Before there were Moving Units, Year Future, and Ground Unicorn Horn, there was Chris Hathwell, who plays in all three and there was his great, doomed punk band The Festival of Dead Deer. They were great because the noise they made could melt steel and boil blood, and they were doomed because they reared up fast, spat out beautiful music, then vanished into the ether. Their album The Many Faces of Mental Illness (ThreeOneG) gives us 14 faces of mental illness in 44:57 minutes of frantic, stained-to-nothing vocals, sludgy razor sharp breakdowns, and song structure that bucks from one extreme to the next. We see guitar leads as attacking snakes, drums that co-opt hardcore's blast beats and R&B's submarine groove. It has all the screaming beauty of Gravity's catalogue, the kind of angularity a million bands have since tried for, in turn turning the very idea of angularity (or at least the search for it) into a joke. This record isn't a joke. It's not a half-ass screamo cash in or a trend-searching fashion parade. Take all your preconceptions and theories of what punk is and flush 'em down the fucking shitter. This is the sound of bones crushing to dust. Love it or get out of the way and pretend you're not afraid to look the thing in the eye.
The Spleen Position
01 Before Narcolepsy
02 Hunting
The Appendix Position
03 Limited Edition of Zero
04 Inner Planetary Reasoning
01 Before Narcolepsy
02 Hunting
03 Limited Edition of Zero
04 Inner Planetary Reasoning
05 What Makes Sense
06 Basura Blanca
07 My Name's Explicit
08 A Controlled Response
09 In Fifty Words or Less
10 Episodes
11 Rated Are
12 The Coming of Going
01 The Festival of Dead Deer - Monotones
02 The Festival of Dead Deer - Stagnant
03 The Crimson Curse - Psycho 75
04 The Crimson Curse - Funeral Empire
