Band Names Not Brand Names

Grindcore’s one of those genres you either love or hate, there’s absolutely no in between. Between pitch shifted pig vocals and insane tempoes, grind makes most people want to slam their head through a wall over and over. Aside from underground black metal, grind is probably the least accessible genre of metal that I have ever heard. So what makes it so damn amazing to listen to? For me, it’s the Mach 2 tempoes and subject matter. It’s always nice to put on a pornogrind album and laugh at the samples and whatever lyrics you can understand. Seriousness is not one of grindcore’s finer points and this is really where some good material comes from. Take New Jersey’s own DANNYTANNER. Named after the famous dad from a very popular 90s family sitcom, who would expect anything serious from these guys?

Well, everyone should. Despite the name, the silly cover art on The Finest Grind, and the samples, DANNYTANNER mean business. The lyrical content of all the songs is political in nature, even if you cannot understand them. Lyrics aside, the music is better than your average grindcore album. Like many bands, DANNYTANNER make use of a drum machine instead of an actual drummer to pound out their blast beats and every song have strong jazz and progressive influences. The album starts off like just about any other: fast and in your face. The riffs are set to obliterate and the drum machine is working overtime to get you hooked into listening. At least, this is exactly how I got hooked onto them from their Myspace page. They go beyond the typical grind template and infuse something real into their music. There is a lot of melody put into tracks like The Running Monk or Nonexistant (sic) and the jazz influences shine through on the latter parts of the album. Further going beyond the typical grind template, their track lengths range from 39 seconds to just over 3 minutes, quite a marathon length in grindcore terms.

Each half of DANNYTANNER make sure that the engineering is a top priority and that everything sounds right. I don’t have my CD in front of my right now however, I do believe that the CD was self recorded and engineered but not self mixed. I love this CD and have played it quite a bit since receiving one of the first copies to be sent out (iTunes says roughly 10 plays for the CD and about double that for playtime in my car). There’s really only one issue I have with the CD is the sound quality of the latter tracks. I understand that this was mostly self recorded however, in the latter tracks there are some serious volume normalization issues. Take the last track of the album 1/16 for example. It has a much louder recorded volume than any other song on the album. The last three songs on the album have appeared on other compilations and EPs before this album came out so it’s understandable that DANNYTANNER did not re-record these tracks and instead used the previous masters. But this has caused the audio problem that has me constantly lowering the volume at the end of the CD which is a real shame since this is where I feel the band really shows strength and potential. The 10th track off The Finest Grind is Overhwleming Profit Margins and is probably my favorite track. Judging by their Myspace plays, it’s their 3rd most popular track. It’s got a nice segue early in the song that tricks you right before Chris Netta unleashes some serious riffs that’ll melt your face. However, it’s that short segue that show some real progression in the band. It’s very short but shows that DT have influences outside the sphere of metal and are more than willing to put those influences to work.

Overall, sound issues aside, this CD is vying for my top5 of 2007 so far. I’ve heard a lot of grind this year but frankly, nothing has come close to the sheer level of face shredding, ear bleeding, or rocking out that DANNYTANNER have spit forth in their 23 minute full length The Finest Grind. The CD was only pressed in a run of 500 copies so hit them up on Myspace for a copy and prepare to shred. Now I’m just waiting for UNCLE JESSE to release a disc.