California's death and grind gladiator Andrew Lee sounds more cohesive and masterful than ever before on his latest LP with Ripped to Shreds, somewhat ironically, titled 亂 (Luan)- a character which translates to “chaos” in English. The title is not necessarily self-referential (although applicable) and appears to stem from an outward examination of the world and human history. The character 亂 can also mean warfare and destruction, and you may remember it from the poster art of Akira Kurosawa’s exploration of human hubris, Ran. Given that context, the themes of the album come into sharper focus. The Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries for much of the world has been a ceaseless wheel of horrors and destabilizing events. The past four years (especially the past six months!) have required many of us in the United States to take stock of the role that our country has played in seeding this disorder. A reflection that becomes all the more necessary as the bounty many Americans once deemed their birthright (the product of colonialism, capitalist imperialism, and good old fashioned racism) has been revealed by COVID-19 to be little more than a mound of rotten fruit. But bandleader and musical marshal Lee is not content to let 亂 wallow in the shallows of guilt that have presently overtaken the American political consciousness. No, he has much older scores to that he ios looking to settle.
The cover art depicts the Lugou Bridge Incident, a battle between the invading army of Imperial Japan and China’s National Revolutionary Army in July 1937. It involved the Japanese army’s attempt to locate a missing soldier in a Chinese town and quickly escalate into a brutal showdown between opposing forces, which some historians credit as the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War (and World War II proper). The entire Incident is depicted in the first single from the album, “Opening Salvo” a maddening crush of crater making grooves and pulverizing percussion that will leave you scrambling for cover as the deadly heat of the Phil Tougas's guitar work rains down around your ears. Through the twisted marauderism of tracks like “Righteous Fist to the Teeth of the Wicked,” Lee delves into the inciting sentiments of the Boxer Rebellion, while the wild cry and merciless hack-saw push of the doomy “Throes of a Dying Age” tells of the war’s grisly, bitter conclusion.
Not all of the tracks off 亂 are mired in the grim history of colonial warfare, though. The album sees Lee taking the time to explore Chinese mythology as well. Although these detours inexorably lead the listener down a bloody path that parallels the real-life horrors depicted elsewhere. The Entombed-Thrower sputter and rip of “Eight Immortals Feast” shutters with blathering cries that have all but lost their human qualities as the lyrics depict a butcher shop that reduces luckless souls to moist delicacies for the culinary satisfaction of immortal beings. Later, the listener is greeted by an equally grisly depiction of King Zhou Xin and Queen Daji of the Shang Dynasty’s debauched parties on a lake of wine on the track “Ripped to Shreds,” a stranglehold of unyielding pressure and galloping, skull-cleaving grooves, abated only by the writhing shriek of a frenetic guitar solo’s outburst.
If you’re looking for a refreshing, modern take on Swe-grind that will occupy your ears as well as your mind, leading you down Wiki-rabbit holes of myth and true-life tales of mayhem (and really, why wouldn’t you), then Ripped to Shreds's 亂 is here for you when you're ready to set your senses and psyche ablaze!
