With metal's return to flashy "melodic" leads and "Maiden-esque" riffs, as well as the ubiquitous addition of emo choruses, skronk is arguably where the genre is at its heaviest right now, and has been for some time. Members of the Network come from the hardcore scene, as you can tell from the sober/corporate band name, but thankfully have not gone the Gothenburgcore route, which will one day—hopefully soon—be as passé as having DJs in bands; instead, watching Every Time I Die supporting noisecore demi-legends Bloodlet in New York one time, this New Hampshire quintet was inspired to reevaluate the good stuff (Deadguy, Coalesce, Kiss It Goodbye, etc.) and drag it up to present-day man-in-a-dark-cell-screaming-his-brains-out intensity levels. Three singers compete for attention, but it's the total David Vincent vocals of Scott White (I presume) that successfully bat off the other more Blood Brothers-style ones—which is a good thing—and song titles such as "Love on the Lips of a Whore" or "Idiot Tender Welcomes" are closer to the Agoraphobic Nosebleed let's-make-the-world-a-better-place-by-throwing-verbal-diarrhea-at-it school of thought than some protracted emo whine. Another check plus! Sonically this debut clumps together skronk jazz-metal leads, noisecore lunges and lurches, and plenty of meaty death metal riffage, nicely topped by those Vincent vocals (any news on a new Morbid Angel album anyone?) and, of course, lots of the usual atonal guitar squealing, all without ever really committing to one restrictive template, which is what all good noisecore tends to achieve. "Innocent v. State" ends with a deliberately out of place Deadboy-style acoustic number and "00:00:56" is an industrial club interlude, both nicely slicing up the grinding mayhem to be savored here. —Daniel Lukes
The_Network poises itself to be one of the weirdest albums of 2007 despite the fact that it was released on the twenty-third day of the year. While they were lead to write the songs on This is Your Pig's Portrait after attending a Bloodlet show, I don't think all but the most trained and knowing ears would pick Bloodlet as an influence on the band. While there is a good bit of the heavy, mid-placed groove of old Holy Terror bands, they mess around a lot with making grind kind of…poppy? Their blast beats have a weird jangle to them that sounds off to me, and I'm sure it's intentional since it's most frequently accompanied with screamo-squeals. And just as you're becoming acclimated to the oddities of the first minutes of the disc, the acoustic outro of "Innocent v. State" jars you back out of place. The "gang vocals" that follow it then throw you for another loop. And since I'm talking about jarring vocal arrangements, the_Network uses two of the strangest combinations of vocalists I've ever heard. One guy sounds like Deadwater Drowning or Premonitions of War (those are different guys, right?) while the other sounds like a nasally Some Girls. At first this description is off-putting, but it fits with the lack of cohesion in the disc. A few of the breaks feel like they could have been lifted out of a Cannibal Corpse record, only to be followed with some weird, off-kilter punk maybe akin with something Youth Attack would put out. To be honest, I've never really heard anything like these guys. It's not insanely heavy. It's not insanely fast. It's not insanely weird. It sounds like dudes whose iTunes have more variety than most people could stomach. This is Your Pig's Portrait is kind of all over the place, but not in a bad way. Just in a, "Wait…what?" kind of way. It's never bad to be questioning the boundaries of what's really hardcore and what is too pretentious and full of itself to be labeled anything besides lame. Fortunately, I can say with some sense that the_Network are the former.
