meth
meth “Shame”
By Dr. Abner Mality
With a band named meth, you can be reasonably assured that they won’t be playing commercial pop music. And you’d be right. This Chicago noise metal collective’s last album “Mother of Red Light” was a jarring voyage through a barbed wire strewn No Man’s Land, but sounds positively cheerful next to “Shame”, which is a musical root canal.
It is primal scream therapy for band leader Seb Alvarez, who apparently suffered a lot at the hands of the Catholic Church. He has plenty of company there. I would have to imagine this album was beneficial for him, because he puts every bit of misery, anger and agonized guilt into this throbbing, noise-filled excursion. Once the liner notes said that meth was more interested in rhythm than riffs, I knew I’d be in for a tough slog. “Doubt” starts things off with a pulsating wall of thick rhythmic noise. It’s actually one of the more “catchy” tracks, although that term is stretching it. As the album goes on through a series of one word song titles like “Compulsion”, “Cruelty” and “Blackmail”, it gets progressively more deranged and cyclonic, until final track “Blackmail” emerges as a nerve-shattering torture test of noise and screams. The progression is logical, but pretty harrowing.
Those who like dissonant grindcore and the most extreme of 90’s style noise rock should be the natural audience for this. The whole world seems to be degenerating into neurotic, hopeless breakdown, so perhaps soon more will be trying this sonic noise therapy as a coping mechanism.