Resistant Culture are a Los Angeles area crust/grind band who have been around since the early 90's, going by the name Resistant Militia and releasing records on cult labels like Wild Rags before changing their lineup around and switching the name to it's current form. The band wasn't widely known outside of the L.A. area (I hadn't even heard of 'em until recently), and was probably best known for having Napalm Death guitarist Jesse Pintado in it's ranks. Pintado was still in Resistant Culture when he died suddenly in 2006, and the band's 2006 album Welcome To Reality would become the last recording that Pintado would appear on. Tragedy aside, this is also where the band started to develop a buzz in the crust/grind underground, not just for their brutal

Terrorizer-gone-stench grindmetal, but also for an interesting and very quirky assimilation of some, uh, very non-grind sounds....

Resistant Culture play an extremely solid brand of metallic crustcore loaded with brutal death metal-style vocals trading off against hysterical shrieks, crushing steel-plated D-beat drumming, distorted blower-bass, massive downtuned riffs, it's all kind of an even mix of crushing stenchcore a la Extinction Of Mankind, Stormcrow, Warcollapse, Extreme Noise Terror, etc., but with a heavy old school death metal element to their sound with all of the wailing lead guitars and rigid double-bass driven drumming. On top of that, you get furious anarcho style lyrics that focus on native peoples, ecological issues, and anti-corporate warfare with all of the primal rage and stripped-down furor of any number of Profane Existence records. Where things get wiggy on Welcome To Reality is when Resistant Culture incorporate some element of Native American music into their punishing grindcore. Yeah, Native American music, a mix of actual instrumentation and triggered samples that thrust this into the demento-zone whenever they appear.

The first two songs ("Hang On To Nothing" and "Ecocide") open the album with a furious one-two punch of D-beat driven grindcrust, which leads into the equally thrashy and crushing "It's Not Too Late", but almost as soon as this song gets underway, the band shifts into this weird percussive breakdown with heavy chugging guitars and omninous leads over Native American-style percussion and chanting. The song then goes back and forth between the chanting/percussion and the all-out thrash, and the way that they do it is really weird, almost krautrocky, and definitely sets you up for the rest of the what-the-fuck moments that pop up sporadically on this album. "Misery" and "The Struggle Continues" are another pair of straightforward eruptions of metallic crust, followed by "Sentient Predator", which starts off with a more grindy, blastbeat-ridden attack. But then a minute and a half in, the song suddenly slows down into an angular, almost industrial Godflesh-like dirge, and once again those wailing native chants show up, along with what sound like rainsticks (fucking rainsticks) while the guitars chug this huge dissonant riff. Very odd. Then there's "Elder Wisdom", an instrumental acoustic guitar piece with traditional flutes. The next couple songs return to the crust, and at this point I'm starting to hear more of a crushing industrial-metal quality to some of their riffs, like a mix of metallic crust and early Fear Factory. There are more short classical guitar interludes, and samples of forest nightlife, the supremely catchy anarcho-anthem "Civilized Aggression", and a cover of Discharge's "Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing", which would have been a real mindfuck if they had stuck some Native American chanting in there. And the album ends with "Land Keeper", which is hands-down the most insane sounding song on here, starting off as a tribal percussion jam with animal sounds floating around in the background (including a goddamn coyote), and is joined by a crushing death metal riff that's played over the thumping tribal drums and rattles while the singer does this gutteral version of Native chanting, trading off against the samples of actual Native singing. What the hell?

Their mix of ultra-heavy crustmetal and traditional native music is going to be an acquired taste, I think. While the album definitely leans more towards the straightforward grind side of their sound (and that stuff most defintiely RAGES), the parts where the sampled chanting and flutes rattles show up are pretty damn weird. Open minded crust and grind fans, on the other hand, will probably FLIP over this!