It makes sense that Guy Kozowyk would release this. They bear more than a passing resemblance to his day job, though The_Network sound like they listen to as much Blood Brothers as Red Chord. You hear it in the twin vocal assault, one playing the cookie monster ying to the other's schoolboy nasal yang. You envision a guy in a pink An Albatross shirt along with a dude donning a black Anal Cunt tee. The juxtaposition can be jarring; at least it separates The_Network's wheat somewhat from the newer school crazy core chaff. Ed Gein rifle off similar batshit explosive blasts. Job For a Cowboy have gained massive notoriety as of late brandishing their own brand of tech-cum-metal hardcore, complete with Ion Dissonance-esque pig squeal vocal theatrics. The_Network flaunts likeminded pork-fried flare. Sixteen songs bludgeon with jackhammer blast beats and time-signature defying drum patterns. It's 37 minutes and 12 seconds of aural agony. Kevin Howley and Pete Marr know what to do with their trusty axes. The guitars play the starring role, with impressive Dillinger-like sweeps and taps. Tim Meehan does a commendable job keeping up beating the skins. Trouble is, the recording makes his snare sound like someone popping a rubber band against a paper cup. The rumble is provided by Nate Johnson, the low-end anchor to the guitar and drum squalls that erupt all over the record. I'm not sure who is responsible for what vocals, yet the insert informs me the band contains a stand-alone singer going by the moniker of Scott White. Whether or not he is of the big man gruff roars or the boyish shrill shrieks would be determined in show. With song titles along the lines of "Love on the Lips of a Whore," "Oh, Girls" and "Faith in Lust," the band appear fans of Pig Destroyer (also note the frenzied blasts of fury). "Play Dead" boasts the band's positive qualities, with winding guitars over pummeling drums and a munching off-time Meshuggah-like passage. "Dead Like You" takes the speed down on a notch for a slower, bruising repose. An acoustic guitar opens "Prison Letters," followed by highly questionable Gavin Rossdale crooning. Where The_Network errs is their insistence on assaulting us with machine-gun volleys of musical mayhem. Some of it adds up to "songs." But a lot of this sounds intentionally amorphous. They've got some chops and demonstrate the capacity to experiment and nudge the envelope. Yet they could work wonders by focusing their energies on crafting songs instead of creating sonic tantrums. Bottom Line: If you want to make you or your neighbor's ears bleed and head throb, play The_Network at hard volume. Not for the weak-willed fairweather music fan.
For some bands, taking a considerable period of time before finally unleashing their debut album is the right way to approach matters. Such is the case with American Metal/Hardcore outfit The Network, who spent over five years jamming, writing, touring and honing their sound whenever they could before recently signing with Metal Blade subsidiary Blackmarket Activities and releasing their debut full-length "This Is Your Pig's Portrait". To discuss the new record, lyrical inspiration and how Rock 'N' Roll is just one gigantic middle finger to everything, guitarists Kevin and Pete and main vocalist Scott caught up with Blastwave for a very interesting little chat. Blastwave: The members of the band jammed on-and-off for a number of years before actually getting together properly to tour, record your debut album and all of that. Can you tell us a little more about the history of the band? Kevin: In the mid and late nineties, Pete was in a band called Ookla The Mok and Tim, Scott and I were in a band called Fault. We were all good friends and would jam together whenever we had the chance. In 1999, both Fault and Ookla broke up but Pete, Tim and I would still play music for fun. We weren't sure if we still wanted to play Hardcore/Metal music. We really didn't know what we wanted to do musically, we just loved playing music together so we kept on going. We were busy with crappy jobs and/or college and became rather removed from the Hardcore/Metal scene. On New Year's Eve in 2001, we all went down to CBGB's in NYC to see one of our favourite bands, Bloodlet, play their reunion tour with Every Time I Die. Both bands amazed us and we decided that we wanted to play heavy music again. We drove back to New Hampshire and started chuggin'. Blastwave: Your sound has been described as "Spazzcore". Could you perhaps elaborate on what the term means? Scott: "Spazzcore" is kind of like having sex with Jenna Jameson: awesome. I'd like to ask you, "Who has described us with the term 'spazzcore?'" Whoever it is, I'd tell him that he was an azzass-whore. We are The Network! Kevin: I don't know what that term means but I love the suffix, "core." Blastwave: Maybe you should talk to your label's promo department, that's where it came from. On that topic, upon reading your press release, you seem very proud to wear your influences, such as Converge, Coalesce and Refused on your sleeves. Do you wish more bands had that kind of attitude, rather than trying to tell everyone that they're doing something amazingly ground-breaking when they're really just ripping off At The Gates and In Flames like dozens of other bands? Kevin: Every band rips off other bands whether they mean to or not. We've loved bands like Coalesce, Converge, Bloodlet and Refused for so long and have no problem admitting that we'd like to sound like them. We've played together for so long, however, that whatever music we write ends up sounding like The Network with some aspects of our influences. And yes, I do get irritated with bands that can't admit that they sound like other bands. No one's breaking ground, no one's defying gravity. We're all playing music. Some rock, some suck. Blastwave: Do you think this different range of influences that your band has gives