trauma rock

God Bullies - 'Cemetary' and 'Shallow Grave', from the LP: Dog Show (1990)

I attended a school of art & design from 1990 -93. Hanging around with fellow students exposed me to a lot of music that I may have - and occasionally did- miss out on. I was turned on to the Kalamazoo, MI based God Bullies by a film student friend. Their creepy garage noise rock fit well within our musical tastes; and the low growling vocals, cut and paste audio samples, layered tribal drum rhythms and reverb effects-laden guitar work appealed to our mixed media art backgrounds. At the same time, we viewed it as a snickering reply to the whole goth industrial sampling thing that many of our school counterparts embraced. From the gravestone album art to the recurring song themes of religion and death, they had the dark thing nailed; so to speak. And in spite of it, the album pretty much rocked to high heaven. Maybe not as noisy and harsh as their earlier 7" releases, but still as powerful. Even as laughable as all the horror blasphemy guitar meltdown may seem in retrospect, there was an underlying creepiness to it at the time. Even upon recent listens, it still has it's unsettling moments.