Left: Extinguish The Sickness (1994)What kind of soulless, washed-up No Fun Club Membership-having desk jockey can't get down with some mid 90's XxStr8EdgexX vegan miliant political preachy floor-punching gorilla slam-metal/hardcore delivered by high school-aged Bros in sideways baseball caps, oversized T-shirts, and baggy pants? I shudder to imagine such a sad, soul-crushing zombie drone. And so do the dudes in Abnegation.
Much like Minor Threat is the funnest band to listen to while getting completely hammered with a bunch of Europeans in a shady neighborhood bar, so too is Abnegation the best music to crank when shooting a bunch of heroin, eating a bloody steak, and littering in a public place while getting blown by a tranny. I don't know why. It's just utter catharsis, man. Slow, creepy, mind-bending, down-tuned hatred, created in an alien environment where bowl cuts were acceptable but cracking a beer wasn't. Go figure.
Right: Sown In The Remains (1995)Abnegation were from the Pittsburgh/Erie area of Pennsylvania, and put out a bunch of obscure EP's, demos, and 7"s before dissolving into other bands and projects. Here are a couple of early releases. The sound quality is total ASS (I apologize in advance for the blown-out bass tone on Sown In The Remains), but for me at least, that's definitely part of the charm. These guys had no budget, no knowledge of the "music industry", per se. What they did have was CONVICTION, and a whole shitload of it to boot. Fuck the politics, this is just great music, from the psuedo-death grunt backing vocals to the weird, dissonant clean guitar passages to the sloppy enthusiasm of the double-bass bombardments.
Oh, to be young again...
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4 comments:
Didn't these guys become a full on satanic death metal band after some time? I think I have one of their LPs somewhere...
Yeah, their last record (and only full-length) came out in 97. It was far more "metal" and even contained a Venom cover. Most of their fan base will hardly acknowledge its existence. I've never heard it, personally.
I know one of the guys went on to play with Creation Is Crucifixion...
Yeah, CIC is great stuff, toured with those guys a couple times and they crushed. That stuff is definitely worth checking out, very technical but most of it is also pretty low fi on the production. Quite and interesting crew. Always heard of Abnegation but never saw them or checked them out. Thanks,
Ha,ha that photo of Abnegation is from the Brooklyn YMCA in Cleveland,Ohio....They were opening for Turmoil and Edgewise,I think.....anyways I booked that show many moons ago.
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