This band was just brought to my attention today and my first reaction (after about somewhere between 1 and 1.0001 seconds within hearing their stuff) was that I had to write about them.

I’m literally looking stuff up about them as we speak, but I think that it would be better if I just sort of let the videos do the talking. There are a bunch of live clips of Child Abuse playing at Death By Audio over the years. From what I can gather the situation we have here is that if you like Lightning Bolt, then you are going to love Child Abuse. Noisy, loud, distorted beyond seemingly all comprehension, unintelligible lyrics and more fierce energy than normal humans can muster in a week, right there on stage in moments.

There’s a pretty OK interview with them here where they discuss classifying their music as a hybrid of jazz and metal and “a bunch of other stuff. Everything really.” It does have elements of math-rock and thrash with the stop-start spasming of rhythm with the occasional quasi-blast beats coming forth nonchalantly from the drummer. To be honest, the entire band makes this music seem effortless, though this is not “easy” music, either to perform or to digest. Child Abuse is most certainly not making background music.

Obviously the most important thing is to listen to them. Their first album is available through Rococo Records.