Starkweather - The Divine Art of Exquisite Torment

Hey everyone.  Just a small update today before I do my next post.  I wanna thank everyone who read my last post and shared it and showed me love.  For today we are gonna bring it back to music.
I could dedicate a series of blog posts to Starkweather.  There's no shortage of things to talk about really. You could write about the records, their role in the development of what would become "metalcore," whether they ever got the credit they deserve, and so on.  Check this post on Aversionline for a good write-up of one of their records, and check xSinkingForeverx to download the first two 12"s (which are long out of print at this point).  You can do your own google search to find other info, interviews, etc.
I'm just going to talk about this song, "The Divine Art of Exquisite Torment" from the 1994 Philly Dust Krew comp CD.  This might be THE perfect Starkweather song. .  I hate to use the word "epic," and even though Starkweather has several longer songs, I think this song is a true epic in the sense that it takes all the unique approaches of this band and puts them together in a five minute banger.  This is the song I'd pick to introduce someone to Starkweather, and I hope there are you readers out there who haven't listened or you listened a few times and it never stuck.  Starkweather isn't for everyone but I hope you will join me on this listening experience.
Right away you're hit with those vocals.  Renni's voice is one of the best in hardcore/metal.  He is a master of vocal dynamics, smashing you across the face with that vicious snarl one second and then wrapping melodies around your head with his understated clean singing voice.  1:20 is a good example of this, as the band joins the vocals in making the transition from harsh and heavy to driving and melodic. An almost sickly voice sings along with the cleaner backing vocals.  You are rocking out.  How could it get better?
A slow acoustic passage.  Talk about heavy metal.  It must all go downhill from here.  It's gonna be slow and boring and it's going to take 3 minutes until something cool happens again. NOT! At the 3:12 mark, the perfect drum fill sets things off again and we're back in riff city.  One thing I want to make note of is that awesome noise the guitar makes throughout the riff, it sort of sounds like he's moving his hand along the strings after he stops strumming.  The rest of the song is just a series of furious riffing, whether it's fast riffing with doublebass or the final riff which sounds like it could have been on Urban Discipline.  The drums start building things up first and the song ends how it started: no bullshit.  
Thank you for spending more time reading about the song than how long the actual song is.  
I took the dog for a walk after I wrote all this.  We ran into an Australian tourist who wanted to take his picture.  I took this picture of him rolling around in the grass.

Till next time...