Trencher: Lips
Out: 13/11/2006
Label: Southern
When the Earth’s crust finally does split below London’s foundations, swallowing the city’s towers and sewers alike, only a smattering of individuals – those already in league with the creatures of the fiery underworld that awaits every sinner the capital spawns – will survive. The three men of Trencher are likely to be among the few while the many tumble to an eternity of torment.

Spouting terrifying torrents of seizure-spreading splatter-core, the trio are among the most extreme-sounding outfits in this land; chances are than many an alleged hardcore act cowers before them in other locales, too. Their live might is well transferred to tape (okay, CD) here – recorded in one-take bursts, vocals aside, the album’s tautness is truly breathtaking. Although their music is aggressive to the point of pant-wetting, there’s a technical ability at work here – most prominently in the drums – that stands head and shoulders above the talents of so many grindcore peers.

Stop-start blast furnaces of skin-shreddingly tumultuous terror-rock comprise Lips main draw – each is a disorientating piece decorated by titles as decadently disgusting as ‘Two Semis Don’t Make A Hard-On’ and ‘Mouth To Anus’ (not about sex, apparently), and nothing here’s particularly derivative of the band’s earlier, more one-dimensional material – but the album’s ‘In Reverence’ is quite the proverbial curve-ball. Seven minutes of swirling, atmospheric sludge something, replete with from-the-netherworld screaming and wailing, the song’s mid-album positioning allows the listener a moment or some to realign their spine and straighten their suitably mashed senses. It’s a masterstroke sequencing wise, and the song’s not half-bad either. Granted, its drones are rather overly prolonged, but its completely contradictory nature when compared to the tracks around it is to be applauded.

It’s the immediately gratifying likes of the sickeningly-titled aforementioned and ‘Lips Like Suicide’ that continue to be Trencher’s stock in trade, but the diversions from everything expected on Lips demonstrate that the band have far more strings to their flaming bow than ever expected. Adventurous without ever becoming alienating, Lips is a finely tuned second album of unmitigated violence and staggeringly brutal bombast. It’s fucking beautiful, and beautifully mind fucking.

Best pray to be an acolyte come that fateful day, brother.

Words: Mike Diver

Album reviews "When Dracula thinks…"

By XvScott
To the untrained ear this could very well sound like a creative dead end. To the aware but cynical, it's scenesters shackled to the world of the 30-second ThreeOneG aesthetic, pounding out noise, going through the motions.
Wrong.
It's important to take into account the humour at play here. Trencher's music is hellish, there's no doubt about that. They certainly sounded like death on their early recordings – lo-fi and formlessly segueing slabs of bottom-heavy grind that (dis)graced the world with their presence only on audio cassettes with tracing-paper sleeves.The Trencher of today are different though. They've developed a masterful grasp of structure, an articulation to their chaos that is hard to argue with.And to counterbalance the heaviest, sludgiest sawtooth bass guitar there are 'House Of Horrors' keyboards: cute little stabs of Casio; clean and direct frequencies, foregrounded and hilarious.Trencher are all about surreal. It's like post-everything – ridicule of every aspect of not only rock music but also our mundane little world. It's enough to make me giggle out loud when watching them play their support slot for Deerhoof at the ICA, where the ratio of songs to applause is about 60/40.
Where Trencher boo the audience and not vice versa. Where my cousin in the crowd counts down from four to one in a booming Russian voice and the band launch into a song about flies copulating When sheer irrelevance is placed not opposite but adjacent to brilliantly constructed, technical hardcore.
Trencher's drummer Liam draws flyers for their shows and invert-photocopies them. They're all adorned with illustrations borrowed from books – ships, skeletons, robots, fencers, rabbits… it all adds up.
Trencher are a Technicolor nightmare that ends really fast and you clap.
Their debut album, 'When Tracula Thinks "Look At Me"' lasts just 17 minutes, and that's including the hidden track and its preceding pause (an out-of-character mash-up of effects-drenched guitars and off-the-scale drum hits that resembles the squarewave rave of early Warp).
Nowadays, beauty is too easy anyway. The new beauty is ugly, ridiculous and infused with little cartoony keyboards.

