New Heavy Sounds

About me:

She picked her way across the ruined piles of junk, stepping over the carcasses of old TV’s, furniture, fridges and bags of waste, their liquefying contents oozing noxiously from the plastic.

The rubbish pit of civilisation. There was no escape. Eventually the rolling hills of detritus gave way to the metallic rust, grease and rotting corpses of the auto dump. Thousands upon thousands of cars piled high one on top of the other. Pressed down by their own weight, like geological strata on a rock face. Telling its own peculiar history of tastes consumed, and then discarded, A million zeitgeists whose moment passed all too quickly.

It was strangely beautiful, the walls of metal that rose all around her, not high, but high enough. She’d have to climb to get to her favourite vantage point and the paths between the columns of cars could be narrow and dangerous. But she’d done it before and knew her way around.

Walking past the familiar towers of her route, she stopped as a silver/red flash caught her eye. Looking up she saw the new arrival. Like the cherry on a cake, the red sports car lay perched on top of a particularly rusty and precarious heap, incongruous and enticing. Slowly she started to climb.

The dead cars creaked and groaned beneath her weight but they seemed to be packed tight enough. Carefully choosing each foothold she expertly spidered up the compressed layers of rusty metal.

“Shit!!!”

A loud shriek of metal against metal. She pressed herself flat as something shifted deep within and the wall shuddered.

Minutes breathing nervously. She looked up. Almost there. Onwards she climbed, to the top.

Heaving herself over the edge she stopped and stared at the shiny red sports car. Unbelievable, it looks brand new, and made all the more impressive by the vista that framed it. Dirty colourless sky, grey hi-rise blocks ranged like broken teeth on the horizon, and in the middle of a flat plain of rusting machines, a splash of colour in the monochrome. A gleaming new car, bright red with shining alloy wheels. No rust, no dents, no damage.

No way could it be here, but here it was.

She walked up to it. Ran her hand along the flawless metal body. Looked disbelievingly through the windows at the pristine black interior.

Opened the door and climbed in.

She settled into the warm leather upholstery and closed the door. The smell of newness enclosed her like a warm hand, comforting and familiar. A protective bubble from the shitty world outside. Through the windscreen, even the grubby hi-rises looked poetic.

She ran her hands across the dashboard and found the radio. Clicked it on.

The loud shash of static filled the car. She twisted the one dial, fragments of music faded in and out. The familiar tedious warble and thrum of indie guitar bands. The vacuous wail of a glam pop princess. Anodyne over sung and soulless R’n’B. Farting eighties inspired electro pap.

“What a load of shit”.

She kicked out at the dashboard.

Two things happened. The stereo spluttered into silence, then the glove compartment fell open spilling its contents. A shiny gold disc.

She picked it up. Stencilled on it were three letters. NHS.

Intrigued she pushed it into the slot in the stereo. A splurge of static, then a voice.

“You can call us the NHS.

We're talking New Heavy Sounds. What are the new heavy sounds? Well let me start by telling you what its not.

It’s not some floppy fringed indie twat lifelessly wailing like a ninny, strumming some weedy chords and hoping to impress us with a view on life spouted by a git who hasn’t had a life.

It’s not the second hand glamour of media manufactured pop tarts and over scrubbed boys, making music (and I use that in its loosest term) to sell television programmes. Find the face, find the stylist, we’ll worry about the songs later, if at all….……bollocks.

It’s not a bunch of wimps and wimpesses trying to recreate the most superficial sounds and styles of the most superficial decade in pop history (yes I mean the fucking 80’s).

And it’s not music you can ignore.

We say destroy indie, destroy glamour and destroy your ears.

New Heavy Sounds? Well let me tell you that we’re talking about big fucking guitar riffs…lots of ‘em. Slow and sludgy, fast and noisy. Tempos change and sound explodes, and yes we’re talking churn your bowels up HEAVYYYY.

Where are we coming from? The past and the future is our playground. Metal? Yes we like, but not the silly stuff. Satan certainly has the best tunes. But he also has some of the most crap lyrics. We say stick your devils up your bum.

Hard rock? Yes.

Noise, drones and feedback? Yes oh yes.

Slow loud and heavy? Fuck yes.

NHS is all about taking the dirty, greasy riffage of the best heavy bands of the 70’s, the musical invention of prog (bypassing Tolkien and his elves) and the best of the new noise core. Mashing it up and bringing it to you.

A big fuck you to what passes for a music scene these days. Unapologetic and uncompromising. You’ll either love it or hate it, and if you hate it you can fuck off back to your parent’s house.

Wanna know what I’m talking about? Well strap on your seatbelt and keep listening coming up is a selection of what I mean.

Over and out”.

The noise of the riff.

An infinity of massively loud.

Encountering resistance in an alternative metallic place.

Primarily stasis.

Listen : out of the raw static – a sine wave of unfolding whine MY CAR IS IN MOTION

Oil. Petrol. Hydrolic fuid. Later they recovered the broken statuette of her body from the wreck, unhooking it from the dashboard.

A thousand rusty speakers rear from the junk pile of cars. Vibrations pound like distant artillery blasting away on the other side of a battlefield. TIME FOR SPEED. In the intermediate but vital space between the chorus of smaller creaks and cries and clicks.

Thank you for the metal music, shrieking.

They left the tarmac, laughing.

Time to greave, limping.

Push open the door now. RELEASE CATCH.

She makes her way to the edge of the tower of cars. Stumble.

Good leg. Bad leg. Good leg. Bad leg.

Good leg. Bad leg.

Good leg. Bad leg.

Stumble.

Too late.

The perfume of dead cars. There is another low rumbling moan. Fizz face? Fuzz bass? Fragment face ? For fuck’s sake ! Something half perceived is bursting and crashing and echoing accumulating NOISE NOISE NOISE. Everywhere a deluge of rust.

More cars clouded the air, cutting into her skin cuts the diagram – a map etched by bomb lines into the now disintegrating junk-pile. Cars falling, She is staggering, Good leg. Bad leg. We are only attempting an escape away from cars.

Sweet Satan’s carquake.

A loud rending of metal.

Huge and crackling. Louder and louder.

The noise of the riff. Lips form a rusty word. HELP

The infinity of massively loud.

In the final dying cries of the heap of cars is something that we are denied.

And yet it controls us.

She heard the soft plink-plonk, then saw the silver disc glinting in the oily light as it rolled out of the crushed junk-pile towards her.

It rolled up against her shoes. Spun to a halt.

She picked up the silver disc, still shiny and untouched. Looked again at the stencilled letters, NHS.

“Fucking hell…..that was…….HEAVY”