LISTEN: Kowloon Walled City - "The Pressure Keeps Me Alive"

Back in January, I wrote about Gambling On the Richter Scale, a three year old record by a San Francisco sludge/noise rock band called Kowloon Walled City. They took their name from a legendary walled city, one that originally served as a military fortress for the Chinese back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sounds pretty heavy, huh? Well, Kowloon Walled City no longer stands, but Kowloon Walled City (the band) sounds like an army with a bunch of bottled up aggression -- you know, living inside a city that's walled in and all will do that to you. I found the record to be something along the lines of a heavier Quicksand, but, then again, sludge metal and noise rock are not genres I can claim to know a lot about.

LISTEN: Friend Collector

Friend Collector (feat. members of The New Flesh) is a noise rock/punk band from right here in Baltimore. Most will take them as just a bunch of rampant noise with no purpose, which is missing the point. From what I've gathered, this is a band that plays with reckless abandon and an inescapable fury of noise in order to obliterate expectations. Instead of attempting to make something from a mold of another band or familiar sound, these guys are freeing their demons in a most unadulterated manner. Certainly, this isn't going to be a band for everyone, but the noise here is an attempt to break down walls and put forth a challenge. Friend Collector have no intention of writing catchy songs and crafting something that is easily definable or interpreted -- as the irony of their name might suggest. This is a band that is expelling raw, primal emotion as a form of catharsis; it's the sound of anger, frustration, and confusion swinging around like a physical, emotional wrecking ball. This is music that translates its message through sonic assault, not melodic hooks. It's the equivalent of climbing a mountain, standing on the edge, and screaming out until your lungs have no air left.