Drowned in Sound UK
A co-release across some six (that's six) labels, self-proclaimed Casio-grind trio Trencher's 'When Dracula Thinks "Look At Me"' is the sort of record that'll give half its listeners cold-sweat and vomit inducing nightmares, and the other sick, sick half the wettest dreams of their lives. It's wrong, all wrong, yet so, so right. It's music to watch a mangling by - the soundtrack to some non-existent film about a murderer who gets off by twisting his victim's body into a pretzel-shaped mess of broken bone and severed flesh. It will, eventually, make you physically sick, like eating as many Mars bars as there are hours in the day in one ten-minute sitting. But you'll love it, and then lap it all up again as you would your own hot, chocolatey spew. Unless, of course, you're one of those close-minded people who won't dip someone else's toe, let alone your own, into the pond of musical experimentation in which Trencher reside. Fine, you stick to your mall rock and corporate emo, but we'll know where the passion and the fury really is. It's right here - 14 tracks in 17 minutes. Nothing but gargled screams, fucked-up keys and the maddest drumming this side of Animal if he was infected a la those blood-spitting freaks in '28 Days Later'. Trencher make The Locust sound as lightweight as Counting Crows (but with better hair), and a driverless bulldozer crashing through a bus depot full of passengers as graceful as Mozart. The song titles are as mad as the music itself - 'Illuminated Dead', 'Dead At Work' and 'Hispanic Telepathy Attack' leaping off the cover like flys fleeing a spent corpse. Sound crap to you? Fine, don't buy it; it's your decision. Loser. Me? I've just found an excuse to go to bed early at night. Best dig out that plastic undersheet though, and fetch a bucket. I feel a gut-rot coming on.
Author: Michael Diver

Smoking Beagle UK
"Hmmm Casio grind, the kids are going to love it!". At least 6 indie labels are thinking this exact phrase right now. For they have all seen fit to unleash Trencher's proper debut full-length on the braying herd of skinny, cap wearing boys and cuddly girls with bad hair.
And we use the term 'full-length' very inadvisably. What you get here is 14 tracks coming in under 20 minutes. That's including at least 5 minutes of silence in the final track. This thing is so short that half the disc is totally clear. Which looks quite cool.
Trencher are sucking on the same mutant strain of hardcore splatter that infects the likes of The Locust and Arab on Radar. Their common gene is playing way short non-tunes that mix wild noise with death metal lurching and absurdism. Every nugget on this record is simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. The application of a tiny toy keyboard to squeeze cheesy hammer horror melodies on top of the heavily distorted bass and wildman drums ratchets the absurdity up again.
They've been banging this shit out for roughly 5 years now, originally as a 2 piece, mastering the self-imposed limits of their craft through cassettes and 7"s. Leaving torn larynxes and splintered wood in their wake, Trencher have played up and down the country and continent with both the aforementioned bands and a host of other empathetic noisy bastards. And whilst their sets are as short as this record they're always great value.
So on 'Dracula...' you join them as they reach the peak of their powers. For whilst the music is brutal and bewildering at first, these guys are damn tight. The changes between slow grind and full on thrash are all executed skilfully. The drums and bass work is always imaginative and interesting, even in isolation and all 3 members contribute screaming vocals, creating a messy cacophony and raising the intensity further.
So what sucks about this record? a) Bonus tracks and silence on CD's has always been crap. b) The cover looks ace but the rest of the artwork is a cheapshot.
And that's it. The record handily lasts just about the right length of time to make your dinner and is only a fiver from the ever-excellent Jonson Family records. Go get.
Trencher are underground legends in waiting. File under hardcore, funsized.

