentine's Day. The hard and fast nature of the music made the live experience difficult to nail down; amped by the Double Door's oppressive sound system, any intricacy of the tracks was lost in a wash of fuzz and drums, and without any familiarity with the material, many were left wondering just what they'd actually heard. Regardless, it was crowded.

"I figured there'd be a lot of curiosity, primarily because of who was involved," says Sharp of the turnout. "I was kind of surprised in one sense, since that's not really the normal venue for that kind of thing. At the end of the day, or at least what I was thinking, is that the people who would understand what we were doing would be the old farts, like me. But apparently some of the younger kids seem to get it too."

His last point is something that's heartening for everyone ever involved in the eighties punk/metal/hardcore scenes, but who's astonished by the lack of aggression in what's called "punk" in the twenty-first century. Sharp, who once said in this space that nu-metal makes him want to puke, breaks it down in a kinder manner than you might expect. "A lot of the things that are missing today are just incomplete thoughts. The real artists are the actual producers. You think about all these bands on their major-label contracts, and they're making desperately uninteresting music--but it sounds really good because the right producer sat in and created something really radio friendly. But the kind of stuff we're talking about--back in the day, so to speak--people had a complete thought. There was music and an image behind it. Like the Discharge records, and Crass and that sort of thing--they had an identifiable sound and an identifiable look. It was more internal versus bought."

Perhaps most amazing is the fact that Sharp can still sing--well, scream--with the same tonsil-shredding veracity that he always has. "I've never had trouble with the voice. Periodically I'll have a blowout with the lungs, but, you know, I quit the smoking of the cigarettes," he explains with resignation. "At this point, all I really have to monitor, to seriously watch over, is the drinking, the hoisting." He pauses for a moment before finishing. "But I'm from the South, man. It's our culture!"

(2004-07-13)

Also by Dave Chamberlain

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(2004-06-02)

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(2004-06-02)

Raw Material
(2004-05-25)

Summer Music 2004
(2004-05-25)

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