Grotto: Targeted Solution 12"

Grotto: Targeted Solution 12” (Neon Taste Records) Targeted Solution is the debut record by this supremely pissed-off hardcore band from Calgary, Canada. Some time ago, I remember a band (I’ve sadly forgotten who) describing themselves as “regular hardcore,” as in not d-beat or beatdown or crust or fastcore or youth crew or whatever microgenre people are referencing these days. While “regular hardcore” is obviously self-effacing, I hear a critique implicit in the term, calling out bands for losing the forest for the trees, focusing too much on manipulating the minor signifiers of subgenre like a genetic engineer toying with strands of DNA. The alternative is throwing all that out the window, letting rip, and trying to tap into the universal well of anger and intensity that drew us to hardcore punk in the first place. By that definition, Grotto sounds like “regular hardcore” to me. Like a lot of bands these days, they’re musically accomplished, playing tight and fast and generating a big, burly sound, but they aren’t afraid to reach across those subgenre lines to use everything available in hardcore’s toolbox. There are fast d-beat parts, chunky mid-paced parts, super catchy riffs, some scissor beat parts that sound like a musical seizure, brief heavier and more atmospheric bits… there’s all kinds of stuff going on, but none of it, for a second, sounds like anything but hardcore. While I hesitate to compare Grotto to any particular band because their sound is so not on-the-nose, but something about them reminds me of Cold Sweat. There are lots of things Cold Sweat did that Grotto doesn’t (blasting parts, Black Flag-y lunging rhythms), but there’s a desperate tenor to the music the two bands undoubtedly share. Viva regular hardcore!