1 post tagged “"fear of god"”
Fear Of God “First EP” (E.U.’91 Produzioni 018)
This originally came out in 1988 as a 7”. It has 21 songs, most under the 30 second mark. The guitars and bass are downtuned, the drums are spastic, the vocals are growled/screamed. Most of the songs seem to be over before they’ve really started. Every once in awhile there is a slow, grinding riff before things kick back into overdrive. My favorite song of theirs is the monumentally grinding World Under My Fingernail. Unfortunately, it’s not on this disc. At the time this was released, very few bands sounded like this – Napalm Death and possibly a handful of others. Now, in 2006, when too many bands sound like this, I still get a kick out of listening to Fear of God, if mostly for the sake of nostalgia. It is definitely good catharsis music for when I’m experiencing moments of extreme frustration or anger. Can’t listen to it much around the house though because it scares the kids and the pets. Fear of God, and music like this in general, is a bit of an acquired taste. During the eighties, when I was constantly on the lookout for ever more extreme types of music, Fear of God was reached via a series of stepping stones like Venom, Swans, and a whole slew of early eighties European punk bands too numerous to mention. After hearing Fear of God and their ilk, I discovered that I’d reached a dead end as far as that particular type of extremity went, so I had to turn around and venture down other musical avenues. In a different way, their vocalist, Erich Keller, opened up other musical avenues for me through tape trading, introducing me to bands like Death SS (and Paul Chain), Laibach, and incongruously enough, Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, as well as many others. Erich was also responsible for the fanzine, Megawimp, which brought him to the states on research missions during the eighties. He, with a couple of friends, even stayed at my house one Christmas (back when I lived with my mom, no less). I never could read the magazine though, since it’s all in German and I am hopelessly monolingual..
Oh, this cd comes with the original liner notes, and I
recently noticed/remembered that I’m thanked there. How punk of me! My only complaint is that this reissue should
have come with an hour so worth of bonus tracks. Fear of God recently reformed, but I think
maybe they’ve since broken up again.
Check out www.megawimp.ch/fog.html,
and an unofficial fanpage at www.myspace.com/fearofgodgrind.
