POST 2 GRIDLINK

Ah GridLink. You know there’s a lot I could tell about this band’s history, much like any other ultra hip blog would do, but you know what? I figured everyone’s got their heads so far up Jon Chang’s ass that it wouldn’t matter. Bottom line is, Jon Chang’s full of shit. “Later though with T.I.D., Rob and I wrote songs that we thought Jon wouldn’t like an be like “Oh man, this is gonna be funny, he’s going to hate it” (cause it wasn’t straight grind all the time), but he actually wound up liking the stuff.” Dave Witte’s quote. I once read how Jon Chang stated that the band, thus including Chang, wrote the record so that every song would be a different and distinguished genre. Bottom line, Chang’s full of shit.

Take their vinyl release, for instance. It’s a single LP, nothing more, nothing less. http://www.bluecollardistro.com/hydrahead/product_info.php?products_id=5124&cPath=4_741&store=

Just take a look at how much it costs here. Just look! Awe, awe! And that’s no exception. Why must they charge 24 dollars for it? Because it’s one CD, and another CD, that both cost 12 dollars respectively and now they’re together on one LP, so now it costs 24 dollars! That’s some solid reasoning right there.

Chang’s also stated that he doesn’t like vinyl. He’s not a big fan of using petroleum derivates and the mastering process is a wrong representation of the original recorded music. This can all be found floating around the net until someone finds out there’s me giggling about it as if I’d be lip-synching to Justin Bieber and posting it to Youtube, and then it’ll get deleted. If anybody wonders what that’s supposed to mean, just take a look at mister Chang’s lyrics. They make just as much sense. Or read further down into the “article” (I suggest you pronounce that in French, I’m an active blogger now so I deserve an “Internet Douchebag” stamp). Anyway;  good for you, mister environmentalist. Too bad you love CD’s instead, which is plastic and aluminum for a large part. Maybe not aluminum, I might be wrong there but you catch my drift. I’m right and you know it. Bottom line, Chang’s full of shit. Did I mention that before. I’m so witty. God.

As is GridLink’s cover art. I mean it's full of shit. Would you just look at that.

Chang’s also stated that the only thing good about LP’s is that it allows big cover art. That’s fun. If you’d actually have cover art. What is this? I see less pixels then the first album cover. I bet they did that for the video game reference effect. That, or digital camouflage. Either way, the effect isn’t quite different on CD or LP. It’s still lame. The LP just sucks you more into its lameness. Maybe that’s Chang’s true intent. Who knows. That’s why I have to use this picture again. It’s appropriate.

                                                      

                                                        These are Chang’s actual words.

http://www.hammersmashedsound.com/2010/05/jon-chang-interview.html

The interviewer’s not as annoying as Andrew though. Oh wait. Forget what I just said. Modern grind bands “don’t get it” with their “35 minute long albums”. Yeah 35 minute long albums are the worst. Waaaayyy too long. Or your attention span just is waayyyy not long enough. Why would you even compare your work to Hieronymus Bosch anyway, coming to think of it. It’s like calling that ridiculous Photoshop job cover art. Hell it doesn’t even qualify for a Photoshop job. Like his lyrics. They’re ridiculous, and don’t qualify for a good Photoshop job either.

Rotate

Through all

The seasons

Of Dante

A siege

Surrounding

Watership down

Watership Down. I’m sure it has a cryptic meaning and it’s personal and all. Can you all sense it coming?

                                                     There he is again! Sneaky bastidge.