Collective Zine UK
Many of you reading this will already have born witness to one of Trencher's many live performances, a spectacle that is baffling and terrifying in equal measures. This fourteen track, seventeen minute affair is a gleeful attempt at grappling that insanity, dragging it to the floor and forcibly committing it to the confines of a skinny piece of shining plastic.
For those hermetic souls unfamiliar with Trencher's racket, it amounts to more noise than should plausibly be wrought from a drum kit, bass guitar, dysfunctional keyboard and set of vocal cords. An uncomfortably fast splatter of damaged art-grind interwoven with synthetic blips, Hammer Horror keyboard parts and a threatening, guttural roar that suggests it's owner's favorite food is dead babies. Brief, unpleasant, and thoroughly worthy. One for the odd sorts who give equal time in their daily listening to the likes of Gasp, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Melt Banana and East/West Blast Test. Two thumbs up.

Pitfire.net CH
Das Debut-Album dieser 3-Mann Band aus England. Wer die Posse schon livegesehen hat (hierzulande waren sie auch schon mit den Basler Lokalmatadorenvon Speck unterwegs), weiss was sie oder er zu erwarten hat: die volle Dröhnung irgendwas. Die Jungs aus London und Brighton lassen sich anscheinend nur ungerne einordnen; mich persönlich erinnert ihre 17-minütige (bei 14 Tracks) Tour de Force an eine Mischung aus Majority Rule auf Speed und Melt Banana. Wer im Besitze der neuen LP von Circle Takes The Square ist (mit welchen sie übrigens auch schon auf Tour waren) und diese auf 45 RPM abspielt, wird sich wohl am Ehesten ein Bild von "When Dracula thinks: Look at me" machen können. Kommt also alles im düsteren Soundgewand daher, was unter anderem wohl auch daran liegt, dass die Jungs stellenweise ein Keyboard einsetzen. Von Hardcore ist hier also weniger die Rede, Freunde derbster Grind und Noise Klänge werden hier eher auf ihre Kosten kommen. Dank der schnieken Produktion ist diese Scheibe auch weitaus besser hörbar als die Outputs aus jüngerer Vergangenheit. Das mit dem "hörbar" werden allerdings nur wenige unterstreichen können, wenn sie dieses Schlachtfest serviert bekommen: von der ersten bis zur letzten Minute ist dieses Album nämlich einfach unmenschlich (was auch auf das Grusel-Booklet zutrifft, welches Zartbesaiteten den Magen umdrehen lässt). Die CD ist übrigens eine Ko-Produktion von 6 Labels, worunter auch die Bebbis von A Tree In A Field mitmitschten. Ich sags ja: eine durch und durch ungewöhnliche Veröffentlichung, die Dir die Kartoffel vom Organbeutel haut.
Jonas

Ox-Fanzine   D
14 Songs, 17 Minuten, Grind ohne Gitarre aber mit abgefuckten Casiokindermelodien, schönen Ekelbildern im Booklet und auch inhaltlich wohl eher Liebhaber von Obskuritäten. Die drei durchgeknallten Engländer haben es damit sogar schon zu einer Peel-Session gebracht.Nach anfänglicher Skepsis könnte diese Co-Produktion von immerhin sechs Kleinlabels durchaus einen Ehrenplatz in meiner Kuriositätensammlung erhalten.P.S.: Könnte ich vielleicht das Gerät von der Coverrückseite leihen? Ich muss noch ein paar Drainagen verlegen. (17:57) (6) Dr. Oliver Fröhlich

Trans Atlantic Asthma Attack 5inch Review

Collective Zine UK
Trencher kick off this lovely looking blue vinyl 5” single with a dark Dystopia riff before banging straight into some badass Crossed Out / MITB / Locust / Jenny Piccolo style mid 90’s hardcore. Trencher may sound like a lot of older bands, but they fucking rock so much and have plenty of their own ideas that push them to the top of the pile. They also have some of the greatest lyrics I’ve heard in a long time, “me thinks you think, I leer!”. Trencher prove that smoking weed and hardcore belong together like Henry Davies and big calves
Orthrelm are possibly one of the most insanely brutal bands on the planet (although I’m not convinced they are actually of this earth). They take the classic seeds in chaotic rock like King Crimson, Magma and the Boredoms and build on it to a sonic level where the band sound like they’re improvising. The last track on here is so pleasing to the ear I think I’m going to put it on every tape I make this year.
This record is a must-have and all six tracks are hardcore punk pushed to the max. Don’t forget your inhaler!
Reviewer: C W Bress

