Description
Description: Occasionally noisome hardcore punk by way Finland and Vashon Island. Featuring Aaron Turner of ISIS and Jussi Lehtisalo of CIRCLE.
SPLIT CRANIUM WANTS YOUR SKULL
Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse? How about play fast, die old and leave the next round of stiffs wondering what the shit their crusty old grandpop was up to back in the economically vibrant 20-teens, when liquid gold owed down from Finland’s Kemi River and crisp American sawbucks grew on trees? If Split Cranium had a manifesto—which they don’t—they might at least consider endorsing that one, whatever it was, before giving us all the nger and getting on with it.
“It” being a highly satisfying blitzkrieg of Finnish/Amero punk perpetrated by Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharaoh Overlord), Jukka Kröger, Samae Koskinen (Steel Mammoth) and Aaron Turner (Mamiffer/ex-ISIS), a token American brought in to soften potential US resistance to the Finns’ brash mastery of almost every style of rock worth mastering. Of course, it’s no coincidence that Mr. Turner is also not exactly a fucking slouch in the vocal department, lending his patented monastic chants and feral roars to the band’s stomp n’ burn riffola and death-defying d-beats.
Birthed kicking, screaming and drenched in smelly amniotic slime, Split Cranium is the result of a recording session that promptly reversed course. Lehtisalo and Kröger had spent a few days unfurling some artsy-fartsy free-noise-rock improvisations before deciding to just get their fucking riff on. Circle had recently joined ISIS on the latter’s final European tour, during which Lehtisalo and Turner had discussed forming an unstoppable Scandi-American justice league of maximum musical proportions. Right after his improv session went punk, Lehtisalo heard that clicking sound that everyone
always references when they say dumb shit like “It just clicked.” The token American was drafted, post-haste. Koskinen was simultaneously hauled in from NWOFHM killers Steel Mammoth. Left brains were promptly separated from right brains. Split Cranium were ready to, uh, split craniums.
First head on the list? YOURS.
Track Listing:
Little Brother (1:52)
Tiny Me (1:36)
The Crevice Within (1:06)
Blossoms From Boils (4:48)
Sceptres To Rust (2:41)
Black Binding Plague (3:03)
Yellow Mountain (2:26)
Retrace The Circle (8:13)
