Starkweather - Croatoan

STARKWEATHER
Croatoan
Candlelight USA
8/10




A decade after their highly-influential “Into The Wire” album, Philly’s Starkweather has returned with a tortured slab of twisted metal, “Croatoan.” It’s really confusing when people label music such as this as hardcore. The music of Starkweather has little to do with hardcore, in all actuality. There are no downbeats, no gang vocals and not a stereotypical breakdown to be seen. At a certain point, bands decided to play with the intensity of death metal, but didn’t want to be pegged into that scene intellectually. Try Art Metal, it’s a much more appropriate modifier for the schizophrenic musical personality of Starkweather.

When this band does venture near slower-paced chugging, as they do on “Taming Leeches With Fire,” it’s more like drugged-out doom with angry, gargling vox. Be it as it may, there’s no need to try and re-write history, however misguided it may have gotten along the way in aspirations of spiffy taglines. Yes, this group’s obscure initial recordings in the mid-nineties were responsible for inspiring the Dillinger Escape Plans and Ipecac artists of the world, and it’s likely that their inspiration came just as much from The Melvins and The Jesus Lizard as from meathead moments in the musical manifest.

Here, they tackle sludgy, disconnected rhythms and escapist, unconventional shifts in focus with similar zest. Half the time, singer Rennie Resmini sounds like he’s being strangled and during most others, he exhibits a detached, rounded tone that’s certainly unlike most others. If drugs don’t inspire the majority of this group’s musical explorations, then idle time has certainly took its toll on their collective psyche. At times, it’s hard to fathom which direction the music of Starkweather will take next. They turn left, do a one-eighty then do a back flip from measure to measure. Regardless, a large amount of this work is packed with tonnage and the bizarre asides the group takes during the records more abstract moments are less distracting than they originally appear. “Bitterfrost” weighs in as one of the most interesting tracks to surface this year, grooving with a trippy doom parade lurch then drifting into pissed-off obnoxiousness, anvil-heavy and scathing.

Blame it on whichever style you like, Starkweather still has the capacity to inflict some massive damage after all these years, and keep you on your toes at the same time. Most bands can’t claim that feat. “Croatoan” is challenging yet refreshing in its abstract obtuseness. Here’s one that you must delve into quite deeply, but the reward is certainly attractive. Consider the value of Starkweather to lie in their ability to be ornate and abrasive as hell, from moment to moment, with the outfit’s pure, persuasive unpredictability being the unchallengeable ace in the hole.


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