And since I don’t read, ever, unless it’s a book with pictures, I will never know but it feels to me like he’s doing more with the words from the books and video games than just referring to them. That piece of lyrics is from the song The Third Children. If you look at Asuka by Gridlink, you’ll notice that whole song is dedicated to End To Evangelion. What a shitty anime. I’ll give him an applause because not a lot of people do it. I wouldn’t even dare referring to shitty books and shitty anime. But it’s like when a movie starts paying homage to other movies. It’s bad filler. And when you’re sixteen you think it’s intellectual. And then when you hit seventeen, you just don’t care anymore. But the thing is, how old was Chang when he was in Discordance Axis? Thirty? Anyway, it’s actually more unoriginal doing the tribute thingy than it is original being the first one to do it. Think about THAT! Maha! I’m so witty, god.

http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2011/01/orphan-land.html

“That’s pretty much the sensation of GridLink’s Orphan, a relentless 12 minute amplification of everything that made Amber Gray the greatest album of 2008.”

That’s funny. 2008, if I remember correctly, had albums such as, let’s see here: Cleptocracy by Kill The Client, 22 Random Acts of Violence by Phobia, that Maruta record I can’t remember the title of, Traitors by Misery Index, Pyroclastic Annihilation by Noisear, among others. Drummer/by-Childers-pronounced-deity Fajardo was and is in Noisear and Kill The Client, he’s in Phobia now too. Now let’s just take a closer look. In the article mister Child, erm I mean Childers, compares Orphan to that part from the Animatrix movie. Once again, it’s a pretty vague comparison, in typical Child, erm I mean Childers tradition (I say it every time!). Does he mean “It’s fast! And short! Pretty much like any other grindcore album from 2008! Because you know! Drummer Bryan Fajardo did two other albums that year as well! That I’m a big fanboy of! Because I like things fast! And slow! And short! And long! I don’t know! Jon Chang can I please suck your asshole?!”? I really don’t know. The comparison’s good though. Animatrix sucked as well. Don’t tell me it didn’t because you know it did. The Matrix sucked in its totality. My first impression of Orphan was this. Wow, it sounds messy. Why is Fajardo’s drumming apparently less tight? Chang’s lows are annoying me. I guess the platinum crickets didn’t have 21^st Century sound recording on this album. Well, Danny Walker on 22 Random Acts by Phobia was just as fast. You want fast? Listen to the Kai Hahto days in Rotten Sound. Cleptocracy and Noisear are pretty fast too, dude. Just listen to the song Retaliate off that album. And oh, did I mention Fajardo drums in Cleptocracy in Noisear as well already? I just listened to Orphan again, and yeah he’s actually right. It’s a couple of bpm faster. But you know, it’s not tight anymore. And you all know how I feel about typical syndromes of not-as-amazing-as-everyone-claims-it-to-be-musicianship. As for “amplification of everything that made Amber Gray blah blah”, on that album *ehem* Gridlink had a better quality production, apparently better quality than the Animatrix’s animation team, broader sound (broader than Chang’s vocal range), and better lyrics because I wasn’t biased by the hype back when I found out about it in 2009. Are the lyrics even his anyway. That shit’s so overloaded with video games and anime references that you can’t make out if the guy was just copy-pasting things from the video game manual or actually coming up with something of his own.

    

“It's a transcendent, boundary shattering nugget that’s one minute longer than Amber Gray so kwitcherbitchin, clock watchers.”

Wow, a complete one minute? That means they still could’ve put it on a 3” CD or 7”. I don’t understand the term kwitcherbitchin, Andrew. Are you sure you’re a reporter.

““I don’t want to say I really want to make a catchy record, but I really do,” said Chang, who said Deathspell Omega is the first band to really capture his attention since collaborator Takafumi Matsubara’s Mortalized.”

Too bad Chang doesn’t really contribute to the catchiness. All he can do is come up with vocal patterns. Which I think he does an okay job at. Childers must be really flattered to have his idol referring to a band he’s posted about and said nothing but good of on his b-b-bloggie. I actually don’t know if he did. Let’s find out. I just checked. Well, I guess he didn’t. Doesn’t matter, I’m pretty sure he either liked the band before and now feels his prostate tingling with the same sensation as “what made Amber Gray the best album of 2008”, or he suddenly likes the band because Chang does.  

