Customer Reviews

Execution Ground

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is music unlike anything i've heard (besides other Zorn stuff). The moment I put it in my CD player I am trapped, unable to tear myself away, or even divert my attention elsewhere. Especially the first three tracks. There's always something interesting going on. All three musicians deliver superb performances. Zorn doing his "torture victim" style of saxophone playing, and even more normal jazzy playing, to my favorite, that creepy microtonal phase that sounds like several torture victims. Harris manages to straddle these lengthy improvisations without just repeating a drum pattern over and over, he always varies the groundwork in interesting and occasionally attention-grabbing ways. And Laswell he seems to prefer to stay in the background most of the time, letting his simple bass lines create the perfect atmosphere for everyone else. I think the ambient disc works more on a subconscious level, so I try to do something else while it plays, and it certainly creates a different kind of ambience, not harsh noise, but not dreamy new-age stuff. If you can find it I highly suggest picking it up ... NOW!

I bought this disc because I have and love other John Zorn projects (Naked City, Masada), and I knew of Bill Laswell through his production work and great band Material.

I find Execution Ground to be full of interesting textures, bizarre rhythms, and insane drumming - plus plenty of shrieking sax, as one would expect. Although it's certainly intriguing, it falls short of Zorn's other projects for me. The long compositions seem directionless and the endless reverb and delays are a little hokey. I do like the second disc a little better, because the static feel naturally lends itself to the ambient mode, but overall I'd rather listen to Naked City or Material than Painkiller.

Take three recognized masters in their feilds, put them together, and usually you start hearing the term "supergroup" bandied about. Not so PainKiller, and I've never been able to figure out why. Saxophone legend John Zorn, bass-and-production guru Bill Laswell, and manic death-metal drummer Mick Harris (helped out sporadically by Justin Broadrick and Christian Green, collectively better known as Godflesh) combine to make some of the most dissonant melodic music since people started trying to combine dissonance and melody.

Where most PK recordings are chock full of rapidfire assaults on the senses, Execution Ground takes the methamphetamine-styled energy, channels it, and allows it expression in three long pieces (the second disc contains "ambient" remixes of two, but ambient is a relative term here; you'd never find this stuff noodling away on a Yanni disc). There will be those who contend that shorter is better for PK's unique combination of free jazz, death metal, and noise, but Execution Ground does things one better than that by using twisted, but classical, structures in each piece. If you can get through the dissonance, and the walls of sound, listening to Execution Ground bears more than a little resemblance to listening to Mahler, say, or earlier Copland pieces; recognizable themes crop up repeatedly with long bridges, etc.

This is definitely worth checking out if you can get it used, especially if you're a fan of avant-garde classical or noise. It's not one of the discs in my collection I play frequently, but it always makes the cut when the sporadic massive selloffs take place.

Put Simply, this is the best Painkiller album there is. Fantastic! Fierce Bass, Hard-core Sax-chops, Furious Drumming - all to the delight of the ear. Free Rock, maybe? Emotional tunes that go places. Enjoy!