Buffalo Music: 3 bands, 3 kinds of music; plus Triple Hammer benefit at Mohawk

By Benjamin Joe
(Image above: Aidan Howard plays bass in Cerebellum. Photo by Clyde Costlow)

Aidan Howard has a problem.

One of the founders of G.A.G.S. (Get A Grip Studios), Howard is also a contributing member of three bands.

One is Muddle, longtime favorite on the Buffalo hardcore punk scene, where she plays bass. The other is in the metal band Cerebellum, where she’s also the bassist.

And finally there’s Piss Guzzler, a grind-core/grind-core adjacent band where she has a vocalist gig. While much newer, this side project has been making waves with its performances at the all-ages hardcore shows for the last several weeks.

Piss Guzzler is among the bands on the bill for today’s (Dec. 6) Triple Hammer Records and Friends Showcase at Mohawk Place. Doors are at 2 p.m. for the holiday market and 4 p.m. for the show. The show will feature an all-star lineup of Do Crime, Neftali, Overgrowth, Piss Guzzler, Robbery Club, Icken Grimms, Superflea, The New Fury, DJ Knew’d and DJ Spooky Stephen.

One might think, “OK, Howard is a bassist for heavy music bands and they also have a side project in a slightly weirder heavy music band.

“So what gives?”

From her perspective as a participant in those three current bands, what are the defining characteristics of the genres. Is one her favorite?

While it’s obvious that Howard plays heavy music, listens to heavy music, loves heavy music, it’s unfair to put her in a box. Yes, she enjoys them all, and is happy to talk about it, but picking between them is an impossible cholice, in this reporter’s estimation.

But each of these bands carves out a very specific sound and that is not just “heavy music.”

Hardcore punk, for instance, Howard explains, comes from a wave of music that began in the ’70s amongst economically disparate youth, and metal does not. Both heavy music. Both very different heavy music origins.

“You have the two major branches, right? The metal branch and all the branches that came from that and the punk branch. Punk did come first, all the bands in the ’70s,” Howard said.

“I always feel that everybody always talks about the first metal album being the self-titled Black Sabbath record, which I feel is the correct answer, but there are obviously some songs from late ’60s and early 70s that you could call ‘what would become metal’ or ‘what people would draw inspiration from.’

“‘Helter Skelter’ from the Beatles is distortion and uses similar chord progressions, but it’s not really the first metal song.”

Howard also said there’s something about being a musician that plays in each genre, which makes the differences all the more real.

“It all comes into tuning and styles of riffs. Punk is definitely more … punk is super-fast, super-raw. You don’t have to put a lot of money down into your instruments — or pedals, you don’t even need a pedal a lot of the time …

Muddle plays a house party put on by The Lavender Room. Photo by Benjamin Joe.

“You don’t need a lot to make punk music, and that’s the essence of punk itself. It’s very raw, very unfinished, unfiltered, where metal, especially modern metal, is polished and with super hi-tech gear.

“A bunch of shit that is borderline unnecessary, but a lot more expensive. Just coming from a musician’s standpoint.”

On the other hand, Howard continued, metal has “chug riffs” and “breakdowns,” whereas punk has “two-step drums” and “super-fast guitars.” There’s a lot to process here.

Not only that, Howard said, but metal’s got “Ghouls, goblins and the devil and the occult.”

What’s punk got?

“Ninety-nine percent of the time, (it’s) probably about something political. Whether or not it’s good or whether it’s the right opinion,” Howard said. “Punks give less of a shit on their appearance in terms of their production … I feel a lot of punks talk about religion, certain complexes about the government and a lot of ways to approach music, but generally speaking, I feel they do care less about creating a story.”

Of course, on the local level things are different than the mainstream.

“If you look at Slipknot, one of the biggest bands of the last 25-years, it’s nine dudes in masks and jumpsuits. They’re talking about personal issues, but they have that selling point, where you look at punk-adjacent bands like the Circle Jerks, like Green Day, other big national acts … they’re just dudes on stage singing about whatever …” she speculated. “If you stay within local and small bands, you find a lot of overlap and a lot of genres, but if you look at bands from history and bands from before our time, formative bands, they had their genre and something to sell you.”

Like Ozzy with the bat, and punks getting trashed, Howard explained. No overlap, no camaraderie. Punks weren’t at metal shows, metal-heads weren’t at punk shows. But local bands and local crowds group together and enjoy themselves.

Now let’s throw in some grind-core, the newest evolved genre of the three, and there’s the pie. Very different heavy music times three.

Just look at the dancing.

“When you get into metal-core, hard-core, death-core, grindcore, that’s when you get into people who are doing karate and swing-at-bees. If you go to a death-metal show, if you see Cannibal Corpse tomorrow, it’s going to be a bunch of long-haired dudes in battle jackets and camo-shorts, push-pitting. If you go to a punk show — a major, huge, a big room, like a barroom punk show, there’s going to be a huge circle pit of a bunch of dudes in combat boots and plaid pants. But if you get into the niche genres of hardcore and metal core and stuff like that, that’s when you see more styles of karate and people swinging their arms and doing swing kicks and stuff … It’s not for everybody for sure.”

And in grindcore, which started in the ’80s, there’s sparse to no-lyrics. It’s all about what the vocalist is talking about before the song. And they talk.

“Grindcore is just as, if not more, heavily political as punk music,” Howard said. “Grindcore is much more vulgar in its descriptions of the world around them. But grindcore is either all about its imagery, because there are so many grindcore bands that are all about niche diseases and are named after some random skin disease you can get and that’s all they talk about. Weird medical stuff or ones that talk about your corny-dead body weirdos, or you have people who are super political.

“I feel like grindcore is so much more than just the term. You can hit a lot of bases with that genre.”

In the end, Howard said, as a performer she likes Piss Guzzler because she’s the vocalist, but playing the bass is fun regardless of the genre.

Metal is more like “breakdowns” and “open string playing,” while in punk all strings are played out and have more notes per song, but it’s tough to explain everything about each, she said. Both styles are awesome.

Maybe it’s just she loves playing music. It is tough to quantify, she said, even just as an audience member.

Piss Guzzler plays a house party. Photo by Benjamin Joe.

“It’s hard to pick one or the other,” Howard said. “But going to a show? I love seeing metal-core and death-core bands. That’s what I listen to in my free time. But, I will go to a hardcore show nine times out of 10 … it’s so hard. It’s so hard to describe … they’re all the same feeling with a little bit of a different tinge on each of them.

“If there were three shows with three different genres, I would go to a grind-core or a slam show over anything else. I love my friends. So many of my friends play in punk bands, but I know they’ll play again. It’s very rare to get that style of music (grindcore) in a bill with all niche genres that don’t get to play out a lot.

“So if I had to pick, I’d always choose something crazy I couldn’t see on a regular set.”