Yet another disc I was lucky enough to get handed at a recent live show. In this case, I picked up this self-released split CDR from electro-rave LA pranksters Captain Ahab and System Corrupt’s Toecutter during the Canberra date of their co-headlining Australian tour – after witnessing the hardcore BPMs and gratuitous partial nudity of Captain Ahab’s set in particular, I figured I needed an audio souvenir of the night in question. Even fast-forwarding my ‘Snakes On A Plane’ DVD right to the end credits just so I could catch Ahab’s ‘Snakes On The Brain’ track (apparently the result of an online competition) just wasn’t cutting it any more. This thirteen track limited edition tour disc comes across more like a full album, running in at over an hour, with a tracklisting comprised of previously released tracks, remixes and rarities from the two acts that’s sure to have those who caught the recent tour flashing back to the live debauchery.
Captain Ahab get the opening honours here with instrumental ‘The Tyranny Of Pretension’, perhaps their most ferocious contribution to this disc, welding a distorted breakcore barrage to overdriven electronics and death metal screaming, before incongruously elegant piano fills arrive to send the track off into an explosive, percussion-heavy finale. It’s a suitably opulent opening and by contrast, Toecutter’s ‘The Best Party Ever’ almost seems timid, its fusion of disco-house samples and juddering analogue sub-bass buzzes certainly representing one of the laptop terrorist’s more approachable outings, a preconception that his ensuing obliteration of LL Cool J’s ‘Mama Said Knock You Out’ (retitled ‘Don’t Call It A Cum Stain’) seeks to shatter with its relentless laser-gun noise blasts.
Captain Ahab’s electro-breaks reworking of Kelis’ ‘Bossy’ meanwhile manages to easily better all of the officially commissioned remixes, but it does come across as kind of strange that you don’t get to hear any vocal tracks from Ahab until track five’s glam-hardcore declarations of “being infected with sexually transmitted rock” (see the characteristically filthy-minded ‘Rock N Roll Positive’). Elsewhere, ‘Hyphy’ sees the Ahab boys tackling the ubiquitous Bay area hiphop subgenre, skewering the likes of Federation and Keak Da Sneak with impressive flow and a TISM-esque sharp tongue (“don’t get mad cause ya homies got shot”) before Toecutter’s remix of their live favourite ‘Girls Gone Wild’ takes things out towards Vengaboys-esque Euro dance trash, layering knowingly cliched trance arpeggios beneath some retro rave stabs that sound like Mr. Cutter just mugged Altern-8 down a back alley. While Drunk On The Blood… might not necessarily represent the ideal starting point for listeners previously unfamiliar with the two featured artists, this split CDR certainly makes an ideal tour souvenir – no doubt its primary intended goal.
Chris Downton
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