Oakland California's Choke might initially be well known as yet another of the several projects from Bay Area grindcore legend and powerviolence patron saint, Gregg Deadface. Deadface is of course celebrated for many of his musical endeavors in bands such as Your Enemy, Thousandswilldie, XHostageX, and AK//47 among others, as well as the face of Oakland's prestigious 510 Grind Fest. In addition to his work in Oakland's grindcore community, he also is a co-founder of Enemy Of The Goat Records alongside of Choke guitarist and Merked bassist, Fedge. But this review is not about him.
Choke has had a slew of releases in their five year tenure—from their introductory 2018 demo, their self-titled EP and their 2020 full-length—It's Hard To Talk Shit, With No Fucking Teeth—to their later string of splits through 2021 and 2022. Within that time the band has established a staunch attitude of anti-fascist, anti-police, pro-leftist physical violence set to a trudging concoction of powerviolence and a NYHC style of hardcore.
Choke's latest split cassette with Sacramento's Dopemess delivers four shots of that throat stomping, knuckle dragging hardcore/powerviolence cocktail—very shaken and not stirred. The band minces zero words about the subject matter that their lyrics are tackling and makes their feelings very known when it comes to the current political climate and present-day social issues. Each of the four tracks are prefaced with audio clips that relate to the songs specifically and are probably just as long as the songs themselves. Choke are taking the volatile issues that seemingly took precedence during American lockdown culture over the past couple of years to task. Mainly topics dealing with systemic racism, the anti-vaccination/anti-mask/Covid controversy, transphobia, homophobia and the ongoing war on women.
The first couple of tracks tend to be on the slower heavier side, focusing on the plodding syncopation of that hardcore sound rather than excess speed. Chugging palm muted guitar riffs and toppling drum fills march songs in and out of aggressive tension building preludes. Whereas the latter two tilt more toward the traditional vein of powerviolence that moves a little quicker with pounding snare hits and galloping rolls that crescendo into blast beats.
Vocally, Choke are generally divided between shotgunned gang vocals and Deadface's caveman vocals. The standout exception being "Battlefield," where new addition to the band, Gage, takes the lead vocals on a tirade that reminds me very much of Detestation's legendary Saira Huff from the late 90's or modern day Body Farm's Ocean-Breeze Kudla.
On the cassette's flip side, the "hash" obsessed Dopemess speed things up considerably with a clamorous style of grind-violence from Sacramento California. The drum and guitar duo of Joey and Jake have been consistently releasing split and EP cassette tapes annually since 2018, including a full-length of sorts with 2021's Grief Milestones. The band's discography primarily consists of noisy and gnarled blast-tracks that come in routinely under a minute and a lot of times way under a minute. And you can bet that a good portion of those tracks are about hash and hash related paraphernalia.
Dopemess' 2022 split tape with Choke finds the band a little less noisy, but just as vicious and just as hashed dependent, or maybe a little more so on both accounts. As with all their splits, Dopemess supplies a generous portion of tracks, with an ample nine songs here. From the start of their side, the guys immediately set the tone with the nine second snare-n-yell aggression test, "Curse Of Malang," before launching head first into a blur of skank beats, blast beats and a set of caustic and foam spattered dual vocals. They remind me of an abridged version of Eternal Death era Shitgrinder. The band generally keeps the tempo up by any means necessary. At times getting things so tumultuous that they almost sound as if they might shudder apart. Now, Dopemess can slow things down just as abruptly as they can speed things up—keeping the violence in their grind-violence—but the duo are not oppose to bringing things to a snail's pace such as with the doom metal crawl, "Life In A Fog." Although the moody track is the only one over a minute, it is fairly short lived and eventually blasts itself awake.
The split cassette tape between Choke and Dopemess is a quick one-two punch combination of what's happening in modern West Coast powerviolence and grindcore. Both bands together offer a miscellanea of everything that one could want from the genre. Choke with their crossbreed of West Coast powerviolence and East Coast hardcore makes for a crashing, groove-laden cave-core that is sharply modern yet wholly traditional in the spirit of the powerviolence primogenitors, Spazz. Their strict leftist moral ideals are sometimes at odds with their amiable sense of humor.
Meanwhile, Dopemess manage to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. They are a free flowing stream of grindcore, hardcore, powerviolence, crust and black metal possessed sludge filtered through the grime of the Sacramento River and, of course, laced with the band's reverence for their beloved hash. They are gruff enough to be unquestionably brutal, but spindly enough to be plain unpredictable.
These aren't the bands that you will see online with the multi colored limited edition vinyl pre-orders or the CD/vinyl/t-shirt tie-in bundle packs. These are your local hard-working bands that are on the Kinkos flyers stickered over on the telephone poles; put out on a DIY labor-of-love label that just wants to spread powerviolence into the world. Nuff said.
FFO: XHostageX, Body Farm, Apartment 213, Shitgrinder, Deterioration
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