“Takafumi said the first GridLink and Hayaino Daisuki were all brutality and he wanted to add intelligence,” Chang said.

You failed, Takafumi. You did what you did on Amber Gray. Unless someone can lay for me the patterns on a music sheet and pinpoint the difference. In fact, but I don’t know for sure because that one minute extra on Orphan obviously made the album abundantly long for me to sit through, I think Amber Gray had more technical tidbits than Orphan. But oh! Intelligent doesn’t mean technical. Silly me. Alright let’s see what else’s changed in regard of the first album then.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

Oh yeah that’s right. What can that intelligence possibly mean then. Boy oh boy, what can it stand for? For “adding an explanation to music to make it come off as if it’s something it really isn’t, and people buy it anyway because people are stupid.”? Nah that can’t be it. You know, I heard Djent is the new grindcore. As long as I don’t hear double pass patterns that no one can figure out unless you listen to the song a hundred times, nothing goes for intelligent. Period.   

“For all the hubbub about Steve Procopio (ex-Human Remains, sometimes Discordance Axis substitute) and Ted Patterson’s (ex-Human Remains/Burnt by the Sun) addition, I listened to Orphan three times before I even remembered they had joined up. So don’t expect too many changes in that direction.”

Well that’s funny. Adding Makoko to Looking For Answer suddenly had a stereoscopic effect on the latest album, according to you. And this line-up change doesn’t affect Orphan. Wait, a vision just appeared in the stream of blah-ish that’s coming from Childers’ mouth. When bands go into the recording studio, regardless of whether they have two guitarists or not, they just record two or more guitar tracks, each panned to left and right! And oh, in most cases, not even both guitarists record their part. It’s usually one guy recording everything. How could I’ve seen past that? Andrew, you have much to learn, young grasshopper. Or should I say platinum cricket?

“Just listening to Matsubara fillet his fingertips and drummer Bryan Fajardo crack tendons on the bullet train “Scopedog” is enough to set my joints to creaking with incipient arthritis.”

I swear if you try to make a song faster than it actually is by calling it something lame like “bullet train” one more time, I will set your back to creaking with incipient arthritis by thrusting my ovaries into your spine.

“The songs are so unrelenting in their tempos (and the band insists everything must be recorded live with no punch-ins later) that Fajardo had to master a two footed blast to provide the requisite intensity, but the payoff is in the organic aggression that forms the album’s foundation.”

Okay, I can see this makes sense. It really does. Only, I’m pretty sure Fajardo “mastered two-footed blast” long before they did this album. I don’t see how he did Retaliate off Cleptocracy, which is faster than any of the songs on Orphan, back in 2008, if he couldn’t do two-footed blasts.

“This record was a huge challenge for him,” Chang said. “This was a grueling record to make. Making any record like this is miserable.”

You know, every time I read about Chang discussing albums and recording, he says it’s miserable. That’s funny for a guy who has to do vocals alone. Think about guitarists/vocalists who have to track two or more guitar tracks, then do vocals. And imagine people doing an album that’s actually longer than ten minutes. Oh what misery would that be. Maybe he meant the true misery was in that Fajardo had to put up with his bullshit.

“That means one of the finest lyricists in grind is screaming with enough clarity that you can occasionally hear what’s on his mind.”

One of the finest lyricists in grind. Well you know that’s like saying the Backstreet Boys are good when you’re five years old. Wait till you actually learn how to make sense and then get back at those lyrics. See if they mean anything. I’ve got to admit Orphan did a better job, but who knows where he copy-pasted the lyrics from this time.

“The first pressing will be vinyl, including a remixed version of Amber Gray that adds bass by Patterson. It will also come with a download of karaoke versions of the songs so you can stop embarrassing yourself in those Justin Bieber lip synch videos you’ve been posting to YouTube.”

