PainKiller
Guts Of A Virgin

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Sure, the figure of John Zorn is not exactly the first that comes to mind when discussing meanness, right? Glasses framed by a heavy frame, a mocking grin stamped on his lips, military shorts permanently glued to his legs. And then the sax, his sax, the one that for thirty-seven years has populated the nightmares and desires of half of the musical avant-garde. But let's go in order.

It happens, therefore, that in 1991 Mick Harris, until then the drummer of Napalm Death, was ousted from the motherland for his courageous desire to dare, to shake off some of the clichés that the Birmingham band, especially with the release of "Harmony Corruption", began to carry with them. At the same time, the then thirty-nine-year-old New York musician was coming off the exceptional critical success of his Naked City, with two acclaimed albums (the self-titled debut and "Grand Guignol") and another, "Radio", perhaps the most beautiful and eclectic ever published by the "naked city," in the recording stage. It's inevitable, then, given Zorn's particular ability to create works with anyone willing to play along, that the two minds, the two perspectives, the two ways of logically organizing (or not...) music would come into contact. Thus, the Painkiller is born, a devastating trio (with the addition of Bill Laswell on bass) that fuses the surgical fury of grindcore and the germs of early death metal with the sonic schizophrenias typical of the more extreme episodes of Zorn's production as can be, for example, the unlistenable sax treaties of "The Classic Guide To Strategy" or the free-form jazzcore of the already mentioned "Grand Guignol".

In this regard, a distinction should be made, necessary to truly understand the nature of the group. Given the extreme closeness of the two projects, and the underexposure that Painkiller has always had compared to stellar enemies/friends, there is often confusion between them and Naked City, most of the time tossed into a single pot and considered as the same expression of a new way of understanding the song form that, in those years, was taking hold in Zorn's modus operandi. In reality, the matter is more particular and well definable. It is true that those, thanks also to the insane propulsive push of the vocalist, already Boredom, Yamatsuka Eye, willingly gave in to telluric metallic degenerations, that plundered especially the kidneys of hardcore punk (a genre that the saxophonist has never made a secret of appreciating for its execution speed and ability to concentrate many concepts in short durations). However, everything was brought back to a caricature dimension or, in any case, strongly humorous, and just watch the numerous live videos available on YouTube to realize how, even during the performance of the most incendiary segments, the five dandies of the Big Apple were having a blast. These, however, take it seriously, damn seriously, from the cover of "Guts Of A Virgin," the first of the two official EPs dated 1991, which would be censored in all British countries. Here there is no melody, no mercy, not even rock: there is only the awareness of being able to go beyond the "beyond", if you allow me the polyptoton, to break through cacophony to reach a higher dimension.

"Scud Attack", the opener, is chilling, and strikes the listener to the ground with a futuristic grind, powerful whether it unfolds through jazzy accelerations, in which Zorn's sax assumes genocidal movements, or in the muddy bass and drum inlays, which almost seem to echo Melvins and anticipate the sludge label by a decade. Harris's drums are uncontrollable, in the bursts and starts ("Damage To The Mask"), the bass becomes an alien body in its infinite rumbling ("Hostage", which crackles as if animated by nitroglycerin), Mick Harris devours Patton a couple of years in advance (the title track, hallucinatory, but also "Purgatory Of Fiery Vulvas"). And, among the usual few seconds shards, as usual totally out of control ("Deadly Obstacle Collage", "Handjob"), ours even invent a jazz-dub hybrid that settles the spirits a little and leans the face towards the CD player to turn up the volume ("Dr. Phibes", certainly the best piece on the album), before it comes to life on its own and plants the cleaver in the middle of the eyes, with the hardcore carnage of "Devil's Eye".

Is that all? Is that all.

Give a whistle when you're overwhelmed. John Zorn forgives, but does not forget.