Hearing this reminded me of the time this girl asked me to review her brother's* (see below) demo disk. Which I apparently agreed to in a 10 beer drunk (and cause she was giving me a handjob- NOTE: adies, spit on your goddamn hands already. We need the moisture). Then this weekend, I ran into her and she was fucking pissed. I found out later it's cause I never did the review, but I thought she was still mad about me using a "hobo condom" (trash bag and spit) on her when we did it. Hey man, ya gotta use something, right? Lotta diseases out there. I don't need to earn a nickname like Nick "The Carrier" Olds.

But anyway, Clash of the Life Force Warriors: I've praised some bands for experimenting with shrieking noise/thrash-metalcore (?!?!), but this ain't one of em. It's basically two bands mashing their instruments together without any vision of what they're doing. Which I appreciate normally, but there's no improvisation here. You can tell, too- the same rhythms are repeated over and over in every song (Yes, tee hee. Might be an inside joke, but I'm betting it's just another band using the "repetitive equals hypnotic" technique. Definitely nothing new, but too many in-dee RAWK! bands seem to be using it now.)

So basically, I'm disappointed. The concept here's that the bands AIDS Wolf and Athletic Automaton got together and recorded a buncha tracks with each other. Sort of like the Pussycats- Lennon and Nilsson thing, but without the hooks or direction. But I mean, naive hipsters may be fooled into thinking these guys are neo-noise rock revivalists, in the same company as Death From Above '79 and Big A little a. But this album's about as adventurous as a tribal tattoo on a suburban white girl's lower back (which is an interesting thought, cause doesn't it seem more rebellious to NOT have a tattoo these days? "Hey, I like your tatt." "Thanks. It means 'Peaceful Warrior." "Really? Cause I thought it meant 'Drunk Dare: Cabo '03").

But then again, if you're into screaming, gear-grinding guitars, throbbing drums, and synth shots firing everywhere (so basically, Sonic Youth in a wind tunnel) you might like it. But this all sounds like a band trying to showboat their idea more than making melodies. And I'll take a quote from Blur/Gorillaz/Good, Bad, Queen honcho Damon Albarn about this: "Melodies are very important things, really-- they're like keys. There are some melodies that have been around forever, so there must be something in them. It's not like the body, it's an idea-- it's eternal." (Which by the way, if we're still operating under the premise that music reviewing tells you what to think: listen to Blur).

So with that in mind, I can't say enough of how annoying it is to hear the same riffs in every song. Even if there're atmospheric moments that transcend the trash rock, they didn't drudge up any inspiring images in my mind (although oddly, I did keep seeing a picture of a Mid-West bagboy huffing ether in a Wal-Mart break room. Which is maybe what these guys were going for.)

Like in the first song, "Pantstathlon": it gets kinda monotonous after a while (ya know, after the 4th minute of the song [which is over 7 minutes] I shut it off to watch Man vs. Wild. Is anyone else narcotically compelled to watch this shit?).

So essentially, the rest of the CD's just variations of the same racket. And that makes me wonder if any one guy(s) had a strong idea of what they wanted to do. I mean, I understand a musician's need to express themselves in anything they do. But this sounds like everybody's soloing.

I'm split here, though. I like the un-pop experiment, but it just seems like it could've been more focused. But the chaos'll probably grow on me eventually. For now though, Clash of the Life Force Warriors sounds like chaos made by pedestrians.

*=Man I fucking hate this guy. Kid's so undeservedly confident. He needs to be taken down a notch. And the best way to do it? Rape him. Nothing shatters a man's confidence like a dick in the ass. No wait, a dick in the ass, and then in his mouth- so he tastes his own ass. Fuck that guy. (NOTE: I would never rape a guy. I wouldn't even watch. But I'd wait outside the door till it was over. Just to be the first one to laugh at him).