Christdriver

Everything Burns (Profane Existence)
by Scott Hefflon

Christdriver is the conceptual mix of heavy music backbone and long, crystal-clear sound clips I’ve always wanted to hear. It’s a nightmare mix of having the stereo and the TV on simultaneously, bombarding your senses with media-driven hype and propaganda. If they didn’t exist, someone would have to invent them.

Originally I thought this band was called Christdrivel. I think I like that even better. Anyone need a band name? I must admit, without all the sampling, Christdriver are little more than a heavy, dirgy, plodding, noisy band with a singer who roars his pain at the cold, hard world (and has a thing for a cheesy delay). While being tuned lower than Sabbath and letting your feedback-driven powerchords churn like butter is a good start, the musician-oriented innovation of Christdriver leaves much to be desired. Ah, but then we get to the samples. Put it this way: this ain’t your typical a-snippet-of-this-and-a-snippet-of-that linked together. “Mediate” has a long, un-fucking-believable clip from Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio, a movie that makes Pump Up The Volume look like a piece of pap culture Hollylint. A guy is losing it on the radio, tirading against everything, all the while Christdriver plods mercilessly in the background. Like spoken word with some fruity accompaniment on piano – only better, obviously, ’cause it’s heavy. But when the “singing” starts, it’s time to find another sample-driven dirge to TV culture. None of the clips are credited, which is incredibly inconvenient for those of us who’d like to explore further. (Please think of that next time, huh fellas?) As songwriting, this ain’t much to speak of, but as a multi-media conglomeration, this is conceptual genius. Without running their influences through a woodchipper the way Skinny Puppy used to, and without relying so heavily on a single sample that the song loses any sense of dynamic (like Ministry’s aptly named “So What”), Christdriver’s best moments are when they let a well-chosen sample speak for itself. Unfortunately, Christdriver still wants to be a band. There are zillions of decent bands in this world, but Christdriver comes damn close to the darkly philosophical combination of samples and rock music that I’ve been looking for ever since sampling technology was invented.