Information Sniper - A Tribute to the Grindcore Ninja Commando Team [0010]

This album cover is that of the best album ever. Seriously, I will not argue about that with anyone. As I have already mentioned, for the first part I wanted to do a short review kind of thing, so that's what I did, irrelevant to whether it makes any sense mentioning the sheer levels of fanboyism contained within the next few paragraphs.

The Inalienable Dreamless, as I experienced it on the first listening session, was... amazing. I had either realized, or made myself believe through blastbeat-hypnosis, that I had found in this album a sort of aural perfection, a flawless ball of sound, a world encompassing, embodying the creative urge, the urge to scream, the urge of nature, an extremity akin to an overwhelming orgasm out of the totality of love, all in twenty-three minutes of twitching near-dissonance that somehow transduces from its original state to the utter joy of existence. From the overall design, to the music and the lyrics, The Inalienable Dreamless is miraculously beautiful and exhilarating.

It is grindcore.

You could say that the minimalist cover art stands in contrast to the audio content. The music itself is a total explosion of condensed sound trying to break free, like words uttered in the (relative) vaccum of space, whereas the portrait of a perfect blue sky (and, well, sea) defines a state at the same time morose and serene, ambivalent, the very construct of our reality: existence. Here's life, unmatched in intensity, through Witte, a drummer incredible in terms of accuracy and speed, followed by exceptionally original, abstract and just silly riffs to-bang-your-whole-goddamn-soul-to by Marton, and finally, to top the cake off in a martial arts manner, some of the most extreme and self-destructive screaming ever coming from the lungs of Chang, implying that he is either a very angry man, or one of them banshees from the netherworld (also, totally demonic growling, mind you). The combination of the three amounts to something apparently incomprehensible to most people; an album actually fairly melodic, but at the same time as abrasive as harsh noise. Or so it'd seem.


"DA was essentially 3 very strong personalities clashing constantly."
- Jon Chang

Not mentioning the lyrics would be a sin since they also belong to the very top of the genre, mostly 'cause Jon Chang decided to put some time into writing and actually express himself and his emotions through words. People like to describe all Discordance Axis lyrics as a combination of anime and sci-fi (literature), but there's a huge difference in terms of pure, yet unmeasurable emotional input between "The Inalienable Dreamless" and everything written before. When TID was released, newly apparent in Chang's lyrical style was the huge Neon Genesis Evangelion influence.

"At last I heard those words from you
But they make me disgusted with myself
Life choked back into you
With ambivalence

Familiar closed hearts conceal their loneliness
As best as they can
When together
Even further apart

Open your heart
As wide as the sky
This pain worse than death
I just ran away
Lonely?
Yes lonely
But you can't always rise from the dead"
- End of Rebirth

Aside from the title (which is most likely an Armored Core reference?), the whole song reminds of Evangelion for many reasons, but especially for the way it climaxes in the end, kinda theatrically explosive, like the End of Evangelion. Adding to all that is Jon Chang screaming his poetry like it's the last thing he will ever do. I mean, y'know that Eva protagonist, a whiny boy in puberty, Ikari Shinji? As pathetic as he is, he still tries, and tries, and tries. But you can't always rise from the dead, right?

"I had a strong influence in my writing style from Eva and a strong influence in how to structure the material."

Basically, what I'm saying is that these three guys blasted away some twenty minutes worth of noise and created the greatest piece of extreme music ever. Yes, that is what I'm saying. This is the grindcore album, and for a long time now I remain incapable of imagining a more satisfactory listening experience, just like the guys in Discordance Axis were incapable of slowing down.