Send "Trash Talk " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Trash Talk are brutal. Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham once told me that Trash Talk has "the most violent pits I've ever seen", then told me a story about watching two 14-year-old girls punching each other in the face while the Sacramento hardcore band was playing. Frontman Lee Spielman manages to project an air of livewire danger and omnidirectional contempt even between songs, something rare even to hardcore frontmen. The band plays its brand of fast, borderline amelodic hardcore without frills or clean edges; there's no hint of, say Converge's technical precision, or Iron Age's old-school thrash melodic sense. The band just bashes out its rage-fit growls extremely quickly, without regard for subtleties like hooks or song structure.For a band like this, the show is the thing, and records are more like souvenirs, or previews. But Eyes & Nines actually does a good job capturing the instability of the band's live set. For one thing, it's not even 18 minutes long, even factoring the relatively epic 4:30 doom metal excursion "Hash Wednesday" into the equation. For another, it's deliberately messy. The guitars raggedly bleed into each other, and every lyric is delivered in the same wracked, high-pitched scream, whether it's Spielman or one of the other guys singing. Without a lyric sheet, you're only going to pick out the odd word or phrase ("sadistic psycho," "no one can save you now"). On a few songs, the band slows things down toward the end for riff-heavy mosh-part breakdowns, and when those come in, you can practically see the fists whipping around. Eyes & Nines doesn't quite sound like it was recorded at a basement show somewhere; the fidelity's a little higher than that. But the recording is kept purposefully raw, and the immediacy is there. "Hash Wednesday" is the type of thing that should just destroy live; after all the hyperspeed riffage of the songs that came before, it's slow and full of empty space. The drums don't even kick in for more than a minute, which is longer than a lot of Trash Talk songs last, and the whole exercise gives the band a chance to sound straight-up evil rather than just grimy and pissed off. And though you can probably listen to the album more than once on your morning commute, it still works as a full-immersion experience, its sludgy roar hitting hard on a visceral gut-level....full text |
| Bbc |
| Hardcore rock of this white-knuckled, wildly aggressive variety arguably began and ended with Black Flag’s 1981 debut, Damaged. That record featured a succession of short and fast numbers, and has influenced innumerable musicians with short attention spans and predilections for heavily amplified guitar riffs ever since. Sacramento-spawned quartet Trash Talk has been steadily building a buzz in hardcore circles for a couple of years, and their third album is aimed at introducing them to an audience wider than any they’ve enjoyed before. But it, like countless collections before it, plays to conventions cast in iron almost 30 years ago. The band’s obvious debt to their forebears isn’t overlooked, though – they’ve previously collaborated with Black Flag’s Keith Morris, and here they join forces with both Greg Heston (Circle Jerks, Bad Religion) and The Bronx’s lead-screamer Matt Caughthran. When things take a turn for the melodious, it’s Caughthran’s eponymous-album-fixated crew that Trash Talk most easily evoke – Explode is the closest this album comes to delivering sing-along motifs, although passing out come the climax of its two-and-a-half minutes is an inevitable outcome should one attempt to keep pace with the voraciously barked vocals....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| Johnny Music Industry being a shady bugger, there is probably a convoluted breadcrumb trail of reasons why Sacramento, California four-piece Trash Talk are on a label with Alkaline Trio and Rolo Tomassi; why they managed to get Greg Hetson from Bad Religion to appear on this, their third studio album; why they have been thirstily plated by more or less every rock-centric newsstand magazine and radio show in the UK. And, more pointedly, why pretty much no other fast hardcore / crypto-powerviolence band of recent times has managed to do anything very similar, despite playing an essentially similar style of music. While it isn't their fault that writers and subeditors with evidently scant grounding in hardcore collude to deem them THE MOST DANGEROUS BAND IN THE WORLD, one doesn't get the impression that they shrink from such hyperbole either. Nor should they be obliged to: this could all end tomorrow, man, so why not enjoy the ride while it lasts and collect a few silly articles to Blu-tak on the toilet wall? However, since you asked, Trash Talk are not the most dangerous band in the world either in the live 'arena' (they're sweaty and interactive, no question, but... that's essentially what hardcore bands do) or on Eyes & Nines . They've adhered to their established less-is-more ethos, ten songs totalling 17 minutes – previous releases have averaged about a song a minute – and largely remain in the realm of thrashy, downtuned HC with no solos or choruses. How abrasive or extreme you find it will largely depend on your level of immersion in the various micro-styles they assimilate. The most direct practitioners of late-Nineties powerviolence (Charles Bronson, Asshole Parade); Canadian icons Cursed and various parts of their family tree; sardonic Dutchmen Das Oath: all these have paved the way to Eyes & Nines, should you already be a paid-up fan of Trash Talk and up for some backtracking....full text |
Trash Talk lyrics
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