5" Split with Kinetic Crash Cooperation review

First thing's first. This release is on a piece of blue transparent vinyl that is five inches in diameter – that's the size of a CD. That is cool.
Secondly, it fucken rocks. German band Kinetic Crash Co-Operation's song has a scary atmospheric intro, followed by a brief but pleasurable slab of dirty old-skool hardcore. All in glorious lo-fi, of course. This filters out into wild staccato drumming and a drilling guitar squeal, and screamed lyrics about bloody assholes. Fun.
Trencher manage to cram two songs onto their side of the split. They are, as always, poetry in motion. The funny haunted house Casio riffs make themselves known, followed by hellish screams and bludgeoning grindcore. Then some nice cartoony bleeps and bloops, before that track is over. The next is largely similar, except with a great pure-static bass guitar somewhere in the mix as well. Both songs last mere seconds, and that's what keeps them bearable. Nice!
-XvScott

Presumed Dead Cassette Review
I was feeling a little low earlier, so I listened to 'Nebraska' by Bruce Springsteen and this, and both cheered me up. Quite odd, as Trencher are very punishing indeed, but so enjoyable at the same time. Two guys, a bass player and a drummer playing fucking up grind. The bad production, and samples makes it come across really well and the whole thing sounds like Lightning Bolt playing Cattle Decapitation songs, whilst not being afraid to spazz out either. I like this! You should too!
Reviewer: Luke Younger

Live reviews

Marquee, London
Trencher don't mess about. Trencher deliver hot, concentrated helpings of noise, they deliver it all wrapped up in a warm pitta bread of demented barking (a la Extreme Noise Terror) a crunchy salad of complexity and a chili sauce of horror organ - wiping their nose on the back of their sleeves as they hand it over. They have a member of Silent Front on extra yelping duty tonight; His name is probably Phil, probably Mad Phil or similar after the way he attempted to swing himself upside down from the gantry above the stage, nearly decapitating the drummer with an unfeasably accurate boot to the head (he said it was an accident). Trencher do one-minute-of-hell organised chaos in the manner of The Locust and Fantomas, they have a distinctive sound of their own within that style: the (not so) secret weapon that tiny Casio organ thing they use. It sounds massive in a cheesy b-movie way, coming in with a wheezy gonzoid riff like a
giant ant lurching over the sand dunes, cutting through the full-on hardcore bits at the right Trencher moment. We like Trencher and their willful noise.

08 June 2005 The Phoenix, Manchester
And then for something rather different…London’s Trencher make grindcore super-noise using the same unconventional set up in then vein of The Locust or Noxagt. In this case it’s fuzz bass, and a £10 casio keyboard that seems to be playing variations of The Twilight Zone theme. While the novelty lasts it is at least amusing sounds like a children’s TV program colliding with Anal Cunt which is interesting if dependant on a suitable frame of mind.
By DH.(manchester live review - website)

06 Decmeber 2004 Bardens Boudoir, London
The venue was impressive to say the least, occupying a long, and I mean long, basement space. Each band on the bill had set up in one of two areas of the floor, which meant that I saw very little of openers Trencher as I jockeyed for space behind Lightning Bolts drumkit. Trencher play a sort of mile a minute hardcore that lies somewhere between a band like Orchid or the Locust, it was pretty fast and heavy but very hard to gauge without seeing them whilst they were playing.
Artrocker.

10. March 2004 The Star & Garter, Manchester
Late additions to the roster Trencher are first up and show exactly why they're being talked about in the same breath as The Locust. It's hard to think of another three piece that can come remotely close to matching their sheer noise and invention. And regardless of the comparisons, Trencher's concoction of madcap casio-grind, still sounds refreshingly unique and innovative. Playing the vast majority of tracks of their 'When Dracula Thinks "Look At Me"' record, each sub-minute long burst leaves half the crowd perplexed with the other half in standing in astonishment. Ones definitely to keep an eye on.