Just as Mike Patton and Dave Lombardo seem to make a perfect match, conglomerating via the darkest depths of their fiery imaginations, so does the combined force of drummer Zack Hill (Hella, Team Sleep, Nervous Cop) and guitarist Mick Barr (Octis, Orthrelm, Quixotic). Like Patton's Fantômas, Hill and Barr flutter between hyper-intense speed metal and jittery, apocalyptic soundscapes. Their creations are linear but no less dense or persistent in delivery, and the overall result of their debut release, Shred Earthship, is like having thousands of tiny needles dropped into your ear drums from a great height.
Hill and Barr give themselves so much space and freedom for experimentation on Shred Earthship that they extend their distinctive, instrumental prowess even further than with their main projects. Barr's ruthlessly shredding harmonic solos weave the thick tapestry of the tracks, while Hill himself has said that "this album tops any level of playing I've ever done on a record"-- a pretty major statement considering that the self-taught musician has been responsible for some of the most remarkable heavy drumming of the past five years.
For the most part, Shred Earthship consists of disheveled rhythms smoldering with death metal influences but not actually flirting with any obvious techniques. It's more like Hill and Barr reduce the elements of the genre to its core-- focusing on the bare bones of style yet still keeping things bafflingly intricate. Hill's low-tuned drums and flighty footwork hold the flow throughout the record, and although Barr appears to be wary of straying too far into melodic zones, his licks never seem repetitive or stodgy; on some occasions, the duo sound like a less riffy but more intensely manic version of Sleep.
Because both musicians are familiar with playing in duos (Hill in Hella, and the Ladies with Robert Crow of Pinback; Barr in Orthrelm and Crom-Tech), they're used to staving off the potential thinness in sound of a two-man setup. Here they accomplish this through compositional sensitivity and an extraordinary range of manual and electronic effects. The end result of this rhythmic workout is an all-encompassing blast of broken cymbals, unexpected but wildly textured amp glitches, and effervescent noises that twist and jerk like a well-built yet surprisingly agile beast.
