Neurot Recordings – 10th November 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
It’s practically impossible to overstate just how grim things have got lately. It’s not just any one thing, either. The climate is fucked, the economy is fucked, the world is at war. This isn’t about local pockets of fuckedness. It’s all fucked. Ex Everything very much appreciate this, as set out in the notes which accompany Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart: ‘Our world has been gradually falling apart. This may seem like a bleak point of view, but the collapse we’re all witnessing inspired post-mathcore outfit Ex Everything as they created their eruptive debut Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart… “Everything around us–politically, socially, environmentally–seems to be stretching and breaking,” says guitarist Jon Howell. “Our record sits in that terrifying place where you’ve been watching it happen.”
A fair few people I know – my age bracket in particular – have said they’ve stopped watching or reading news because it’s detrimental to their mental health. No doubt it is, but the bliss of ignorance can’t last forever and ignoring everything that’s going on is the ultimate compliance. British politicians in particular repeatedly begin sentences with ‘let me be clear’ – before rolling out an endless ream of obfuscations. So let me be clear. Everything is fucked, and things are only going to get worse.
As their bio summarises, ‘The Bay Area quartet boasts current and former members of Kowloon Walled City, Early Graves, Mercy Ties, Blowupnihilist, Less Art and others, but listeners shouldn’t mistake this for a short-term project or side band. This is a priority, every member focused and committed, and it only takes a few minutes with the album to understand how serious they are. “This band is completely its own thing,” says Howell. “It addresses the part of us that wants to write fast, chaotic, knotty, messy, pissed off music.”’
Fast, chaotic, knotty, messy, pissed off music is precisely what these chaotic, knotty, messy times call for. It feels as if the world was waiting for the pandemic to end to go absolutely all out to annihilate one another. There has, throughout history, always been a war somewhere, but now, there’s pretty much a war everywhere, and in less violent, bloody battles, governments wage war on the poor in the interest of ‘the economy’ and fuck over society’s most vulnerable, from the unemployed to the disabled, not to mention the homeless, the wounded, mostly in the interests of capitalism.
Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart packs eight hard-hitting, heavy tracks which rage and rage and rage and hit so hard, in a furious frenzy. The guitars are often busy and brittle and mathy, but the rhythm section is welded together and blast the hardest sonic attack. Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart is the sum of its parts, and that’s a positive here: it brings together the best elements of the contributors and fuses them into something tight, taut, uncomfortable. Single cut ‘Exiting the Vampire Castle’ is exemplary: full-throttle noise rock with dominated by shuddering bass and thunderous drums, with guitars which are both grimy but also reverby clanging over the top, while the vocals and raw and nihilistic. This is some full-on angst: ‘A Sermon in Praise of Corruption’ is a full-on, blistering rager, and there really isn’t much let-up in terms of ferocity. This is an unashamedly political album, as titles such as ‘Slow cancellation of the Future’, ‘The Last Global Slaughter’ and ‘Plunder, Cultivate, Fabricate’ suggest. These are highly political times, so it’s only right that Ex Everything tackle the issues.
There is detail, there are moments where they pull back on the pace and the blunt force, but they’re brief, and serve ultimately to accentuate the immense and intense power of the rest of the album when they put their collective foot hard on the pedal And drive forward hard.
In the face of everything, rational contemplation and collected consideration are difficult. The real urge is to give in to the temptation to simply give up, give in, and to scream at the world to fuck off. Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart comes close, but better than that, it noisily articulates the nihilistic rage which sprays in all directions. There’s no one thing that’s shit or fucked up: it’s everything. And sometimes the only way to deal is to let it all out. Ex Everything do that, channelling every last drop of fury into this bleak and hefty beast of an album.
AA
Aural Aggravation 