Tomeka Reid, Deicide & Brutalismus 3000

Forward-thinking jazz, retro-minded techno, and frozen-in-amber death metal

The Tomeka Reid Quartet (L-R: Jason Roebke, Tomas Fujiwara, Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid) - photo by Lawrence Miner

Before we begin: I reviewed three of my favorite Branford Marsalis albums for the Shfl: Trio Jeepy, Crazy People Music, and The Dark Keys.

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I’m a tremendous admirer of cellist Tomeka Reid’s work, and have been for quite a few years at this point. She was one of the earliest guests on the Burning Ambulance podcast, in January 2018. I saw her perform with the Art Ensemble of Chicago in 2017, and with a large ensemble led by Taylor Ho Bynum in 2019. She was a founding member of trumpeter Jaimie Branch’s Fly Or Die quartet, and has been a key member of multiple groups led by flutist/composer Nicole Mitchell.

Reid is a leading member of several excellent groups, including Hear In Now (a trio with violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Silvia Bolognesi) and Artifacts (a trio with Mitchell and drummer Mike Reid), but her own quartet is probably the unit I’d recommend as a first stop for those unfamiliar with her work.

The self-titled debut by the Tomeka Reid Quartet, with guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, was released on Thirsty Ear in 2015. A follow-up, Old New, arrived four years later on Cuneiform. Now, just last week and with relatively little warning, there’s a third album, 3+3.

When I interviewed Reid, she said of the quartet, “I like in and out. So I like that mixture of, like, the craziest chaoticness over a foundation. When I think about music that excites me, I kind of like that juxtaposition or, you know, when I hear a great soloist, I love when they’re like — maybe something is playing in a groove, that then they, like, totally abandon that and then come back to it. So I guess I try to write music that reflects that…even though I love playing in free contexts and stuff, I do like melody and I like dancing, so I like grooves.”

There is a very strong sense of groove to the three pieces on 3+3. The first and last, “Exploring Outward/Funambulist Fever” and “Turning Inward/Sometimes You Just Have to Run With It,” are each more than 15 minutes long, and they begin with improvised sections that blur the lines between free jazz and chamber music, before melodies emerge with an organic sensitivity and gradualness, like a time-lapse video of a flower blooming. “Sauntering With Mr. Brown,” the middle track, is a little spikier, reminding me at times of the Fly Or Die band’s vamps and at other times of Halvorson’s small-group recordings.

Reid occasionally applies subtle electronics to her cello here, as a sort of mirror image of Halvorson’s use of delay and reverb on her guitar (there are times when the guitar sounds almost dubbed-out). This music shifts from intense, exploratory avant-gardism to joyous swing so smoothly you never notice the transitions happening, you’re just floating downstream when all of a sudden the water starts moving a little faster, and you slip your hand out of the raft and into the current just to feel it course over your fingers. This is a great band, and a great album.

Deicide were one of the first death metal bands, roaring out of Tampa, Florida and releasing their debut album in 1990. The group is led by bassist/vocalist Glen Benton, with Steve Asheim on drums, and they maintained a steady lineup with guitarist brothers Brian and Eric Hoffman until 2004. Since then, members of other death metal bands have come and gone.

I was never a fan of the Hoffman brothers’ squiggly guitar solos, so my favorite lineup was the one heard on 2006’s The Stench of Redemption, 2008’s Till Death Do Us Part, and 2011’s To Hell With God, which included Jack Owen, formerly of Cannibal Corpse, and Ralph Santolla, formerly of Obituary. Those albums and 2013’s In the Minds of Evil (with Owen and Kevin Quirion on guitars) are Deicide’s best work, to my ear, because the riffs and solos were more melodic. I don’t mean that they’ve become a “melodic death metal” band in the vein of At the Gates or something, but the songs have a furious energy, and the solos soar like eagles.

The current Deicide lineup includes Benton, Quirion, and Asheim, and a new guitarist, Taylor Nordberg, who’s also in a much more melodic death metal band, The Absence. Banished By Sin, the first Deicide album since 2018’s Overtures of Blasphemy, is musically really strong. The songs flash by, 12 in 39 minutes, each one offering a fist-pumping chorus and a high-energy guitar solo all laid over relentless, blasting drums. Benton is a bulldog of a vocalist, frequently doubling his guttural roar with a high-pitched screech. “Bury the Cross… With Your Christ” is a perfect example, catchy but maniacally headbang-worthy at the same time.

The only potential stumbling block is that Deicide’s songs are almost always about exactly one thing: how much Glen Benton hates Jesus. (The sole exception is Till Death Do Us Part, which is an entire album about Benton’s divorce. I’m not joking about that. It’s basically a death metal version of Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear, and it’s a wild listen.) But if you just treat the vocals like an angry dog barking at you, Banished By Sin totally rips.

In just the last week or so, I’ve become obsessed with the Berlin-based punk/gabber duo Brutalismus 3000. They’re a couple — Theo Zeitner and Victoria Vassiliki Daldas — who met on Tinder in 2018 and released their first EP, Amore Hardcore, in 2020. They’ve released two more EPs, Liebe in Zeiten der Kola and Eros Massacre, and a full-length, Ultrakunst. They seem to have signed with Columbia Records and are preparing another album, though nothing’s been announced; the video above is one of its advance singles.

Daldas delivers slogan-esque lyrics in English, German, and Slovak, vacillating between sneering sarcasm that could peel your face off and high-pitched, furious screaming. The duo’s tracks are a noisy and ridiculously fast blend of hardcore techno, gabber, electronic noise, and a degree of punk-rock attitude. Some, like “Die Liebe Kommt Nicht Aus Berlin,” have genuinely pretty, high-energy melodies, while others, like “Je N’Existe Pas,” offer little beyond pounding drums, squelching synth bass, and shouting.

Brutalismus 3000’s early work would often pound a single idea into the ground for six, seven or even eight minutes, but the songs on Ultrakunst are simultaneously shorter — at 4:40, “Je N’Existe Pas” is the longest track on the record — and more obnoxious. The beats are mixed to give you a concussion, and Daldas’ voice comes through a layer of distortion reminiscent of a subway PA. The obvious antecedent is Atari Teenage Riot, but they were never this much fun. I don’t know when their second album will be out, but I suspect I’ll be blasting their back catalog in my car all spring and summer.

That’s it for now. See you next week!