Search - Exit 13 :: Ethos Musick

Gods of grind

Patrick Stott | Rolleston, Canterbury, New Zealand | 10/15/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's all been said before about bassmaniac Dan Lilker- In Anthrax, kicked out of Anthrax, in to Nuclear Assault, then came SOD, Nuclear Assault broke up, Brutal Truth formed, endless projects followed...Yeah, Lilker played on this album, but he was only a hired hand, as was Brutal Truth skin smasher Scott Lewis. Exit-13 was the baby of Relapse Records supremo Bill Yurkiewicz and partner in noise, Steve O'Donnell.And noisy it is. This will have your speakers jumping around the room like bedroom furniture in The Exorcist. Bison from the local zoo will try to break out and answer the ultra-low frequencies mimicking mating calls. This could even destroy your stereo, quite literally.The comparisons to Brutal Truth are inevitable. Think of a slightly slower, exponentially heavier, rougher around the edges, more grinding Brutal Truth and you won't be far off the mark. Indeed, the prodigious use of blast beats sound very `Truth-like. To the casual listener, the bands are similar, but look a little deeper and the differences are obvious. While BT were at the time were generally fairly straight forward musically, some of the songs here will occasionally drop out of full on grindcore fury into an old time rock `n roll beat, an acoustic guitar passage or a prog rock improvised guitar solo.Exit-13 uses a lot of samples and cut-ups, to excellent effect. While most are intros and outros, some are used in songs, and at times behind the music. My favourite is a couple of inbred hicks talking about rendered down animal heads being used for meat.Exit-13 are not great fans of mankind in general. Yurkiewicz rails against humanity's inhumanity ("Societally Provoked Genocidal Contemplation"), hunting ("Open Season", which has nice samples of hunters being used for target practice), meat eating ("Diet For A New America", "Anthropocentric Ecocidal Conundrum") and the criminalisation of cannabis ("Legalize Hemp Now!"). There are so many issues touched on here it's difficult to take them all in. The track `Earth First' is a spoken word track, taken from the Phil Donahue talk show. Donahue interviews members of Earth First!, a highly radical environmental group. While the group lost a lot of credibility years later after being linked to mailbomb terrorist The Unabomber, it is still thought provoking.The band were obviously fans of Japanese hardcore and noise, like The Boredoms (see the title track and "Disemboweling Party") and Merzbow respectively. To this end, a noise track has been tacked on the end, the grandly titled "An Electronic Fugue For The Imminent Demise Of Planet Earth". Imagine tuning your television to a channel with no signal, turn the white noise up to full volume, then call a fax machine with your phone on speaker and run it through an amplifier. Sit through it for 28 minutes. There is a warning with the track: it was deliberately recorded using overlevel indication, whatever that means. Basically, don't blame Exit-13 if it wrecks your stereo. It is tempting to take this disc to a party and whack it on full volume to see if it actually WOULD blow someone's stereo.Exit-13 is definitely not to the tastes of everyone, including a lot of grindcore fans. It challenges the listener to reconsider their views on a number of highly political and controversial issues, and pulls no punches when it comes to telling people how wrong society is. However, if you're sick of straightforward grind which deviates little from the hyperblast plan of attack, and don't mind having sacred cows challenged, try it."

Total Mental Trip

Ryan M. Kelly | ILLinois | 01/17/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Relapse band Exit-13 broke up sometime between 1996 and 1997 I think and I don't know why. There last album "Smoking Songs" was by far the most original piece of music I have heard in a looonnnnggggg time. But I guess every musical artist or band must one day come to an end.
Anyway about this album it is a good CD if your into grind core or slow stoner death metal. The music itself is more whacked out than Charlie Manson but at the same time has a nice groove beat.
The only downfall of this CD is that you can't understand one word these guys are saying unless you read the lyrics in the booklet. And the songs are actually pretty educational. "Diet for a New America" speaks about slaughterhouses and the horrors inside. "Legalize Hemp Now" talks about how the government made weed illegal for money and how people are locked away for just a joint. And "Open Season" tells a true story (I think) about how a man in the state of PA. goes crazy and kills a bunch of hunters because they were hunting and killing animals.
Now if I am correct some of the people in this band are from Brutal Truth. I'm not for sure but if I'm wrong.....I don't know maybe I'll die.
Overall this is a good album, trippy vocals, cool guitar work and nice lyrics.Exit 13 ~ 6 stars out of 10 starsCheck out:Exit-13: Smoking Songs
Silent Cry: Tears of Serenity
Suffocation: Despise the Sun"