Rob Nabbe interview - HSML - S/T (2004)

This one has been sat on my shelf for ages. Just waiting for the right time to be posted. feeling like shit and hungover, this morning seems to be the right time.
I first met Nabbe when my then band played Trashfest in Holland many many years ago, having previously toured with his old band Insult. Spent all weekend hanging out with people, drinking and playing noisy fast music.Nabbe has been responsible for being involved in some pretty sweet bands. Insult, Jason obsessed gore metal with Bile and today's offering.
HSML where a band he followed Insult up with. The album never really got distributed that well, which is a shame because its certainly better than most stuff mining a similar vein in sludgy hardcore.
But who better to explain it all to you than the man himself.......Rob Nabbe, and his thoughts on a few things.....

HSML........

HSML stands for Hot 'n Steamy Monkeylove and started out in the early '00s after the demise of Fastcore pimps Insult. The idea was to create Sludge/Punkmetal influenced by the likes of Iron monkey, Buzzov*en and Entombed amongst others. As a band we never really got picked up since our style wasn't hip or happening at the time. We didn't have the right tattoos, shitty facial piercings, haircuts, dance moves or social skills to fit in with the herd. The fact that our debut LP/CD was poorly distributed and promoted didn't really help either. HSML was heading for the shallow mass grave of obscure and forgotten bands. Sure we played shows with a bunch of well known bands such as Tragedy, Gadget and Cursed amongst others, but whatever. It was painfully obvious the scene wasn't ready for sexy riffs and sexy beasts. To this day I stand behind our record 100% and now that you've uploaded the thing here, all the nerds, wimps and posers can pretend they like us.

Current trends and the lack of any sort of backbone to modern music............

The backbone of modern music is snapped like a twig.
Or was it a spineless worm to begin with? It seems pretty trendy to play weak and lame music that is easy accessible and your girlfriend can mosh to while you hold her purse, Lucy.
There is no substance, no power, no violence. There is nothing good about modern music.

The point of creating/being involved in music.............

The only reason you need to be involved in creating music should be the fact that it's interesting and exciting to yourself and your bandmates. Music aside, it's the drinks, the laughs and the bullshit that makes it worthwhile. As long as you enjoy the music you create, that's all that counts. Who the fuck care's about the internet rumour mill, flavour of the week or how many idiots "like" you on facebook? If I can sit in my car, crank up one of my own records and feel like driving off a fucking cliff out of sheer adrenalin or aggression, that's all that matters.

Current musical highlights..........

My personal musical highlights at the moment involve this project/band I'm doing with a couple of dudes from Ghent, Belgium. The band is called Blind to Faith and is all about malice, violence and distortion. Dwid Hellion (Integrity) picked us up and released our debut LP through his Holy terror records. Recently we've released a split 7" with Gehenna through A389 records and we've only played a few shows so far. We don't wanna play every shithole and will do everything on our own terms for a change. We play whenever we want and that's that. If this means 5, 50 or 500 shows? Time will tell. So far, we've shared the stage with Eyehategod, Voorhees, Geriatric unit and a few others and will be playing with Buzzov*en in April. We're currently in the process of writing a new album and fans of heavy, raw and violent tunes should keep an eye out. Since nerds are to lame to pick up an album or visit a show they can download our debut LP through the Holy terror records website. Google "lazy" or "easy" you cunt.

Friday 13th...........

Daryl Kahan from Citizens arrest played a little part in one of the Friday the 13th movies. I will not spill the beans on which movie it is or if he's getting killed, maimed or mutilated or not.
Bring out the pizza's and beers and good luck.

What stuff you doing musically these days..........

Besides Blind to Faith I'm currently active in Skullhog and Mutank. Skullhog is working on new material that is basically filthy, moronic and utterly barbaric. Like Autopsy and Hellhammer's retard offspring. Mutank is a new Sludge band that focuses on crushing skulls and crumbling buildings and cities through low frequency obliteration. 

Straight from the mouth of the jacket destroying madman himself. This is HSML.............

HSML - S/T

AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO

AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO AGGRO

Triac - Splits Comp ( 2003 - 2005 )

Once again the archives have been raided. This was the haul. Some fine, fine grinding from Baltimore courtesy of Triac.
I came into possession of this CD when my old band toured with Pig Destroyer. They had a merch guy called Blake, who at the time was the vocalist in Triac ( and, coincidently enough now plays in PD doing noise and electronics). We would talk each night, sat behind the merch table while we tried to sell our wares about music and stuff. This usually boiled down to talking about Conan The Barbarian, Mad Max and old Carcass. Blake surprised me one night by handing me this CD and telling me it was his grind band. He had made a small number of them, compromising of tracks from the 7" splits they had with Medic and The Karma Payment Plan, to hand out to folk in the UK. So when I got home it was the first thing I listened to and it blew me away.
Triac are a very dynamic and chaotic take on grind influenced hardcore. I know for a fact the wide ranging influences they pull from and they do manage to fit them all in here somewhere. They swing from frenzied blasting ( check the opening track The Worm That Gnaws ) to slug slow discordance and into thrashin fastcore effortlessly. Turning-on-a-penny dynamics and vocal acrobatics abound. Plus, any band that references Mad Max is fine with me.

