Is it ironic that this album murders all competition?

A Wilhelm Scream - Career Suicide
Posted by Rachel Lux on 16-Jan-08 @ 12:52 PM

[4.5/5] After releasing an album a year since 2000 (first as Smackin' Isaiah), last year was the first without any new music from A Wilhelm Scream. While message boards chattered about the band's disappearance from the spotlight, the quintet quietly retreated to their practice space and took extra time to make sure each of the 13 songs on Career Suicide met or exceeded expectations set by the Punknews.org nation after hearing 2005's Ruiner, an album universally praised for its energy, aggression and innovation in a mostly dead skate-punk scene.

Career Suicide, while falling about three millimeters short of the formidiable mark set by Ruiner, is still AWS at their punchy, speed-punk best. The band veer off the verse-chorus-verse pattern even more with unorthodox song structures in "Get Mad, You Son Of A Bitch," and the album as a whole is noticeably thrashier and less hook-based than previous efforts-not to say that the album is devoid of pop. The "whoa-oh"-heavy "These Dead Streets" and "Check Request Denied" are instantly memorable, "5 To 9" is the best song Propagandhi never wrote, and the near-five minute onslaught of "The Horse" is in the top tier of songs guitarist Trevor Reilly has ever written. Even though Nuno Pereira howls "Let's get the fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck out of here!" on "Jaws 3, People 0" (an exercise in face-melting guitar and bass solos), here's to hoping A Wilhelm Scream never leave us. (NITRO) Scott Heisel

ROCKS LIKE
Propagandhi's Potemkin City Limits
Ryan's Hope's Apocalypse In Increments
Strung Out's Blackhawks Over Los Angeles

IN-STORE SESSION WITH GUITARIST/VOCALIST TREVOR REILLY

This is the third record in a row you've done in the Blasting Room. What's the reason for continually going back?
They keep stepping up their game because they know that when we come in, we're going to bring something that we didn't bring the last time. So they still have that fire; they've still got that real competitive streak, and I love that about them. Now that we got to know [producers] Bill [Stevenson] and Jason [Livermore], we were a lot more comfortable [this time]. There's no kid gloves, so everything just goes a lot smoother and faster, and we can just concentrate on getting tight sounds and fuckin' banging them out. We couldn't imagine going anywhere else.

This is your first time recording with Brian Robinson on bass. How did that affect the songwriting process?
Brian's a very technical bass player; he pulls off some shit that I couldn't even fathom being able to do myself. Like, ever. So knowing that, working with him was kind of like, "Hey, Brian. I've got this part in this song and it's about, like, a shark attack, and I wanted you to do this nasty fuckin' bass thing. I want it to be fuckin' as if it was like a Disney movie, and you were scoring onscreen, like, a bunch of scattered cockroaches running from the light." Just by that-he hadn't heard the song yet; I was kind of writing it on my own-he goes, "Oh, shit! Yeah, yeah, yeah!" And then he just came out with this fuckin' insane [bassline] that I don't even understand. You know, I've been playing guitar for a long time, and he's totally on another level musically.

"Pardon Me, Thanks A Lot" has some pretty direct lyrics; who is it about?
It's about Mitt Romney. We're from this city called New Bedford-he's the governor of Massachusetts-and he fucked over our city pretty bad. He didn't get any support from where we live because we're a very democratic city, and so the people of our city never showed him any love because, you know, the people of our city are like, fuckin' salt-of-the-earth type people-something that dude doesn't understand. So, you know, now he's running for president, and it's all a big joke, so I just felt like writing it.

So what's the deal with titling all your records after hardcore bands? Career Suicide are a band from Toronto; your last record was called Ruiner, and there's a hardcore band from Baltimore called Ruiner...
Dude, I just found that out yesterday. Like I said, I don't really go on the internet much and find out about these bands, but with Ruiner, they contacted us like, "Hey! We're friends with friends that you guys are friends with!" I remember I was like, "Oh, man, I hope that fuckin' never happens again." And then, like, yesterday I found out that there's another band called Career Suicide. I'm like, "All right, fuck it. No more voting on album titles." [Laughs.] -Scott Heisel


Official Website: http://www.nitrorecords.com




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