Car Bomb (band)

Car Bomb is an American mathcore band from Long Island, New York that was initially formed in 2000. Their debut album, Centralia, was released through Relapse Records on February 6, 2007.

Biography

Car Bomb first came to be around the year 2000, when Greg Kubacki and Michael Dafferner of the band Neck shared a rehearsal space under a Rockville Center, New York butcher with Elliot Hoffman and Jon Modell of the band Spooge. Over time, the bands became great friends and frequently visited each other's practices. In 2002, Modell, unsatisfied with the music his band was making, recruited Kubacki and Dafferner to form what a side project called Car Bomb. In 2004, Car Bomb began recording. Their first full-length album Centralia was released on February 6, 2007 via Relapse Records.

The band's first full-length release was named after the doomed town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which was abandoned during an underground mine fire.^[1] The track's lyrical content and titles cover various topics - Cielo Drive (also known as 'Bloodbath Orgy') was named after the road on which one of the infamous Manson Family spree-killings were committed (10050 Cielo Drive), HN51 is the medical abbreviation for the then-recent outbreak strain of Bird Flu, while 'M^6' covers neglect of a mother. The band recently added a song "BraCKet" to their Myspace page, which was an out-take of Centralia.^[2]

Car Bomb showcased a number of new songs on their recent May 2009 tour with Gojira and The Chariot, viewable on YouTube.

Singer Michael Dafferner premièred his first independently released film [Why_You_Do_This], a feature-length documentary 'about money, touring, and technical metal,' at the Queen's World Film Festival in August 2011.^[3] The band's New York rehearsal space was flooded in early 2012, with most of the equipment being lost or damaged.

The band released their second full length album, 'w^w^^w^w' in 2012. It consists of twelve tracks, and features a guest vocal appearance from Joseph Duplantier of the band Gojira. 'w^w^^w^w' is supposedly pronounced 'w click w', but guitarist Greg Kubacki mentioned "a lot of people are now calling it the “waveform record,” which works too." ^[4]

Style

Car Bomb's style is marked by a highly experimental and extremely aggressive approach to metal. The band's music and riffs follow a very discordant style; chords and scales are not of the conventional variety, and have an almost random playing feel (as demonstrated in "Hypnotic Worm"). The band have cited their style to be influenced by Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, Autechre, Coalesce, The Locust, Naked City, Metallica, Pantera, Slayer, Frank Zappa, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Vinnie Colaiuta, Allan Holdsworth, "and anything Dave Witte has played on".^[5]

Whether chopping a riff into pieces, reversing it, cutting it short, or messing with the tempo, Car Bomb’s unique style of progressive metal is the product of dissecting ideas and beating them to death. The result is equivalent to a jet engine propelling gravel into your skull. Car Bomb combines the polyrhythmic and mathematical madness of Meshuggah and Dillinger Escape Plan with the rage and energetic fury of Coalesce and Converge. Though their songs are musically challenging, Car Bomb refuses to dilute their ruthless execution. Their intent is to assault the listener in any and every way possible - compositionally, sonically, and lyrically.^[6]

Describing a 2014 Car Bomb performance supporting Meshuggah, Amit Sharma of Kerrang! said of the band: "Long Island experimentalists Car Bomb sound absolutely ferocious. Their psychotic turbo-thrash is disgustingly disorientating, Frankensteining Meshuggah and The Dillinger Escape Plan into one relentless onslaught of time-chopping violence."^[7]

Guitarist Greg Kubacki's playing style uses a lot of descending pick scrapes, artificial harmonics, and ascending Digitech Whammy pedal sweeps. These techniques are best demonstrated in 'Gum Under The Table'.

Discography

• Centralia (2007), Relapse
• w^w^^w^w (2012), Independent

Band members

• Michael Dafferner – vocals
• Greg Kubacki – guitar
• Jon Modell – bass
• Elliot Hoffman – drums

Notes

References

• Car Bomb at Allmusic

External links

• Official website