The Shizit : The Shizit / Live At Club Spirit

"Returning to his roots, JP Anderson revives the digital hardcore legend with an indelible sonic boom!"

Emerging in 1999 and spending five years in the Seattle underground, The Shizit was America's answer to digital hardcore, incorporating a vicious style of industrialized noise and electronically driven metal that vocalist/programmer JP Anderson would continue to pursue in Rabbit Junk, albeit it a greater emphasis on melody and more personal lyrical themes. But they say you never get over your first love, and Anderson has returned to his roots to revive The Shizit for a new free digital release that will surely please many and confound others. Certainly, from the blistering blastbeats and grinding guitars of "Civilization Extermination" kicking the self-titled release off, topped off by Anderson's socially deprecating lyrics and shouts so quintessential to hardcore, one would imagine that The Shizit never left. The trend is continued with the stomping double-kick marches and subsonic sequences of "Break Out" to the menacing guitar-driven atmospheres of "Bloodlust Blues," and to hear the expansive juxtaposition of caustic synthesizers and intricately programmed beats on "The Shape of Living Resistance" and "Fat Slave," one can surmise that Anderson is at the top of his game. We even have a cover of Nailbomb's "Wasting Away," complete with some gabber undertones and some of the sickest sounding bass and squelching synth noise a fan of extreme music could ask for, and "Young Broke Pissed" is in its title alone is the epitome of the underground scene. So what could one say against The Shizit? The most obvious answer would be the absence of Brian Shrader, the one-time second-half of the group. With Anderson having always been the driving force behind the group, responsible for virtually all of the production and performance, aided this time around in small part by Glitch Mode Squad cohort Sean Payne, those who might wonder how this can appropriately be released under The Shizit moniker without Shrader can rest assured that little will be lost either thematically or conceptually. The Shizit retains all that the band was known for: politically charged lyrics and intense digital hardcore. In this, Anderson delivers with some of the hardest-hitting material of his career, which is quite a feat considering the sheer level of aggression he has already displayed thus far.


"A small but enticing testament to the digital hardcore legends from Seattle."

A full year before JP Anderson resurrected the digital hardcore legend, D-Trash Records released this would-be final testament to that band's eminence in the underground music scene, a reissue of the band's mp3.com release Live at Club Spirit. Recorded during the band's final performance on September 13th, 2000, D-Trash has added four bonus tracks and a bonus DVD of live footage to give Shizit fans more bang for their buck, and what a bang it is. Given The Shizit's underground status and its unwillingness to disregard its morals against the mainstream, the less-than-stellar sound quality of these live recordings is perhaps to be expected. And yet, from the bopping breakbeats, gut-wrenching guitars, spaced out synthesizers, and Anderson's guttural growl that define tracks like "32-Bit Whore" and "Point Click Kill," listeners are given the purest taste of The Shizit's sharpened metallic rage. For those unfamiliar with the band, "Anti-Culture" is probably the best example of The Shizit's power as stuttering metal guitars fight for sonic dominance with pounding breaks, filled to the brim with Anderson's sociopolitical lyrical venom. It's no surprise that of the four bonus tracks, this song is the only one given the remix treatment. Without hearing the original versions, the remixes of "Audio Jihad II" and "Dear Government" only emphasize the group's devotion to melding genres into a furious amalgam of digital hardcore, from the decrepit atmospheres of the latter track to the blistering noise of the former. Ministry covers are a dime a dozen these days, but The Shizit's interpretation of "Just One Fix" in its own inimitable style is something to behold as sped-up breaks and harsh techno beats underlie crunchy guitars and samples from TV's Millennium to create a much more creepily ambient but no less aggressive version of one of Ministry's best known songs. While Anderson has clawed through the dirt to bring The Shizit back from the grave, many fans will see Live at Club Spirit as the nail in the coffin of his partnership with Brian Shrader, a partnership that yielded some of the fiery intense digital hardcore since Atari Teenage Riot first emerged. Almost appropriately, the end of the gabber mayhem of "Firewall" has Anderson announcing, "We were The Shizit, and now we're dead!"