THE_NETWORK — This Is Your Pig's Portrait (review)

THE_NETWORK — This Is Your Pig's Portrait album cover Album · 2007 · Grindcore Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Vim Fuego
The word "hard" causes a number of problems with a lot of what gets labelled hardcore these days. The first problem is a lot of it isn't that hard at all, basically trying to pass off hyped up grunge with shouted vocals as something it's not. The other big problem is some bands try far too hard to be hard, and just end up hard to listen to. Fair enough, play each song in twelve different time signatures while incorporating six different genres if that's what you really want to do, but don't expect such a convoluted recipe to set the world on fire.

Thankfully though, for all the thousands of Converge wannabes and Facebook mathcore nobodies out there, there are a handful of bands like the_Network who get it right.

This music is right on the edge, amplifiers near the point of exploding, guitar strings on the verge of breaking, vocal chords near shredding. Modern hardcore enmeshes with the crushing post-metal chaos theory cacophony created by Neurosis and Today Is The Day and creates a sonic firestorm. The triple vocal attack screeches and bellows through lyrics more oblique than those of the average hardcore band. Everywhere through the album there are underscored guitar lines, tricky off beat drum fills, and even blast beats. There's a bit of good old fashioned mid-pace mid-range chug, but it often ends up warped and twisted into a gnarled nightmare of aural violence.

"Faith In Lust" has blast beats black metal bands would sacrifice their favourite codpiece for, but the amplitude of the bass frequencies would scare them off. "Bright Lights, Big City" has an odd jazzy intro, before descending into staccato, vocally punctured hardcore rage. "Pig's Portrait" could be a love song ("Hands bound (Baby it's you)/ Tongues tied (And the choice is gone)") or it could be vengeance brought to bloody fruition ("It's time to fill their lungs with gunpowder/And offer them a light/Don't give them their last words/Don't give... Don't give them their last goodbyes").

"Prison Letters" is a musical joke with one hell of a punchline. It starts with an acoustic intro pulled straight from a Creed album. It even has the crappy angst ridden vocals. Just when the bile is rising in your throat and lunch is about to put in a second appearance, the smelly stoner is put out of his misery by a razorblade slash to the throat as the real song kicks in. "What if we never wake up?/What if we never see the sun again?" takes on a whole different meaning through the sheer charge of emotional terror blasted into the song.

The sheer bludgeoning of song after pulverizing song could be too much for the unwary. Easy listening or a hangover album this ain't. Dissonant, discordant, intimidating and hard to beat.
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