CHILD ABUSE ARE NOT CHANGING THEIR NAME
Things that other people in the metal community care about:
- White ppl music.
- Old ppl music.
- Beyond boring shoegaze black metal.
- Sumerian dudecore nonsense.
- Ehh bands with awful singers.
- This.
Things that I care about:
- Feel good grind.
(photos via Noisecreep)
Have you ever had a band win you over in about 10 seconds? Well, that was my experience the first time I heard/saw a band that’s gotten more crap for their name than any other band I know of….Child Abuse.
I can recall it all quite well.
Twas a drizzly night in the Fall of 2005. I was a junior in college, and I went with my d00d friends to go see Behold…the Arctopus in Brooklyn. (These guys were so obsessed Colin Marston and that silly WARR guitar, I wanted to pinch their wittle cheeks.) I didn’t know anything about any other band on the lineup on this particular evening. The first group I watched had a triangle player. I was not pleased.
And so the next band starts to set up. An “Average Joe” on drums, “some guy” on bass, and this tall, lanky thing with a mile-high ‘fro on the keys. “Well, this sure looks like it’s gonna suck,” were my thoughts. A few minutes later, they started, and every preconceived notion I had was thrown out the window. Afro man gets on the mic and is all “Hi, we’re Child Abuse,” and BAM, a most beautiful explosion of noise. It’s hard to really put their sound into words, but I’ll go with this: 8-bit grindcore with the Coooooooookie Crisp dog on vocals. They had a song called “Penal Jihad”…..It was love. My friend bought their shirt on our way out, which had a picture of an eagle ripping a baby in half. It was too small on him, but he didn’t care.
I’ve caught them live a couple times since then, including once at a basement show in New Brunswick, where I went to college. Their self titled album was put out in 2007, they just recently put out this new shit called Cut And Run (via Mookie Singerman’s Lovepump United) which I’ve been gettin’ down to for the past couple weeks. Every song is a treasure. “Financial Burdon” sounds like it’s straight outta some trippy ass rave. “Bebe” is a more sophisticated version of this cough I currently have. And then there’s “Opportunity Zone,” which is totally something you could go surfing to…if it were possible to stay up on your board while convulsing. Man…these guys srsly get me. I got to see them again last week at their record release show at Glasslands in Brooklyn and they sounded dope. Too much rock for one little joint.
It pains me that so many people still seem to know nothing about Child Abuse, or even get past their name, so hopefully my kind words will shed some light on this close-minded, breakdown-craving, atrocious guitar tone-loving metal community that I dwell in these days. I won’t lie…Child Abuse are not for everyone. But perhaps they can help you all take out your aggression on this awful Summer festival circuit that is currently plaguing our nation.
All three members of Child Abuse were recently profiled on Noisecreep.com by Miss Justina Villanueva. You can read all about bassist Tim Dahl here, keyboardist (and former model??!) Luke Calzonetti here, and drummer Oran Canfield here. She also did a write-up on the Glasslands show here.
Listen to Child Abuse. Do it. Go. Now. BUY IT.
-Elise
P.S. I heard a little talky-talky about Child Abuse going on tour this Summer. I also heard a little sumtin about an NYC show with another band I wuv dearly that recently reunited. Oh snap..gossip. But y’all didn’t hear any-a-dat from me.
