I’m sure you know folks whose whole life is work. They basically do nothing else. They’re always slaving away at their craft, trying to do something new and different, pushing themselves to achieve newer, crazier levels of productivity. Those people are just wired differently.
Aaron Turner seems like one of those people. When he and his ISIS bandmates shut down their long-running, heavily influential band, surely no one would have complained had he gone into hiding, perhaps ensconced himself entirely at the goings-on at Hydra Head Records, and took a well-deserved break. But yeah, he isn’t wired that way. There was a handful of ISIS live recordings to get out, then there was a new Mamiffer full-length and then the band’s joint effort with Locrian (we already gushed like a baby over that thing), a tour with Old Man Gloom, and I’m pretty sure there’s something I’m leaving out of that picture. So, it only makes sense that Turner would come at us with a new band.
Split Cranium might surprise you, if you don’t know any better. While Turner is known for headspace-expanding, atmospheric, brilliant compositions, that’s certainly not all he’s got. The band’s debut offering sounds like Turner letting loose and blowing off some steam. It sounds like he and his bandmates are having a blast playing these punk-flavored, crusty death-tinged, D-beat assaulted tracks. He and his crew — Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Phantom Overlord), Jukka Kroger, Samae Koskinen (Steel Mammoth) — crafted something that was the product of loose creative sessions gone monstrous, and the band sounds like one that, in a live setting, could set fire to the place and leave everyone a heaping mass of flesh. Eh, sorry Great White. Actually, these jams probably are equally as cathartic for Lehtisalo, whose Circle can be as perplexing as any band out there.
This 8-track, 25-minute album wastes no time grabbing you by the back of the head and forcing you into their pit of madness. “Little Brother” opens things just right, with a speed-punk assault, Turner’s menacing growls, and a pace that’ll make you dizzy. That leads the way into “Tiny Me,” a song that has some pretty sweet guitar riffs and that boasts classic punk attitude; “The Crevice Within,” a heavy hardcore-influenced cut that blasts past you before you know what even happened; “Sceptres to Rust,” a song that acts like it’s going to be some weird ambient interlude before it blows up halfway through; and “Black Binding Plague” and “Yellow Mountain,” that both sound like a head nod and lit-cigarette-thrown-into-the-audience tribute to Motorhead.
As great as the band’s fury is, the two most interesting cuts come when they space things out and let the smoke really fester. “Blossoms From Boils” lasts nearly five minutes and is highlighted by some tasty Southern rock guitar licks that get swampy and nasty. All the while, Turner howls away like he’s trying to exorcise demons from his throat. It’s a bad-ass song that you could unleash in front of your cheap-beer-swilling, redneck neighbors without instigating fist-i-cuffs (unless the song got them that fired up). Closer “Retrace the Circle” clocks in at more than eight minutes, and there are pockets of cleaner vocals, some riff repetition that induces trances, the whole thing threatening to succumb to static, and then the glory kicking back in full force to whip your ass on its way out.
Maybe one day Turner will take a damn break already and soak in what he’s accomplished. Or perhaps he’s just not that type of guy and always will be in creative mode. Whatever he does, we’ll check it out. Hopefully his future will contain more from Split Cranium, his most riotous project yet.
For more on the band, go here: http://www.facebook.com/SplitCranium
To buy the album, go here: http://www.bluecollardistro.com/hydrahead/categories.php?cPath=4
For more on the label, go here: http://www.hydrahead.com/
Meat Mead Metal 