The Badburn’s wild and brilliant noise

The band Badburn in their album Bound by Blood (MCA Universal 2001) redefine metal, rap, even anger and loathing. It is a formidable task listening to them churn out this wild, brilliant combination of noises, but then it becomes evident after a couple or so listenings that Badburn is a formidable band.

Just what is metal and what is rap? These questions among others become academic in the seething ferocity of their sonic assault, right in the opening crunching chords of Realm of the Wicked, which shifts time signature like changing gears on a steep incline.

Comparisons, conjectures on possible influences are also unavoidable, be it with Rage Against the Machine or Biohazard, perhaps the noisiest purveyors of the deadly fusion of industrial-strength rap metal. If indeed the term or hybrid did not exist or was just another neat invention of pop critics, as once suggested by a Playback reader, Badburn now reinvents that very label, twists and shapes it to serve the band’s purpose. Which is ... music can have a corrosive effect on the ears, but that doesn’t make it any less valid as music.

A few seconds into the CD, one fears that all the cockroaches will be scampering out of their hiding places in the apartment. A minute or two later, nearby furniture appear as if they are getting a good dusting. But then again, the funny thing is you get used to this noise, this simulation of a helter-skelter, dizzying apocalypse. What better time to listen to such stuff than these present confused days, and let bassist Hendrick Gonzalez, drummer Libyano, vocalist Marben Romero and guitarist David Abaya trudge out like the four horsemen.

Again what sets them apart from bands of similar bent is that Badburn can actually play, are something short of virtuosos on their respective instruments, and their use of English lyrics perhaps a means to reach an international audience. Language however becomes secondary here; they could be singing in Swahili and the effect would still be the same.

In Swahili or whatever, the lyrics can be as timely as the refrain of In Silence: "The best proof of man’s greed ... war."

Why are these guys so angry and are they really on the listener’s side? One might say they have a right to vent their spleen and bile, not to mention throw in the kitchen sink, at all things despicable and unfair in this world.

A song like Bulldozer could well be the soundtrack for a film clip of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center, not that the tragic event needs background music.

Or Just as Denied might be considered to be playing in the ears of millions of Afghan refugees fleeing their country in fear of military strikes. Then again maybe not; Badburn does not go well with kebabs.

Awake is as good a call to arms as any, with a hint of the subversive.

Equally ear-catching is the vocal interplay of Sandwich’s Marc Abaya, possibly the guitarist’s brother, with Romero in Blind Conviction.

In such a loud soundscape there is hardly room for a sense of humor, and at times they do come across as if pitching fire and brimstone from a pulpit on the edge of nowhere.

The volume approximates the pain threshold decibels of punk, but minus the sloppy musicianship of that genre.

Badburn on the whole demonstrates how effortlessly one can segue into acid jazz mode from straight-ahead metal, or vice versa, in the CD’s last two cuts, Trust (not the condom) and 41.

The instrumental breaks indeed come as a welcome respite to all that ranting and raving, with Abaya showing some worthy guitar lines, or Libyano shuffling some on his drum kit.

Romero’s vocals, for the most part, sound as if he’s about to burst a blood vessel, while Gonzalez on bass is the all around cure for the proceedings, making Bound by Blood quite a bloody record.

The songs seem to flow and blend with one another, that unless your player has a track counter it would be hard to tell where one tune ends and another begins, the band rushing headlong into the wall of sound like good soldiers to the frontline.