New Jersey winters can sometimes get harsh. For weeks on end it seems that the gusting winds keep at it just to piss you off. There are many ways one can deal with this type of dilemma. You can sit around at home, not shower, not shave, and dirty your long johns watching “Family Guy” DVDs over and over again until April when it just rains everyday, or you can put a soundtrack to it that makes it seem a little cooler—not weather-wise of course. Being that I’m obligated to write about music on this music webzine, it would seem that retelling my days of cutaway jokes and lethargy is hardly of anyone’s business here. However, around early 2002 I stumbled upon the perfect CD that made the grey, snowless days all the more bearable.

I was tagging along with my mom as she was driving my brothers to Edison for some professional bowling tournament—a sport for which they were obsessed with for some time. The day was cold and overcast and driving on Route 287 among the more urban commercial sprawl of the area did not improve it much. After dropping them off at the very retro-looking bowling alley, my mom decided that since we were in the area we should go by Curmudgeon, a small independent record store with an interesting inventory, usually the stuff that Vintage Vinyl didn’t have—it has since moved to another location.

Being that I didn’t go there often, I perused carefully through the racks, but my choices, at least in my mind, were quite basic. I got a Converge shirt and two CD’s: Rorschach’s Live in Italy and Quicksand’s Manic Compression. After making small talk with the clerk about the whereabouts of ex-Rorschach members (how cool a teacher would a Deadguy guitarist be?), I made my way to the car and insisted upon playing Quicksand. I’d familiarized myself with their Slip sound which had the Walter Schreifels trademark of melodic riffs held up by a stiff hardcore backbone and with a radio-ready alt-rock sheen. It’s a great album, but the accolades I heard about their follow up clued me in to a different temperament.

While Slip seems to just barely tolerate whatever grievances it has, Manic Compression has little time for such politeness. Indeed, it sounds just the way a post-Nirvana ’90s band from New York City should: tightly wound, precise and permeating with a tar-thick dirge that conjures up thoughts of late night walks through back alleys and side streets, or in my case, on winding highways.

I listened to the whole thing upon getting home. By that time it had gotten much darker and windier. I put it in my Discman and lay back on the couch occasionally looking outside. The album seemed like a perfect fit for that evening. Any other day I’d be bored and irritable, but the blunt force of Schreifels’ guitar and bitter, tantrum-like vocals were oddly soothing. Considering his talent as a songwriter, this album has little filler, if any at all. His lyrics are, in classic hardcore fashion, to the point, but with a higher degree of emotion—mostly angst. “Landmine Spring” is by far the most melodic track with a repetitive, lighter guitar rhythm making up the core while a much heavier one chugs less frequently with an equally oppressive bass behind it. The lyrics are oddly violent. They use a landmine explosion as an emotional metaphor. I think. This is followed up by “Blister” which delivers a thorough thrashing. The whole song is played to an irate, almost teeth-grinding rhythm, the vocals are just the same, the whole thing rages through rather quickly as it abruptly halts and teeters off into a sparse, but still abrasive outro.

The album may not necessarily be about winter, but it gets to you, just like whatever it was that irked Schreifels in those tunes got to him. Manic Compression is still good to listen to, but it brings me back to a more innocent time when teenage angst went well with a sludgy guitar solo and engulfed me like a single-digit wind chill.

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