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Balboa MI Says Goodnight with MMX

Although this is the second album I’ve reviewed this week with the title MMX (here’s the first), Michigan sludge bashers Balboa MI use the Roman numerals not as a statement of intent or a beginning point, but the opposite, as a way of marking their end. MMX is a 16-track collection from Hydro-Phonic Records that serves as the final statement from Balboa MI, compiling their original 2007 demo with the blistering New Means to an End EP and a cover intended for the dead-in-the-water Buzzov*en tribute, Unfit to Consume. It’s probably as close to a definitive statement from Balboa MI as we’re ever going to get, and at 48 minutes, it says just about everything you need to know about the band: they were here, they were heavy, they’re gone now. Vocalist Jarrad Collard’s striking line drawing of a snarling dog that serves as MMX’s cover is emblematic of the overall mission of Balboa MI, and after seeing the band live in their home state on more than one occasion and making my way through these tracks, I can only say it’s too bad that mission got cut short.

The immediate reference point for Balboa MI during their time together was always EyeHateGod, and with tracks like “Cousin Fucker” (as opposed to “Sister Fucker”) and “Dixie Jam,” which opens the demo, it seems like they knew it. The difference between Balboa MI and the scores of others under the grip of Bower power, though, is that the double-guitar five-piece never lost sight of what really made EyeHateGod so influential in the first place: the intensity. Sure, the slow Southern riffs are great, but it was the unbridled and filthy hardcore punk that offset them that really helped make sludge what it is today, and Balboa MI are (were) masters of the form. “Acid Rain” (which appears twice on MMX as it was re-recorded for New Means to an End) and the aptly-titled “Hardcore Song” take the feedback-drenched churn of New Orleans sludge’s glory days and give it a flavor of Michigan’s post-economic devastation. Anger is universal, and it bleeds out of Balboa MI’s truncated discography as sincere and frightening as ever.

But for the two repeated songs (the aforementioned “Acid Rain” and “Cousin Fucker”) and personnel changes, Balboa MI probably could have put out MMX as a studio full-length. Both the demo and the EP were recorded by Kevin Kitchel, whose careful ear captured a kind of grace within the nasty feedback that leads the demo in and out and permeates just about every song on both that and the EP, guitarists Raymond Nelson and Justin Collard adding abrasion dually. Collard wasn’t in the band when the demo was made and drummer Chris “Cletus” Wambold replaced Josh Meadows for the EP, so that’s a chief difference, but sonic continuity still isn’t a problem, even when it comes to the Buzzov*en cover “Flow” (from 1998’s …At a Loss). It’s all one big messy pile of sludge. One problem you’re never going to have at that point is the songs not meshing well together.

Balboa MI’s sound may not have been completely unique to them, but the two Collards, Nelson, bassist John Cates and Wambold hit on a right application of the sludge formula, and that kind of thing is always missed. Their ultra-punishing sounds probably never got the attention they deserved, but considering the immediacy of this material one doubts the members of the band are totally done either with sludge/doom or music altogether. Michigan has a strong and growing scene – thanks in no small part to the work of people like Kitchel and Hydro-Phonic — and though it’s lost one of its strongest bands in Balboa MI, there’s still plenty to offer from the region as a whole. Let MMX serve as a convenient introduction and conclusion for anyone who might have missed out on Balboa MI during their time, and hope that we hear from these dudes again soon, one way or another.

Balboa MI on MySpace

Hydro-Phonic Records

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2 Responses to “Balboa MI Says Goodnight with MMX

  1. Benj says:

    Crippled Black Phoenix’ cover anyone?

  2. Bubba says:

    Yes I was thinking the same thing when I saw the cover.

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