Monday, November 30, 2009

BCxDC Interview With CHARTattack.com


http://www.chartattack.com/news/77303/bastard-child-death-cult-try-not-to-sound-like-100-different-things

By: Keith Carman

"I have a serious problem," admits Bastard Child Death Cult (BCxDC) vocalist Adam "Doom" Sewell.

No, it's not some The Dirt-esque revelation about shoving toxic substances into his orifices — or those of others. It's more a realization that after years of fronting incredibly diverse acts (Monster Voodoo Machine, Damn 13, Automatic Dub Riot), it's time for him to pare things back.

"At any given moment, I have ideas for two or three different bands in my head, and it's been really difficult learning to keep all of these ideas separate from each other," he says.

"I've had to learn some hard lessons over the years that audiences and listeners don't want songs from me that have everything and the kitchen sink in them. No one needs a reggae/techno/punk/southern rock/Sabbath-influenced, low-fi garage rock, trip-hop, rockabilly song. Trust me, I've tried."

Thankfully, though, Sewell has refined his attack, assisted by the abilities of guitarists Adam Arsenault and Darren Quinn, bassist Dave Smedley and drummer Joel Bath.

Bastard Child Death Cult's Year Zero debut full-length is a deadly blast of rudimentary, ball-quaking metal pummelled into shape by the obliterating, no-frills hardcore of originals such as Black Flag and Discharge. Now imagine all of that being sodomized by death punkers Turbonegro back when they were actually dangerous. In essence, Year Zero is the kind of shit that makes biker gangs nervous.

And how exactly does one go from the wonky purple haze of reggae-punk to flat-out menace? Sewell calls it the "two-minute rule," noting while the band are still intent on crafting quality tunes, BCxDC are about embracing expedient and getting it done before it gets mired in over-thinking.

"[We] pick up the guitar and if the song doesn't come together in two minutes, scrap it and move on to something else," he says with resolve. "I also keep in mind that we're playing heavy, aggressive punk rock, so I purposely leave out ideas that don't work within those parameters."

It works. Year Zero is easily on the same playing field as Southern gurus Arson Anthem, west coast speed freaks Zeke and the Voivod of yesteryear when they were basically hammering out Motorhead riffs at supersonic speed. Sewell is quick to dispel the hyperbole about their sound and style, though.

"All that I can tell you right now is that we simply do what we do. We plug in, play and hope that it's not all too self-indulgent. Ultimately though, it's just me and my inner 15 year old screaming at each other."

Friday, November 20, 2009

ThePunkSite.com Reviews "Year Zero"

http://thepunksite.com/reviews.php?page=album/number_d/bastardchilddeathcult_yearzero

If you meshed together metal staple Motorhead’s ever-heavy riffs, The Video Dead’s chaotic song structure and enthusiasm, and hardcore veteran Death Before Dishonor’s unrelenting hardcore delivery, then you’d have the Toronto based Bastard Child Death Cult (BCxDC). While technically only a year old, the band is really the spiritual successor of lead vocalist Adam Sewell’s previous act, Damn 13. But this isn’t purely Sewell’s show. No, every one of the band’s five members, consisting of members of acts like The Cancer Bats and Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah, find themselves at the centre of the hectic and frenzied product. As implied by the band’s self-made GI-JOE video montage (check it out on their website), BCxDC’s debut, Year Zero, is this year’s soundtrack to destruction.

Featuring three equally active guitarists, Year Zero never slows down – and certainly never offers listeners a chance to catch their breath. Like in “Blackout,” most tracks feature the tough, guiding crunch of heavy riffs and a thunderous backing bass – the type you hear when the metalhead sitting next to you on the bus closes their eyes, and air drums their way to hearing loss. In other words, BCxDC makes loud music that should be embraced without reserve.

The album also features occasionally surfacing metal solos, serving to elevate BCxDC’s sound and cement them as more than mere noise rockers. The solos on tracks like “Halo” and “Black Thorn Rising” demonstrate unquestionable technical ambition and ability. Such moments astutely counterbalance quick and messy tracks like “Slave One” and “American Graveyard,” making the album digestible for those who don’t normally experience this much intensity in a given year.

