Since 1996, Mindflayer's Matt Brinkman and Brian Chippendale have placed skronk beneath splashes of electronic Day-Glo feedback, with individual pieces reeling like the decapitated segments of basement jams. There's been variation in the overall approach-- last year's Die & Mold 12" stretched tracks to longer durations; It's Always 1999 basted punchy rocket-fire soundtracking-- but overall the vision's remained more or less the same.
Expedition to the Hairier Peaks, the band's fourth album, is rawer, cavernously big-bottomed, and less sequenced than its predecessors. That, and, well, really long. Its trio of 10-plus-minute pieces work (and work well), but because these freeform monsters are followed by a seemingly interminable succession less successful five- to eight-minute rockers, the whoop-ass grows anemic. As so many bands have yet to realize (or realized but decided to ignore?), albums and live shows could be so much more enjoyable if the players simply wacked weeds.
It's unclear why Mindflayer overstuffs. As a bit of background: Brinkman pilots Forcefield and Chippendale pounds skins and screams in Lightning Bolt. There's been a considerable time lag when it comes to Mindflayer releases. For example, Hairier Peaks was recorded in October 2002 and released three years later. Likewise, 2004's It's Always 1999 was released five years after it was put to tape, as its title suggests, in 1999. It's hard to call Mindflayer a side project, especially considering Brinkman and Chippendale have been pairing up like this since the mid-90s. But since Forcefield became art-world darlings, partaking in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, and Lightning Bolt emerged as noise-rock poster boys, Mindflayer's stuck playing second fiddle (or distortion pedal, if you will).
Still, all's not a wash. The boomy 11-minute opener, "Rally For A Wind War-- Part 1: Whirlwind Dervish, Part 2: Cracking The Barrier Riffs" is a tad like Silver Apples eking "Oscillations" from within a static maelstrom. It's followed by the serviceable shorty "Getting Our Hair Done", a drum solo (with slight bass hum in the distance) that evokes boxers feeling each other out before engaging in the first punch. Like the opener, it just stops-- no attempt to smooth it into the following piece-- and this ragged, free-and-easy approach is a plus. Of all the long balls, the best is "Each To Their Own Dark Path", which squeezes two distinct movements into 12 minutes-- the first's an unrelenting This Heat! rave-up; the second has Chippendale gagging on faint Chromatics vocals behind a slightly less rousing monster smash. Despite some beauts, the cataloguing eventually gets tired and even the most patient listener may resort to picking out songs with funny titles: "Let's Play Holy War Fuckers", "Gore Gone Wild" etc.
Entropic noise (or metal-noise or minimalism or whatever) released in the wake of Orthrelm's magnifico OV needs to step it up, which can mean downsizing or interjecting precision or even some sort of theoretical raison de etre. A few weeks back, a friend and I were talking about how it's cool Thurston Moore collaborates on noise stuff and promotes younger artists, but it's disappointing that his experimental side hasn't developed-- i.e. he still basically stands in front of an amp, bends the guitar neck, and baptizes us with his fretwork. I get that same feeling with Mindflayer: Chunks of this racket provide enjoyable sugar lumps, but put them all together on an album, then line said album up with the entire oeuvre, and the flat-line non-arc gives me brain freeze.
