No band makes a show of underground camaraderie like Destruction Unit. The group tends to invite friends on stage, uniting players from typically insular realms like hardcore, minimal synth, and metal in the service of further saturating its already dense, imposing performances. There’s a tagline for this, New American Heavy Underground, which you can find on t-shirts. And the catalog of Ascetic House—an art collective and tape label tied to Destruction Unit—likewise corrals sounds from the shadowy margins of accessibility. Eroding those superficial scene divisions dovetails with broader visions of liberation: Destruction Unit celebrated the release of its latest album, Negative Feedback Resistor, with the pioneering prison abolitionist group Critical Resistance, for instance. But for all of that refreshing commitment to activism and exploding aesthetic cliques, the album sounds rather familiar, an echo of its last full-length statement, Deep Trip, and the usual proto-punk touchstones.
Destruction Unit's current lineup solidified by 2013’s Void. Previously, the handle was a vessel for vocalist and guitarist Ryan Rousseau, a refugee from the Reatards. With a new lineup, the Arizonan outfit favored up-tempo, punchy beats inherited from hardcore; riffs pitched to near-total scree; and barren, windswept passages reminiscent of the group’s forbidding but awesome Sonoran Desert surroundings. It was an estranged sort of psychedelia, distinguished by what felt like elemental terror from the American southwest, but with Destruction Unit’s latest album the same approach risks exhaustion. Repeatedly evoking an arid landscape is perilous work; inspiration could evaporate.
That said, Negative Feedback Resistor is assaultive in a way that Void wasn’t. This is in no small part due to the rhythm section, which defaults to an up-tempo beat that lurches and bludgeons in the insistent style of Motörhead or even Discharge. With their reliance on halftime breakdowns and sharp drum patterns, Destruction Unit sound inspired by hardcore, but they leave out the concision. That’s too bad. The three-minute highlight "If Death Ever Slept" could lead a savage seven-inch. Instead, it’s easy to miss after the album’s midway slog through redundant nine- and seven-minute numbers.
This lack of dynamics works better in the band's cataclysmic live show, where the band has few peers. But Negative Feedback Resistor’s relentlessness made me pine for Void’s atmospheric excursions. There are a few hazy, impressionistic moments, notably the introduction to "Judgment Day", but they feel appended rather than interwoven. And, as with many traits of Negative Feedback Resistor, the same could be said for Deep Trip. Indeed, Destruction Unit’s prior album opened with a song that pivots abruptly from sprint to halftime in much the same way as "Disinfect".
Negative Feedback Resistor also harks to space-rock like Hawkwind, not to mention that the core riff for "Salvation" is essentially identical to the Stooges’ "I Feel Alright". Rousseau’s words are mostly inaudible, morphed into queasy, feverish missives, but the ongoing allusions to drugs and the bible indicated by song titles and lyrical snippets are frustratingly pat and disappointing. Off record, the band’s ideas about getting free are much more urgent, inventive, and contemporary than those psych clichés. Sadly, the band's stylistic conservatism has such a blurring effect on their records that any three tracks contain its total rewards.
