♫♪  PERIOD - “Four”

Hey there, friend. Do you know PERIOD? No, no, not the punctuation mark, you dummy. If I was talking about the punctuation mark would I have intentionally caps-locked my way through the word up there? I’m talking about the improv/experimental/maybe-sort-of-metal-sometimes-but-other-times-not-really band featuring Charlie Looker, Chuck Bettis, and Mike Pride. Somebody once described them as sounding like Derek Bailey covering the Melvins, so, yes, confirmed, they sound like my dreams coming true. Hows about I list some of the members’ side projects to, I don’t know, jog your memory? Well, Looker’s used to be in a little group called ZS, and he also headed up Extra Life. Now he’s currently all about that Seaven Teares life and that Psalm Zero life. Bettis is primarily associated with his work in the improv duo Mossenek, as well as the bonkers sonic assault of Brown Wing Overdrive. Pride leads From Bacteria to Boys as well as Drummer’s Corpse, and he’s collaborated with a whole bunch of folks who will probably make you say, “Oh neat!” like, for example, Nels Cline, Keiji Haino, Matana Roberts, and Otomo Yoshihide.

Okay, with all that listing out of the way, we can get to what my youth pastor used to called the “real spiritual meat” of this here Choco post. You see, many moons (read: 8 years) ago, PERIOD put out their debut album PERIOD, and that shit sold out almost immediately (as of right now, though, you can grab a digital version of it off of Mike Pride’s Bandcamp). So naturally, the guys in PERIOD were like, “Let’s wait eight years and put out another record.” And now, thanks to the kindness of Public Eyesore Records, that new new PERIOD record is finally here. It’s called PERIOD 2 because yes, I agree, making up titles for things sucks. Right now we’ve got an extra special premiere of “Four” from the album going on below. “Four” is the second track on PERIOD 2, which is sort of like how Ben Folds Five only had three people in it.

Anyhow, “Four,” is an exercise in riding that Painkiller-ish line between metal sonics and free improv. Consisting quite simply of Pride’s wall of drums, Looker’s almost-chiming baritone guitar, and Bettis’ wailing reverbed-out vocals, the thing sounds nevertheless massive, pummeling. I want to attribute a substantial chunk of this specifically to Mike Pride, who manages to wring out a surprising range of dynamics and textures, even when playing comparatively traditional parts like the blast beats early in the song’s nearly 12-minute length. Bettis and Looker, too, sound totally jacked in to what Pride is doing, smart enough to lay out when they need to, and carefully just those frequency and timbre ranges left untouched by Pride, springboarding the whole thing up in to the upper atmosphere.

PERIOD 2 features special guests Darius Jones of Little Women, and Sam Hillmer of ZS, and it’s out May 29, as evidenced by the record release show that’s happening on that day in New York. For that show PERIOD will be joined by the clarinetist Jeremiah Cymerman, which is convenient for me because it gives me a reason to include one last Relevant Media Link: here’s Cymerman interviewing Looker on Cymerman’s own 5049 podcast.

• Chuck Bettis: http://chuckbettis.com
• Charlie Looker: https://twitter.com/charlielooker
• Mike Pride: http://mikepride.com
• Public Eyesore Records: http://www.publiceyesore.com

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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