The complete Genghis Tron

Genghis Tron often gets billed as nothing more than a cybergrind band, which is a shame. A crying one, at that. Yes, there are elements of cybergrind, but there is so much more to their sound. There are entire sections within their songs that range from drum n' bass to ambient to analog dance music to psychedlic rock to post-hardcore. When the band really shines, however, is when they seamlessly merge all those disparate styles into a cohesive whole. Take "Arms" off of the Cloak of Love EP. It starts off with a dance beat, goes almost immediately into a blast of cybergrind interspersed with moments of DnB, into a section of Aphex Twin-type ambient music, another blast of cybergrind, before finally combining elements from all of those styles with a post-hardcore guitar line over everything, all in the course of two and a half minutes. The rest of their music follows suit, throwing vast amounts of musical genres at the listener over the length of a typical pop song, sometimes even less. The closest thing I can compare them to would be Naked City-era John Zorn, only with more musical styles and the ability to combine those styles together rather than just jumping from one to the next. While they may seem a little jarring and difficult at first simply because you never know what they'll throw at you next, given time Genghis Tron may just change the way you listen to and think about music. Just a note: the versions of Rock Candy and Laser Bitch on the Laser Bitch single are different than those on the Cloak of Love EP.


Laser Bitch Single
1. Rock Candy
2. Penultimate Just Means Second To Last, You Pretentious Fuck
3. Dance, Laser Bitch


Cloak of Love EP
1. Rock Candy
2. Arms
3. Ride The Steambolt
4. Laser Bitch
5. Sing Disorder


Cape of Hate EP
1. Discomfort 1
2. Rock Candy (Rainbow Jesus Remix)
3. Arms (Dylan Reece Remix)
4. Discomfort 2
5. Ride the Steamboat (Demo)
6. Welcome Home Mother (Destructo Swarmbots Rock Candy Remix)
7. Laser Bitch (Exfoliating Gel Scrub Remix)
8. Discomfort 3


Dead Mountain Mouth
1. The Folding Road
2. Chapels
3. From The Aisle
4. Dead Mountain Mouth
5. White Walls
6. Badlands
7. Greek Beds
8. Asleep On The Forest Floor
9. Warm Woods
10. Lake Of Virgins

mewithoutYou - I Never Said That I Was Brave (Full Album)

This is mewithoutYou's first official release. It's currently out of print, and hard to find even on p2p networks, which is why I'm uploading the whole thing. If you're a fan of [A-->B]Life, you should probably download this. If you didn't particularly care for that album, my guess is you'll like this one even less. It's basically a more raw-sounding [A-->B]Life. The whole thing sounds less-produced than their full length, and Aaron's vocals (or screaming, rather, since there's not much singing on this one) are a little less developed than they are on their other two albums; however, they are easier to hear, which is a plus since I felt they were pushed too far back in the mix on [A-->B] and Catch For Us the Foxes. There's nothing drastically different between the versions of "I Never Said That I Was Brave" and "We Know Who Our Enemies Are" on here and the ones on [A-->B], but if you're anything like me, it's interesting to see how the songs evolved. "Flamethrower" is quite good, as is "Dying is Strange", especially if you're into mewithoutYou's more hardcore moments. "Four Word Letter" is indeed the sister songs to "Four Word Letter (Part 2)" on Foxes, and the two are probably best appreciated if listened back-to-back. I recently discovered that Aaron and his brother were in a band together before mwY called The Operation. I managed to find their out of print full-length on Amazon, so that should be arriving within the next few days. If it's any good (and really, why wouldn't it be), I'll order their EP and upload both of them. Till then, enjoy this!


(Click image to download)

1. I Never Said That I Was Brave
2. Flamethrower
3. Dying Is Strange And Hard
4. We Know Who Our Enemies Are
5. Four Word Letter

PS - This is what the alphabet would look like if you took out the letters "Q" and "R". Also, I'm a contributor over at MuchMusic.net now, so I may occasionally post things there that might not end up here.

Showbread - No Sir, Nihilism Is Not Practical

YAY! Ben has a music blog! For my first post, I decided to upload a few tracks by Showbread off their album No Sir, Nihilism Is Not Practical, which I thought was fitting since I stole the title from their song "The Dissonance of Discontent". It took me a while to get into Showbread, a lot of which I blame on some of the vocals. When I first heard the album, I think I was expecting spazcore in the vein of Norma Jean or Training For Utopia. What I got instead were elements of hardcore, math rock, a little spaz, and a ton of straightforward face-melting ROCK... with both clean vocals and high-pitched screaming. I liked the clean vocals, but the screaming seemed out of place at times. So did the keytar. Yes, I said keytar. However, the song about Evil Dead II ("Dead By Dawn") drew me back simply because of its subject matter, and after a few listens, what had formerly sounded disjointed and chaotic (in a bad way) started to make sense. From the weird electronic bounce of "Mouth Like A Magazine" to the "raw rock" (the band's term) power of "The Dissonance of Discontent" to the sad, yet somehow uplifting and entirely relatable "Matthias Replaces Judas", which I'm sure features Reese Roper from Five Iron Frenzy on vocals, Showbread manages to be diverse while still making a cohesive album. If you're into the likes of the Blood Brothers or labelmates He Is Legend, you may want to give Showbread a listen or three, since it may take time to sink in.



1. A Llama Eats A Giraffe (And Vice Versa)
2. Dead By Dawn
3. Mouth Like A Magazine
4. If You Like Me Check Yes, If You Don't I'll Die
5. Sampsa Meets Kafka
6. So Selfish It's Funny
7. The Missing Wife
8. Welcome To Plainfield Tobe Hooper
9. And the Smokers And Children Shall Be Cast Down
10. Stabbing Art To Death
11. The Dissonance of Discontent
12. Matthias Replaces Judas
13. The Bell Jar