Below The Sound

More Like a Gunshot Than a Car Wreck (Crucial Blast)
by Craig Regala

Wow, along with the Superhighway Carfire disc, I’ve been having a flashback weekend to my tenure as an indie record buyer in the late ’80s. Superhighway leans towards the Unsane style of ballistic churn Below the Sound were fed as feral cubs at the nip of Chicago’s art-plus-punk-vs.-rock nexus that gifted us with Big Black and The Effigies who begat Tar. Here, the urge to rock-out new style succeeds while sidestepping rote hardcore and duh-metal without defaulting into the “industrial pit” hole where Ministry merged duh and rote into a career after that good record I don’t have anymore.

Below the Sound compact dry, nagging riffs with a mechanical rabbit-punch whacking you from different angles until your whole body’s been worked over by a sock fulla golfballs instead of a single whomp to the ass. It lacks the braying bravado of stoner rock, its roots in legwarmer-era metal without chilling out too far. If Janitor Joe had cut a half dozen records and toured constantly, or if Rollins had been able to break The Mark of Cain stateside, there’d’ve been a footpath for you to stroll to Below the Sound’s house. Whack through the woods anyway and go see these guys if they play in your burg. Catch More Like… at the home of Weedeater, Totimoshi, and Spickle.
(PO Box 364 Hagerstown, Maryland 21741)