you an advantage over a lot of others that all sound almost identical? Scott: The Network sounds like The Network, and The Network I'm talking about is the one from New Hampshire. Kevin: I'm not sure if our influences give us any advantage over other bands because so many bands share our influences. I think the fact that Scott, Tim, Pete, and I have been jamming together for so long, and have been through so much together in our personal lives does give us an advantage over some bands though. Over the last eleven or twelve years, we've all lived together at times, been to high school together, been to college together, and worked together. We're really best friends and I think that comes across in our music. Everything we do, musically and lyrically, is a genuine collective effort. We have no song with a sole contributor to the music or lyrics. We're fucking Voltron! Blastwave: Listening to the album, one of the things that strikes me the most about it is the four-pronged vocal attack. How did you decide to utilize four different vocalists and is it ever difficult to find a balance between them and make it work together within the course of an individual song? Kevin: Personally, I've been really influenced by a lot of Hip-Hop when it comes to The Network vocal styles. I've been listening to Hip-Hop for as long as I've been listening to heavy music. I've always loved the vocal attacks of groups like Wu-Tang Clan, Gravediggaz, Public Enemy, Jedi Mind Tricks and Hieroglyphics. Honestly, I think the vocal talents of some of our members are just too good to go unused, so we spend a good deal of time mashing their vocals into our joints. Pete: I think for this album, the vocals played a big part in the overall theme outlined for the record. For the first few demos we did, we went into the studio without a clear understanding of who should handle what vocal responsibilities and where ALL the vocals were going to be placed. For this recording, we spent a great deal of time before stepping into the studio going over the vocal patterns and deciding who was going to do what. We really wanted to emphasize the difference in vocals and each vocalist's own style without sounding like a circus or unfocused. I think the experimenting came from using the different vocal styles and trying to see what worked best with them all. We layered a lot of the vocals for certain parts to create what I feel best represents us live. Blastwave: The Red Chord's Jonny Fay produced the album. How did you come to hook up with him and do you see yourself working with Jonny again in the future? Scott: Well we didn't get to fit five mules in his mouth so we didn't get to hook up with him, but we did get to do an album with him! Kevin: Jonny Fay's the man. Our bassist, Nate, was in Deadwater Drowning with him and introduced us to him. We love the Deadwater CD and Jonny recorded that before he went to school for recording and engineering. We listened to some of the demos that he'd recently recorded for some New Hampshire bands and were into them. He came to one of our practices and was so professional and such a cool guy. Also, since he was just starting his recording career, his prices were reasonable. We also weren't on Blackmarket Activities yet, so had no recording budget and Jonny's studio is only a forty-five minute drive from where we live so it was all really convenient. Working with him was amazing because he's extremely talented and hardworking. We really hit it off with him, would love to work with him again, and consider him a member of The Network. Blastwave: The band's lyrics focus on a number of socio-political issues. What are some of the main issues and topics that inspired the uncompromising lyrical outlook of the new album? Kevin: The lyrics focus on the struggle between the rich and the poor throughout the world. Whenever one explores that struggle, one finds a great deal of corruption, deceit and injustice. That corruption, deceit and injustice is usually executed by those in positions of power. Those in positions of power that we focus on are the U.S. government, massive worldwide conglomerates, media outlets, U.S. government related organizations such as the CIA, FBI, and even companies like Halliburton and Lockheed-Martin. It may be cliché, but the rich get richer and the poor get angrier. Another strong theme in our lyrics is the relationship between the U.S. mass media and the U.S. government. This relationship is constantly portrayed and thought of as adversarial, when in fact, it's quite symbiotic. The media needs the government to sell papers and the government needs the media to form and gauge public opinion. This relationship proves to oversimplify many national and international issues, leaving most Americans uninformed. The way we deal with some of these themes lyrically, is to point out the futility of supposed social norms like 9-5 jobs, materialism, and apathy. There's a great deal of injustice in the world, and we all have the chance to make some noise about it. Blastwave: Do you have a favourite track from the album, and if so, why? Scott: My favourite track is "Love On The Lips Of A Whore" because I like love and lips, especially on a whore. Kevin: I know it sounds pretentious, but I like all of the tracks on the album. Lyrically, "Send Them In" is my favourite. Ryan McKenney from Backstabbers Inc. and Trap Them contributed some lyrics to that song and it came out great. Blastwave: Can you explain the meaning behind the title "This Is Your Pig's Portrait" as well? Kevin: The album title has two different, but related meanings. First, "This Is Your Pig's Portrait" can be interpreted as a description of U.S. "leaders." The music and lyrics hope to construct a portrait of those with great financial and/or political power, and the greed that fuels their actions. Second, "This Is Your Pig's Portrait" can be thought of as a critique of the American