Matthew Widener, who played in the gory grind crew Exhumed in the mid 1990s, formed the Carcass-inspired grind trio the County Medical Examiners, and still performs in Cretin, the trio fronted by guitarist/vocalist Marissa Martinez (one of the only transgender people I can think of in extreme metal), shifted the name of his longtime political grindcore band Citizen to Liberteer as he got deeper into anarchism. He handles everything on Liberteer's debut, Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees, a compact but exceedingly expansive grind record packed with major-key riffs, digitized horns, real-life banjos, mandolin, martial drumming, blast beats, and the lyrics you'd expect from the setup and the CrimethInc.-like vibe of the album title.
His words are unrelenting. Widener isn't one for metaphor or couching things in poetry. You can delve into the lyric sheet ("To birth a world, the first must die," "Killing never justified itself/ But sometimes you must fight/ When peaceful protests choke in tear gas/ Blitz in black bloc squads," "To be happy, god damn it, kill those who own property") or focus on songs with titles such as "We Are Not Afraid of Ruins" and "Class War Never Meant More Than It Does Now". (Then there's the booklet that comes with the album and gives instructions on how to use the case, the CD, and said booklet as a weapon, as a way to hop barbed wire fences, as a stencil for graffitti, as a bomb, etc.)
Better to Die opens with "The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer", a short instrumental that takes its name from W.B. Yeats' much-quoted poem "The Second Coming". Despite its context, anarchy, in the descriptive sense, doesn't come across in the music itself: Widener, who also records classical music, carefully composed these 27 minutes. Repeated motifs echo throughout the collection; specific guitar parts resurface. The 17 songs bleed and blend. There's an overall arc as well as the in-song drama. It's a tightly contained outburst.
The first proper track, "Build No System", incorporates triumphant horns and flutes into its final section, and it comes over like Napalm Death clobbering John Philip Sousa. Another track, "Usurious Epitaph" basically breaks into "Yankee Doodle Dandy" at the 42-second mark. "99 to 1" works in some electronics that would sound dance-y even without transforming into the weirdo "Chariots of Fire" grind of instrumental "Sweat for Blood". If not for the crunchy distorted guitars, the banjo and horn-lined "Rise Like Lions After Slumber" would make sense at a Stare Fair hoedown. Thing is, even when he's not incorporating these oddball flourishes, Better to Die is a memorable, staggeringly detailed, shout-along collection. (Grindcore doesn't often sound this big.)
Widener's decision to place his very real call for action in this anthemic, angry, surprisingly catchy (and just plain surprising) grindcore was a smart one. More than any album I've heard in recent years, Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees reminds me of the more idealistic, early-20s version of myself who moved West with a sleeping bag and some books, to basically dumpster dive, write, and read anarchist theory and Beckett, who I thought could teach me something very real with his expansive use of minimalism. I got older and more cynical, and rejected anarchism for various reasons, but Better to Die is the kind of record that draws that line in the sand again. It reminded me how good it feels to want to tear things down; more importantly, Widener has the intelligence and ambition to create something new in the process.
