Heavy As Balls
Have you ever tried to start a band? There are a few different ways. One is the method of throwing something together quickly just so you can get on stage ASAP and score new friend points. Or, you can shoot for the stars and attempt mainstream success by writing crap tunes that no one cares about, including yourselves. Or you could get together a bunch of egos that constantly bicker, fight and do nothing but play self-indulgent music that confuses the hell out of anyone within an ear's reach.
Destroy All is none of these.
They approach the task with a “patience is a virtue” attitude that just might pay off in the long run. It was a year ago that guitarist Scott Bartlett and drummer Rob Porier started jamming what would be the beginning seeds of Destroy All. A few months later they would enlist fellow scene veterans Aaron Shute on bass and Jay Clift on guitar. The quartet basically have been locked away in the jam space perfecting what they feel will be a force on the local metal scene. “We’ve been taking our time developing our sound,” Shute reveals. “We’re still subtly rearranging the original songs we wrote. We want to try and make them better. We just don’t want to go out with a couple of songs that sound half-assed and we try to write stuff that we love before anyone else hears it.”
This attitude prevails, yet just recently Destroy All have emerged from the jam room and played a select few shows around town. And the response has been excellent. Their music pulsates rapidly and they methodically pick away at the many metallic sub-genres creating the potential for a vast following amongst aggressive music devotees. Installing a unique three-vocal attack with aspects of crust, grind, thrash, hardcore, doom and noise metal. “We’re pretty all over the map which is something we’ve been going for,” Bartlett chimes in. “All of us having come from different bands with separate styles our songs sound different than the next one, but still within one heavy genre.”
With plans to hit the studio early next year Destroy All will continue to hone their brutality slowly while testing their growth with scattered live shows here and there. In the meantime you can check out some of their earlier tunes on their Bandcamp. However, it may be an idea to come out to a show and catch a work in progress before it hits the fan next year and Destroy All comes clean with a full frontal shit storm.
- Heath Fenton
Destroy All play Sept. 28 at the Astoria on a ten band bill also featuring Nard Hammer, Night Terrors, All Out Panic, Last Plague, Car 87, Dead Again, Blacked Out, Life Against Death on Sept. 28.