citizen as a consumer. The album portrays some Americans as giving in to materialism, and ignoring ideas that could better humanity. I believe this is a weakness we're all guilty of at times, The Network included. Blastwave: The band combines elements of Metal and Hardcore into a decidedly heavy sound. Obviously, there are countless other bands out there from all over the world that also combine the two. Basically, what elements or qualities do you feel that The Network possess that allow you to stand out from so many other Metalcore bands? Scott: Elements? Qualities? We plug in, we play. Each individual puts whatever input and heart into each song. Yeah, we all have a favourite CD that we listen to, but we don't bring it to the lab. It is what it is, if you don't like it, go to Lambgoat and cry like those other pussies. Kevin: As I said before, I think that our long history as friends and of playing music together has given us a rather unique sound. Our evolution together has created an instinctive approach to writing music. We don't write songs with a conscious effort to incorporate any elements of Metal, Hardcore or Punk. If we play something that everyone in the band likes, we keep it. Blastwave: Obviously, this trend is a highly popular one. Having been around the scene for some time as a band and also as fans, which bands of that genre have you seen that really impressed you, and when the trend does start to die off a little, which bands do you see continuing to remain popular amongst heavy music fans? Kevin: I'm not sure if combining elements of Metal and Hardcore is necessarily a "trend", but the bands that I think will last are the ones that really love the music they play and have a strong work ethic. Honestly, I've really been impressed with every Blackmarket Activities band. We just toured with fellow label mates Gaza and were impressed with them twenty nights in a row. Thumbscrew were also on that tour and were really impressive. We're now preparing for a tour with Architect and their CD is the real deal, heavy as hell with no bullshit. Also, the fact that bands like Converge, Bane, Reach The Sky and 25 Ta Life are still rocking out as hard as they are is really inspirational. We recently played a show with 25 Ta Life in New Hampshire and they were just as intense as they were when we saw them ten years ago at The Rat in Boston. Pete: The bands that are going to survive the years and the trend will be the biggest bands around today. I mean, if you have the fan base and you're able to cover the cost of touring and living life, all while being in a band, then the easier it's going to be to go through the "depression" the scene seems to go through every ten years or so. It's like anything; once it gets too big, it implodes. Blastwave: If you had to give our readers out there one reason to buy your new album or to come and see The Network live, what would it be? Scott: The Network CD is like a cold, refreshing beer on a hot summer day. Seeing us live is like watching a 685 pound horse fuck a dumb slut, so sick. Kevin: Our record was basically a four-year endeavour and sounds as such. We've always been a fan of real records rather than singles. In this time of quick recording schedules, sound scans and the internet, many albums I hear don't really sound like they're a labour of love. Ours is, and it's refreshing. I'd tell someone to come see us live because they might get to see someone get hurt or some expensive equipment get the shit kicked out of it. Blastwave: On the touring front, what are your plans for 2007? Kevin: We're leaving for a three-week tour with Blackmarket Activities artists Architect on 27th January. That tour's going to span across the U.S. Midwest and the East coast. In 2007, we'd like to do a full U.S. tour and hit up Canada. Of course we'd like to tour the world, but as of now, we're dealing with the reality of being a new band and supporting our debut CD, so we'll most likely only be touring this hemisphere in 2007. As far as festivals go, we'll most likely be playing this year's New England Metal And Hardcore Festival, which is one of the best times anyone can have. 2007's going to be a good year for us. We can't wait to meet as many people as possible, and then sleep on their floors. Blastwave: To finish things off, do you have any famous last words for our readers? Scott: Life's an onslaught of events you have to deal with whether you want to or not. If you're lucky, something will invade your soul and fill your life's energy with a purpose. For some, there's family. For some, there's money and power. For some, there are dreams. For those with dreams, a life will consist of hard work, sacrifice and never ending disappointment. For the best dreams, Rock 'N' Roll is the main ingredient. Rock 'N' Roll is no genre, it's no category, no subset and no horseshit filled contract. Rock 'N' Roll's loud, ugly and confusing. Rock 'N' Roll is raw power, it's not some special guitar-tuning or some ground-breaking sound. Rock 'N' Roll is a "FUCK YOU!" So let's set aside supposed social norms, whether underground or meaningless. Let's make noise and let's break rules. It's a good idea to test that which is not testable, to annoy the unemotional, to pay for shaking and shivering and to cast aside a constant bombardment of suggestions. It's a good idea to reject what you've learned. It's a good idea to say "FUCK YOU!"
The_Network: Quite possibly my new favorite band. They have played 2 shows. The first at exit 23 left kids talking about how "amazing" it was. I really don't believe hype... but holy shit. This was one of the most insane and intense live shows I've ever seen. Take the red chord, mix in the berzerker and then have them jumping around with their mouths as wide as possible, screaming. I don't think the pictures pay them justice. If you find yourself looking at a list with them on it, go or you will regret it