Token Remedies Research

Every once in a while, I get an album in that ties me down, aggresively invades my rectum with an aggravated puffer fish, then to make it official, flashes me it's five across the eyes. Innovation is a rare, but very welcome spark in genre where suckling the godfathers' craggy, hardcore-influenced teat is about as prominent as darkness in a polar winter. I'm not gonna lie, Grindcore is the crown jewel of my album collection, and I'm always hot and ready for a quasi-familiar, but solid grind album. Unfortunately, none of these nearly cloned acts hit me with the same addictive flavor as forward thinking bands like The Sawtooth Grin, Biolich, and the band in question, Damaged.

Damaged play (or played) a style of music very difficult to pigeonhole, as their influences are wide spread and fearless. To be honest, although the guitarwork is great, it wouldn't nearly have the same diamond-studded/platinum leg to stand on without the absolutely ridiculous vocal stylings of frontman Jaymi, and the erratic blast-laden, but bizzarely foreign feeling drum work of skinsman Matt. To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, Jaymi basically mimics a VHS dialect stuck on fast-forward, often spewing about a decade's worth of words a minute. Just throw in a pitch shifter to muck it up a little, and move onto worshipping the second honorable mention here. Damaged, to be fair, is not trying to achieve an album with drumming as the focal point, and is fortunately way out of the cliche inhabited by bands such as Absu. However, the drumming here adds far more than what could be expected from such a often-dismissed act, texturing the music in a way that stands a little too tall to absorb on first listen.

To round things down, take experi-metal era Napalm Death (Diatribes...etc), make it heavier, less predictable, and a hell of a lot less terrible, throw in an aural and an oral machine gun, and you've basically given Damaged a mathematic formula. Although 'Token Remedies Research' isn't as excellent as it's predecessor, it's an incredible album, albeit a difficult one to get into for the more elitist fans of the genre. I suggest you pick this up first, then give Do Not Spit a listen, completely disregarding the existence of this album's followup. Aussie grind comes in many forms, but this is definately the most unique you're likely to come across.

I learned about this band from an early metal MP3 posting website in 1997 run by an Australian who really loved this band since it was one of the few heavy acts that played in his remote and disconnected country. My friend, whom I mentioned the band to, saw a Damaged used copy selling for $3 and bought it for me since I created him a simple band website -- this was 1997/1998, it was a pretty big thing -- and it blew me away, since either White Zombie or Pantera were about the heaviest bands I had albums of at the time.

This album is very LOUD, mostly due to its rather good production for a quasi-grind/death band. The drums will shake the house, and the distorted and detuned guitars create a wall of sonic noise. The incomprehensible screaming and hard-rhyming -- but at a pretty safe distance from rapping -- is incomprehensible even in the included lyrics, since it's written SOMETHINGLIKETHEROMANSWOULDHAVEWRITTEN. Some of it is slow, over-distorted, and boring, but some of it is very fast, energetic, and VERY, VERY aggressive. It actually sounds remotely like the heavier parts of a Slipknot song with its -core influences, but a lot less wiggerish, even though this was a few years before mallcore. Ironic, since the future-mallcore kids (quasi-Mansonites) who listened to this briefly and hated it came to worship the style when Slipknot became big.

Its speed varies, but it can get pretty good, but there is a lot heavier and better stuff out there. In the era of mallcore, the hard-rhyming in the singing can be reminding of some lousy songs, and really dampens the mood and makes it less fun to crank up.

Through most of the album, the sound is just something average for the drumming, riffs, and singing -- nothing outstanding, and no solos. The first song isn't that good, the second song sucks, the third one is ok, but the fourth one -- The Mirror Perils -- is pretty good, and is my favorite on the album. Track 5 is ok, and track 6 is decent, though I'd almost mistake it for a PDM-era Marduk song at its beginning nowadays!

Though they're much, much better lot better than a lot of no-name "extreme" bands that pop up these days, there's still better stuff out there in the grind/death genre. I wouldn't pay more than I did for the album. It's good if you have a large collection of really loud border-line noise albums and want a touch of variety, but other than that I really can't recommend it. I haven't listened to this one for quite some time, and probably won't again very soon. However, if they came to my boring remote town, I would DEFINITELY go see them, and I'd have a blast, too!

Most people would probably give them a far lower score, but I was nice enough to give them a 70 for some reason.