CREATION IS CRUCIFIXION - IN_SILICO (1998)

Creation Is Crucifixion was always one of those "hushed tones" metal bands for me, often spoken about in cryptic and obscure terms by a chosen few within my social circle but never actually experienced firsthand. My old band almost had a chance to play with them after they relocated from Pennsylvania to the Bay Area in the early 00's, but we just barely missed them, hence delaying my exposure to one of the finest underground tech-punk-cyber-grind bands in the world for almost a decade. Fuck.
Creation Is Crucifixion had a sound that is difficult to pin down, oftentimes meandering off into ambient buzzing noise or screeching to a halt at the most illogical of times. But the core of their music is built around a complex and dizzying framework of technology-obsessed, grinding tech-metal, albeit flavored with a distinct DIY hardcore/punk aesthetic. Necrophagist as played by Black Flag? Perhaps. The Locust on meth, playing way better riffs, stripped of pretension and silly costumes? Maybe a little bit. You really need to hear it to understand.
But even beyond their mind-bending music, CIC had several other factors going for them as well. These were some WEIRD-ass dudes, obsessed with robots, circuitry, government, and the concept of mankind-as-program. In fact, their second-to-last full-length release, 2001's Child As Audience (In_silico was their first) came packaged with a 200-page homemade booklet, written by vocalist Nathan Martin, explaining in great detail how to re-program a Game Boy to make it do your bidding. The booklet was analogous to the subject matter present on the album itself: we are all programmed as children -- to obey, to fight, to ignore our own dreams and desires -- but it is never too late to re-write the program. Such next-level metaphoric electronic wizardry was but one aspect of the Creation legacy, and they remain one of the few grindcore bands in history who have a legitimate claim on the term "High Art".

The "official" CIC band bio on Last.FM reads thusly: "Creation is Crucifixion is a spectacle to generate discourse on what has become known as progress. The debates around technology exist within the walls of academia and by representing these ideas to a new audience we desire to renew the debate before the rhetoric maneuvers itself to the center of thought. We have no answers… only questions. Automata is conceptually rooted in our questioning of what in/describes life. Any correspondence regarding content is applauded. We are as you… tools of our tools."

This is not the last you will hear of this band on Illogical Contraption.

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