Splatter on the Sound

Splatter on the SoundCooking Speedcore with the Accüsed

It was exciting at first. When the Earth Crisis-led virus of
straight-edge veganism infected my hometown of Chicago in the mid-’90s,
I saw the old guard wilt. Three-hundred-pound security guards
disappeared from crowds they were hired to dominate, whisked away into
the all-ages night by mobs of featherweight children in leather-less
shoes. Stage diving and moshing reappeared, invisible since the dawn of
the alt-rock lawsuit. Vegetarianism became widespread. Less beer was
consumed. Guitarists adopted the crush-all drop-D tuning. Breakdowns
everywhere. A new ethic for hardcore.

Metalcore, as this dogma would later be called, spread fast and
thoughtlessly, like a skin cancer loose on the body of punk. Victory
Records opened a storefront in an industrial neighborhood starved for
hardcore—and sold only Victory junk. Straightedge made punk
sinful. No drugs, no alcohol, no sex without a ring. I watched
dissenting peers literally turn their backs on the most amazing bands.
Los Crudos, Charles Bronson, My Lai: all guilty of being heavy. Emo was
reborn as an alternative.

Punk and metal had collided a decade previous, to different ends. In
the ’80s, hardcore was yearning for freedom from totalitarianism; some punk discontents, like Seattle “splatter rock”
band the Accüsed, began looking to off-the-rails thrash-metal
bands like Kreator for sickly kicks and explosive musicianship. The
best original “crossover” bands injected metal elements into hardcore.
Not the other way around, explains Tommy Niemeyer, founding guitarist
of the Accüsed.

“If you start out as a punk band and you naturally happen to blend
in elements of some metal, and it sits there and simmers on the back
burner on a low boil for a couple years, whatever you put out after
that is probably going to be a real good, pure mixture of the best
crack cocaine you could cook up,” he says. “But if you start out as a
metal band and you add elements of punk rock, and you let it simmer,
it’s gonna probably taste like really bad green tea that’s been sitting
in the toilet for the last four weeks.”

Niemeyer formed the “little three-chord, one-minute-song punk band”
in the Seattle area in 1981, under the influence of splatter films and
skater politics. He soon created a female mascot with longtime vocalist
Blaine Cook (ex-the Fartz). Her name: Martha Splatterhead. She is a
zombie with enormous breasts, big neon hair, and sharp blades who hunts
child molesters and rapists. If you’re not trying to “do some fucking
good in this world,” cautions Niemeyer, “then you’re a worthless piece
of shit, and Martha’s comin’ to getcha.”

Throughout most of the ’90s the Accüsed were on hiatus because
of label troubles and a revolving lineup amid the area’s grunge
explosion. Niemeyer went full time with his own grunge band, Gruntruck,
but when they ran their course early this decade, he came back to old
Martha, begging her for mercy.

The Curse of Martha Splatterhead, their first album in over
six years, arrives at a time when such punk groups as Municipal Waste,
Inepsy, and Portland’s Ripper are all crossing the guitarist’s advised
path to metal. Standouts “Stomped to Death” and “Bodies Are Rising”
evoke the blackened nuclear thrash of Portland’s Toxic Holocaust,
bringing a touch of modern severity to the timeless splatter.

Says the humble Niemeyer, “It’s a beast that flies its own.”