Daughters

by Stewart Mason Despite the band's deliberately innocuous sounding name, Daughters are an exercise in extreme grindcore noise. Though the all-male quintet is from Providence, RI, comparisons to Japanese noise acts like Melt Banana and the Boredoms are not without merit. Daughters' music is slightly less chaotic and more overtly structured, but with a similarly unsettling manic edge. Daughters (use of a definite article is strongly, daresay intemperately, discouraged) formed in Providence in 2001 out of the acrimonious breakup of local noise rock outfit As the Sun Sets. Singer Alexis Marshall, guitarists Brent Scott Frattini (ex-the Cancer Conspiracy) and Nicholas Andrew Sadler, bassist Samuel Morehouse Walker, and drummer Jonathan Syverson released their first EP, Daughters, on the City of Hell label in 2002; at four songs in just barely over four minutes, it was minimalist noisecore at its most concise, although song titles like "My Stereo Has Mono and So Does My Girlfriend" show a certain panache. Canada Songs followed in 2003 on the Robotic Empire label; although described as a full-length album, its ten songs (with even more overtly goofy titles) are squeezed into just over 11 minutes. With the exception of a stopgap live album recorded at CBGB's that was released in 2004, Daughters laid low for the next few years, and when they returned, some notable changes had been made. On Daughters' second album, Hell Songs, Marshall's previously unintelligible gibber of a voice is replaced by a more measured baritone snarl akin to Nick Cave's Birthday Party days; similarly, the songs, though still brutal, are over twice as long on average, allowing for a greater dynamic range.