Free Radicals
Postmodern bore Jean Baudrillard, asked to explain the recent Paris riots, claimed that the French state is permanently ‘haunted by an eternal flame’, burning just out of sight, but contained, for the most part, by the powers that be (or the ‘superstructure’ or ‘media fictions’ or whatever it is that we’re supposed to be naively buying into these days). Every so often someone seizes the lighter fluid and university campuses combust.
In the Myspace age, Melbourne’s True Radical Miracle could conceivably find themselves soundtracking the struggles of hooded Parisian youth. But it’s unlikely the band would care. Reluctant to place any weight on the futurism of either celebrity philosophers or millenarian socialists, they’re way too busy bending their own reality out of shape (on tape and page) to endorse some ill defined Continental utopia.
- True Radical Miracle
- Thirst for Mucus
- from Some Songs for Shame
On “Thirst for Mucus”, the opening thrash-fest on recent 3” CDEP* Some Songs for Shame, TRM’s screamo/blues hybrid is pushed to its logical end point—they’re delineating the guttural extremity to which they constantly threaten to return. The overdriven dissonance doesn’t really give the listener, or the band, any time to analyse—only to destroy or leave. Detuned guitar blasts manically, the rhythm section holds together valiantly and previously-referenced front man Mark Groves (I think, please correct me here) barks some dirty anti-manifesto he’d probably explain if you confronted him post-gig. You jerk round jaggedly then completely lose the plot but there’s no let up, and the dangerous tone is set.
True Radical Miracle don’t really belong with the tight jeans floppy fringe set to which they’re sometimes appended. Conflict permeates their output and scene ‘solidarity’ is unlikely to escape scrutiny. This is less about aping some overwrought genre (‘hardcore’) and more about fluid possibilities. Over to you, kids.
*Here at Melbs we like to keep on top of format trends. 3” CDs have been rapidly gaining popularity in abrasive quarters ever since My Disco issued Collapse of an Erratic Lung. Left Hand Cuts the Right are the latest converts. I look forward to more.