With a sound dubbed “Casio-grindcore” by the press, U.K. concept-metal trio Trencher mix the brevity of hardcore with grindcore’s ferocious incomprehensibility and Cookie Monster vocals, sprinkle a little prog on top, and wrap it up in a cartoonish, psychedelic, synth-driven package. Midway through Lips, their newest full-length, a curious track called “In Reverence”
even finds the band exploring several minutes of uncharacteristic drone.
Catching up with drummer Liam “Locke Monger” Sparkes and keyboardist/vocalist Mark “M. Shit”
Dicker, I asked how they found themselves drawn to make such a spectacular clatter.
“I’ve always been attracted to heaviness in music,” Mark continues, “in the sense that it contains depth and weight, not just amps to eleven. It’s an exaltation of the absurdity of life and the frustation and wonder of the fact that beauty and horror co-exist, and you find yourself sandwiched between them. Drone is about music being heavy without just turning up the volume. There are new pedals to my keyboard set-up that weren’t there when we recorded Lips. That should help to produce a few more droney tracks. But I think the other two get bored when I go off on some cosmic voyage. We try and reach a happy medium.”
“When we’re playing live,” says Liam, “we like to work the amps and get a body vibe. I’ve read somewhere that loud music makes the same endorphins and drugs in the brain as being on a roller coaster. That’s what we’re going for.”
As for audiences being receptive to either the thrash or the drone, Liam tells me, “Our European booking agent specializes in electronic music; that audience tends to flip out more, ‘cause they listen to what’s playing. They’re a really good crowd; they appreciate it. Art crowds are the tough one. They seem to give it a
more cerebral viewing, a bit more critical.”
Mark is less concerned: “Say we play a gig and there are some people there who know us and like us and some people who don’t and probably won’t. I revel in the fact that we’ve made some folks’ day and ruined some others’ evening.”
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Trencher’s not the first band to grab a name previously belonging to a giant power tool. There’
s a long and illustrious history of bands drawing their names from heavy machinery.
Tractor Sex Fatality. Seattle’
s hardcore heroes warn about the dangers of mixing machinery and pleasure with their amusing moniker.
Combine. The 1995 album Norfolk, Virginia was the sole entry from this post-hardcore indie-rock band.
Killdozer. It may not be a real machine, but Killdozer’
s distorted blues sure rocked like one from 1983-1996.
Bulldozer. These Italian heshers were true pioneers of black metal. If anything, the name is too gentle for the vicious, noxious noise they cranked out from 1980-1990.
Einstürzende Neubauten. Okay, so “collapsing new buildings” isn’
t exactly a piece of heavy machinery. But these industrial trailblazers slide in on a technicality: Apocryphal legend has them earning the name by taking a jackhammer to a structural beam at an early live show, leading to some scary vibrations and subsequent arrest. Who needs to be named after a piece of heavy machinery when you earned your name by
actually using one to make the music?
– Lyam White
MySpace: www.myspace.com/trenchergrind
Southern Records: www.southern.com