Liberteer are nothing if not ambitious. Even before a note has been heard the band’s press release boldly states: “LIBERTEER merges scathing anarcho-grind with triumphant passages and stirring riffs, creating a blasting war march that espouses nothing less than total anarchy. Even more incendiary lyrically than musically, LIBERTEER is the soundtrack to a populace casting off the chains of state, church, and economic oppression, and fighting tooth and nail to recapture personal freedom. Burn the system down!” immediately raising the expectations you may have for the band sky high and increasing the burden of demand upon the band’s debut release for the legendary Relapse label. Can the band possibly be as good as their press release seems to suggest… venture forth and find out!
Liberteer teaches you one thing from the off – take nothing for granted. Opening track ‘the falcon cannot hear the falconer’ is an elegiac piece that begins with a lone trumpet before bringing in all manner of instruments that you would not expect to find on a grindcore album in a million years. It is a short piece, it’s brevity taking you almost as much by surprise as its inclusion and from there we lurch straight into the flaming decimation of ‘build no system’ which sees guitars like chainsaws paired up with regal trumpets and a bonkers, progressive style interlude that suggests Liberteer may be under the influence of any number of mind-altering substances. There is no pause for breath as the band unleash ‘Without Blazon (is the flag I hold up and do not wag)’ a song that is played at near warp speed and with a fury that recalls the blazing intensity of Napalm Death’s BBC sessions. ‘We are not afraid of ruins’, which sees the song’s title being roared at the outset, still does not settle down, the drums a hyper-speed and hard to follow mish-mash of attention-deficit blasting and the guitars buzzing away relentlessly like a horde of mosquitoes buzzing around your room after the lights have been turned out – which is all business as usual until we hit the briefly beautiful interlude that forms the intro to ‘class war has never meant more than it does now’. If my writing style on this review sounds somewhat breathless, that’s because that’s the feeling this stupidly intense record engenders. Just as you figure you have a handle on proceedings, a track like ‘rise like lions after slumber’ appears just to remind you that Liberteer could just as easily be playing on a military parade ground as a sweat-soaked stage in some dank, underground rock bar.
The elegant passages are, of course, few and far between and never detract from the essential business at hand… namely flaying the flesh from your bones with tracks such as ‘that which is not given but taken’ and the furious title track which threatens to destroy speakers with its painfully distorted bass sound. None of which hold a candle to the rampaging ‘usurious epitaph’ which is as blisteringly fast as it is hard to say – or at least it is until it turns into a civil-war-era marching song before collapsing into the brutal ‘revolution’s wick burning quick’ – a storming melee of crunchy drums and stinging guitars. ’99 to 1’ is the sound of untrammelled rage unleashed in the live environment, while ‘sweat for blood’ unveils a hitherto buried love of dynamics and soundtrack music – sort of Hans Zimmer meets The Aborted, if you can imagine such a thing, ‘Barbarians at the gate’ offers no such subtlety, the chugging ‘when we can’t dream any longer’ is a sure-fire mosh-pit leveller whilst ‘it is the secret curse of power that it becomes fatal’ is every bit as whiplash inducing as its title might suggest. Of the final two tracks ‘I am Spartacus’ is a hateful number that ties the nobility of sacrifice for a higher cause to one of the album’s best tracks before ‘feast of industry’ closes the album with as much spit and spite as possible.
‘Better to die on your feet than live on your knees’ does not attempt to reinvent the wheel – rather Liberteer have augmented the traditional grindcore sound to provide something new for fans of the genre. It is a brave experiment that works fantastically well, especially considering the seemingly disparate elements the band have thrown into the mix. With a sound that is part buzz-saw, part heavy metal worship and intelligently written (if somewhat hard to discern) lyrics Liberteer have much to offer grindcore fans who may felt hey have seen and heard it all before. Well worth exploring.
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