Triac - Splits Comp

I do believe they have had some line up changes since this. They followed it up with an album called Dead House Dreaming which is pretty good. Give them a go.

Swarrrm - Nise Kyûseishu Domo (2003)

Digging through the archives the other day i came across this. Having not listened to it for ages it got thrown on the stereo and once again I was immersed in the surreal and chaotic world of Japan's Swarrrm, trust the Japanese to do it.
You see, while they fall under the genre title of grind, they are really left-field within its confines. I first came across them when my old band Narcosis, did a split 7" with them.They only had 2 songs on it but there was no denying there power and scope. This was the next thing I got by them and it further widened my appreciation for these far east nutters.
What other grind band starts a album with a mandolin playing something that sounds like The Godfather theme tune? Then proceeds to use that melody in the same song? Swarrrm that's who. Coupled with some immensely crazy guitar playing and an all over the shop rhythm section you pretty much have the Swarrrm sound. But to top it all off, and this is the best thing about them, is the vocal performance.
They always changed vocalists. It seemed like it was a part of there sound. Every release up until Black Bong had a different vocalist. They had no lyrics either. You get the idea that it was a case of turning up and doing whatever came out. Thus you get insane high pitched squealing and gutteral grunts but delivered with something that could only be described as "melodramatic". It sounds pretty naff on paper but you need to hear this to fully understand the description.

Swarrrm - Nise Kyuseishu Domo

Various - The Bitter Days Ahead (2004)

I got thinking the other day about gig attitudes nowadays and the impact that only a few years of Myspace, Internet access and the like has had on live music. Not to wax lyrical about such matters as I am using the Internet to spread my word here, maybe just because this compilation CD reminds me of lots of all-dayers and gigs that we played years ago. And it is a perfect reminder to me personally of all the fun of playing those gigs. It was put out by Ghost City Records in London. Run by a really nice guy called Jack who used to live with our good friend Seedi. I don't think the label exists anymore really. He put out a couple of really good 7"'s and this comp. The track listing says it all really. Narcosis had played with all of these bands pretty much at some gig or another across the country somewhere back then. Most of them are not with us anymore, some are, some got shit. but that's the way it goes. It just reminds me of some really good, fun times spending all day in some pub down south listening to these bands and hanging out with friends.

Track Listing

1. Abandon Ship
2. Dead By Dawn
3. The Legacy
4. November Coming Fire
5. Trencher
6. The Deathskulls
7. Awoken
8. Injury Time
9. The Process
10. Voorhees
11. The Nothing
12. Patient Zero
13. Shank
14. Burning The Prospect
15. Army Of Flying Robots
16. The Break In
17. Ninebar
18. Night And The City of Broken Promises
19. Shackle Me Not
20. Broken Oath
21. Narcosis
22. On Thin Ice
23. Among The Missing
24. The Horror
25. Boxed In
26. The Sex Maniacs
27. Jinn
28. Break It Up
29. The Permanent
30. Wives Of Seth

V/A - The Bitter Days Ahead Comp

Its still a really sweet comp, and if your lucky you can still pick up the various releases these tracks came from across a few different distros.

Tractor - Demo (2006)

I have been digging through my personal archives recently. Realising I more than likely have a wealth of CD-r's from bands we have played with over the years and that some of them are still really good it makes sense to share some sounds that no longer exist or people never heard first time round.
Tractor are a band I became aware of due to the drummer running Superfi Records, who released a few things by my old band. I got sent this back in 2006 to review and remember it being one of the better things to be sent my way. They have this whole Unsane thing going on. Rumbling, distorted bass and pounding, echoing drums but mixed with a slow, Am-Rep sort of groove. The vocals are the biggest nod to Unsane, bearing that distorted, claustrophobic feeling howl of NYC's noisiest sons. If any of that sounds appealing then give it a whirl. I don't really know if they are still going but there are a few things that followed this release available at Superfi's distro.

Tractor - 2006 Demo

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Filthy filthy Filthpact.

Once upon a time. I was in a band that played quite a lot of gigs and travelled around annoying folk with our racket. We used to play Scotland every so often and one of the best bands we played with while up there was Aberdeen's Filthpact. One time it was a club that was shutting down, Filthpact kindly fed us, put us up for the night and introduced us to the delights of Buckfast. They have split now, but in there short existence they toured Europe and the UK and did quite a few recordings. This is the only one I have. 6 tracks of aggro, crusty hardcore with some little metal touches. Nothing new I know but they did it so well.

Filthpact - The Watering Down of Hardcore EP

A few of the Filthpact boys have been sighted since playing noisy grind in Ablach and Uncalm. Go have a listen and that.