Ah yes, the vinyl. To my surprise, there actually are people besides us that complain about the way-too-shortness of GridLink’s records. And the Changies all hate the select few who do.

”JON: I don't think there's 1 right way to do anything. This is the kind of prejudices "music fans" had against grind when it first came out. "Why are all the songs so short?" "Why does the singer just scream?" "I can't even tap my feet that fast!"

I'm sure anything can be executed in a way that is compelling, but there are no silver bullets. When people complain about Amber Gray being 11 minutes long, I feel like it's analagous to complaining that the painting of Hieronymus Bosch are so small?!”

One: Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings are small? Where did he get that? Second, and most importantly: it’s all cool you’re lazy, have to overcome intercontinental distances to rehearse and write songs together, and then record. But you know, when you make a record that is only 11 minutes long, it’d be natural if you would get that pressed on 7”. Or a 3” mini CD. You know, a 7” 33rpm can hold up to 14 minutes of music. A 3”er can do 20. That way, people wouldn’t have to pay 13 dollars or 10 Euros (I don’t know about the currency balance right now and I’m too lazy to look it up, “analagous” to Chang pulling excuses from his ass for “making” records that you can sing along with in one breath), for a CD that lasts 11 minutes, when it could’ve been pressed on a 3” for only 5 Euros or maybe 7 or 8 dollars, or on a 7” for like 5 euros. That’s one problem I have. Then, a better analogy would thus be: Hieronymus Bosch makes a painting that is 10 by 10” but paints on a canvas that is 6 by 6 feet. And then charges more for it because the canvas happens to be of larger format. But of well, time for me to kwitchermabitchin’.

And, stop embarrassing yourself in Justin Bieber lip sync videos? Is that supposed to be funny? Because I find 1) Jon Chang just as annoying as Justin Bieber, 2) it’s pretty insulting to talk about people who just spent 20 euros on a single LP as if they listened and lip-synched to Justin Bieber, just before purchasing that record. 

“But while you’re still absorbing Orphan, GridLink are already talking about the next album. Inspired by Red Dead Redemption’s soundtrack, Chang said that could involve acoustic grindcore – complete with blastbeats and death screams if Matsubara can get his head around the concept.”

Sure, let’s hear how that sounds. Maybe that’s the kind of intelligence you’re looking for. But oh wait. Remember Helvete by Nasum? Isn’t there a song on there called Stormshield that did that?

well there you go. thanks will. coulda sworn i saw that advertised for sale over at relapse last year. thanks for the correction.

This is Childers’ own comment on his own blog. It’s funny how easily he makes the transition from talking like a linguist to typing like he’s still in high school.

This is another funny one.

“[Album] Art is the only thing left to finish,”

Heh.

You know Orphan’s actually not THAT ba- oh wait. There he is again!

Damn it Chang! You had us fooled all along!

-Manguydude

PS: I don’t really mean everything I say on this shitty blog. Figuring as bloggers and promoters of the albums that get hyped and marketed as being “the best grind albums ever”, I can say whatever I want, not attach any truth to it whatsoever and still get away with it because apparently, and I really thought they didn’t, opinions count. Wait, no they don’t. There’s just this little Midas-effect (of shit) when it comes to mister Chang. I don’t think he deserves being able to do absolutely nothing wrong. Just as much as maybe the Matrix doesn’t deserve to be criticized in its totality.  Everything Chang touches turns into gold and for what? Because he was in a band that made music where screamed to a little bit? GridLink used to be cool when I found out about it, so did Discordance Axis. But seriously, when you read about an “album” that gets presented to you with a LOT of schwing, and then find out by actually listening to it that it doesn’t have any of that, well what do you do then. You’ll end up being disappointed. Or you’ll hate the album before it comes out when you read about how everyone is getting their ass ready for Chang to shoot his load in. But apparently there are people that just appear to convince themselves that every word about Orphan is correct and on it, unless someone says something “bad” about it. Well. Fuck that.