AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RANK AND VILE — “WORSHIP”

Four years after their debut album Redistribution Of Flesh, Portland’s ingeniously named Rank and Vile will detonate a new album named Worship on November 17th, with the pin pulled by Modern Grievance Records.

It really is an explosive weapon, this album, one that discharges a blast front of violent deathgrind but also inflicts bunker-busting grooves and is equally well-calculated to stir up electrified pits of sweat-soaked humanity in the pit.

The album is also well-timed, because its high-octane fuel is politically charged rage and its method is punishment. It is, first and foremost, a musical catharsis, a weaponized reaction that (in words from the label’s PR materials) “takes shots at flabby politicians, hypocritical religious fanatics, and fence-sitting sycophants”. Theocrats, autocrats, and plutocrats may not get the justice they deserve in the outer world, but they sure as hell get it in the inner world of this record.

Photo by Sarah Mendez

You’ll get a concrete idea of what we’re talking about from “Churchstate“, the first single released from the album, and also its opening track. As the band said at that time:

“It features two things that should let you know what you can expect from the album and from RANK AND VILE in general: it expresses the political rage that we share with many Americans who are fed up with having their lives and bodies governed by religious fascists and it’s a goddamn ripper.”

Indeed it IS a goddamn ripper, and the rage surges from it like water from a high-pressure firehose. The drums hammer and blast full-bore; the bass thunders like a high-speed cannonade; the riffing is a super-heated boil of lacerating grit; and the vocals attack in a raw, screaming fury.

The song doesn’t last long, but before it finishes with you the band fire up the big jackhammers, first fast and then slower, delivering a bleak and brutish beating, with the guitar also whining like a dismal siren in the midst of the cold-eyed thuggery.

The kind of hard, visceral, jaw-breaking and head-moving punch that comes near the end of “Churchstate” is a recurring feature within Worship. It could be interpreted as a sign of absolute disgust, an emotion that co-exists in the album with absolute fury. As a songwriting feature, that kind of shift in tempo and mood is also the kind of thing that keeps listeners on their toes — and likely causes crashing human pile-ups in the pit.

It’s hard to decide which aspect of Rank and Vile‘s attack is the more powerful — the raging full-throttle violence in their music or the punishing beat-downs, the dense and maniacally abrasive riff-blizzards or the chords that feel like sledgehammer blows or groaning agony, the drumming that fires like automatic weaponry or methodically clobbers. Fortunately, you don’t have to choose, you just have to throw yourself in and get your adrenaline going.

The songs bring other sensations too — lots of truly electrifying drum fills; scampering punk beats; gritty vocals that roar from the belly as well as spray red blood; fretwork that feverishly skitters, freakishly swirls, stitches like an industrial-strength sewing machine, and brays like an exultant beast.

And yes, although the music often violently rampages and viscerally crushes, the band do let the music revel in the feral glories of defiance too, often doing all of that within the same song. So don’t be misled by the brevity of these assaults — they’re short, but relentlessly dynamic in their momentum and moods, and more elaborate than you might expect from a band so dedicated to marauding.

Oh, we should also mention “Hexed“, the one point in the album when the band really switch things up. They put it in just the right place in the running order, a surprise that might let you catch your breath, or just cause your breath to catch, before running the gauntlet of the final five songs.

It doesn’t take long to get the full-album experience, and that’s exactly how you should take it — start to finish, without pause. Get the full catharsis, all the riot and all the ruin, your heads spun around and your mental bodies bruised. You might even feel cleansed by the time “Cleanse” finishes.

 

 

RANK AND VILE are:
Theo Spence – vocals
Matt Oien – guitar
James Cox – drums
Leon West – bass

The recording of Worship was handled by Hallowed Halls (Poison Idea, Pallbearer) and Leon del Muerte of Beastman Audio (ex-Nails, Terrorizer AD). It includes cover art by Matt Oien, and it will be available on limited edition vinyl, cassette tape, and digital formats.

You can also catch Rank and Vile on stage at these settings coincident with the album release:

11/17/2023 Blackwater – Portland, OR * Worship Record Release Show w/ Rat King, Lesser Animal
11/18/2023 Cryptatropa – Olympia, WA w/ Nurser, Worth Nothing, Rat King, Generation Decline, Grim Earth, Maneater

PRE-ORDER:
https://rankandvile.bandcamp.com/album/worship

FOLLOW RANK AND VILE:
https://www.instagram.com/rankandvilegrind/
https://www.facebook.com/rankandvile