MetalSucks

As one of the chief riff providers for swaggercore titans Every Time I Die, Andy Williams takes pride in making the discordant into catchy. For a perfect example of this, look no further than the band’s latest (MetalSucks-approved) album, New Junk Aesthetic. Distilling the band’s decade-plus essence into a tight half hour, it’s a satisfying mix of thunderous heaviness and easily the most appealing material the band have put to tape. But while he’s often overshadowed by vocalist Keith Buckley’s relentless wiseassery, it’s his and Jordan Buckley’s Skynard-by-way-of-Dillinger-Escape-Plan guitar work that make the band stand out and ultimately worthwhile.

A self-described “chatty Cathy,” Andy Williams was remarkably frank and refreshingly earnest in a recent interview with MetalSucks on the eve of the release of New Junk Aesthetic. Among other things, he discussed why he can listen to the new album and none of the band’s other material, his thoughts on the new Converge record, the changing landscape of the scene he came up in, and life over at ETID’s new label, Epitaph.

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Just because it’s short doesn’t mean it can’t kick your fucking ass. Eighteen and a half minutes after I started listening to their new album Bearing & Distance (Level Plane Records), it ended; so I simply listened to it again.

Through those 18 minutes and the course of 15 tracks — 5 of which are under a minute and the longest of which is 2:08 — California’s Ghostlimb proved that they’re doing something really fucking cool and different. I can’t quite put a finger on their entire palette of influences because there’s a really strong hardcore flavoring, and frankly I just don’t have the musical vocabulary to go there. But fuck it, at the risk of making myself look really stupid and non-versed in the history of punk and hardcore (this is true), I’ll try: Minor Threat, Bad Religion (on coke), Paint It Black, and even NYC’s Wetnurse, but with big, clear production Matt Bayles would be proud of and a whack-you-in-the-nuts metal sensibility that’s also hard to place. Think a faster, non-stop alcohol-fueled Bronx, blending anthemic punk chord progressions through highly overdriven Marshalls and some dude passionately screaming his fucking lungs out on top of it as if he had a fist shoved up his ass and singing these songs was the only way to get it out.

Find out for yourself and check out Ghostlimb on MySpace.

-VN

(four out of five horns)