But BCxDC’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. With such a dedication to raw and unhinged chaos, there isn’t a lot of room for musical growth in the current formula. Thankfully the album only runs twenty-five minutes, so repetition never really becomes an issue, but it does force the question: where does BCxDC go from here? Will they water down their product? Will they keep the formula the same? How will they expand their existing sound? According to a recent news post by Sewell, the next album will feature even heavier riffs (I’ll pose the obvious question: how?), and a “massive groovetastic whitey-twostep.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but if it ends up nearly as well done as anything on Year Zero, then Bastard Child Death Cult’s future looks bright. 4/5

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Exclaim! reviews "Year Zero"









http://www.exclaim.ca/musicreviews/latestsub.aspx?csid1=115&csid2=870&fid1=42550

Bastard Child Death Cult

Year Zero
By Brad Schmale

Toronto, ON's hardcore scene has seen an abundance of acts emerge as of late but very few of them posses the ferocity and noise-polluted aggression of Bastard Child Death Cult. Although the band have existed for a short period of time, their members are all too familiar with the underground rock scene, as most of them are affiliates of Hog Town warriors like Cancer Bats, Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah and Damn 13. Armed with a crushing style of d-beat hardcore, similar to Discharge and Tragedy, this debut release is bursting with intensity, primarily on "Coffin Dragger," "Dead to Me Now" and the sludgy "American Graveyard." Additionally, former Cursed/current Burning Love vocalist Chris Colohan lends his distinctive bellow to the onslaught of sound throughout the album. Year Zero is a powerful and rabid effort that masochistically assaults listeners before leaving them wanting more. (Stereo Dynamite)

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

New "Year Zero" album review!

From Ground Control Magazine: http://groundcontrolmag.com/detail/3/1710/

REVIEW BY: Bill Adams

Sometimes, as hardcore rockers get older, they find that it gets progressively more difficult to summon the fire required to pound out aggressive rock on a nightly basis. They slow down, ease up and, while the flames may not have died, they dim or at least start to burn a different color. When Damn 13 singer Adam “Doom” Sewell announced the birth of Bastard Child Death Cult last year, in spite of the ominous overtones in the new band's name, a lot of fans braced themselves for the same kind of decline; it was perceived as an unfortunate event, but one that many viewed as inevitable with the passage of time.

Those fans shouldn't have been so quick to bow to that perceived inevitability. As it turns out, Sewell and this new band that includes members of Damn 13, Cancer Bats, Monster Voodoo Machine, Soulstorm and Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah have done the exact opposite of lighten up; they've declared a brand new start with new axes to grind. Year Zero doesn't even contemplate slowing down or lightening up for one instant during the run-time of the album's ten tracks.

Year Zero really does live up to its name; it plays like a brand new band insofar as not playing it even a little bit safe at any point during the album – everyone just goes for broke. The triple threat guitar onslaught supplied by Darren Quinn, Mike “13” Charette and Junior stands up as a single jagged and imposing force that only gets run through by Davey “Riot” Smedley's monolithic bass (check out the back end of “Radio Silence” if you want your brown eyes turned blue) and chased by Joel Bath's drumming. Particularly on songs like “Buzzkill,” “Blackout” and “Halo,” the band makes the most of its unique hybrid that incorporates metal weight, punk speed and hardcore's ceaseless aggression and doesn't come off as sounding too close to any of them exactly, but doesn't collapse in on itself and spill out as an over-ambitious mess either. Rather, what listeners get is a sound akin to an unrefined (and very, very pissed off) adrenaline rush that strikes out in every available direction and floors it balls-out each time. It's actually a terrifying assault.

Who could have seen this coming? Given the long-standing “lighten up until you fade to nothing with age” tactics that hardcore has always employed, it's a safe bet that the answer to that question will be a unanimous chorus of “no one.” Something like Year Zero has never happened in punk, metal or hardcore before; it's a new beginning, and it's actually a good, satisfying one.