Pittcore

At the dawn of the decade, Pittcore shared stages at now-defunct venues such as Niener’s and The Bunker with rap-metal bands. Even at the time, frontman Wes Kennon never employed a hip-hop cadence, preferring instead a feral fire-belch. However, N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton clearly influenced this Kansas City quintet at some point in its evolution. “Serve and Disrespect” offers the most obvious parallels, with its co-opting of the “Fuck tha Police” rallying cry, but the whole album crackles with a profane, hateful anger seldom heard since the earliest days of gangsta rap. Sonically, Pittcore conjures Slipknot (especially the pots-and-pans percussion) and Soulfly (Kennon rivals Max Cavalera in ferocity, if not tonal fullness and enunciation). With the constant clicking of double bass drums and the clockwork detonations, Endorphine can be numbing. Dual-guitar interplay (one plays an eerie lead while the other pounds a downtuned riff) gives the group some melodic presence, but Kennon’s occasional stabs at tuneful singing never really register. Musically blunt and lyrically monochromatic, Pittcore draws strength from its primal attitude, which gives Endorphine a brutal cathartic charge that many technically driven, eloquent metal albums lack.