Music / Discordance Axis

Jon Chang in his natural habitat.

"I will live forever. Alone."

Discordance Axis were a grindcore band from New Jersey. Formed in the early 1990's by vocalist Jon Chang, guitarist Rob Marton, and drummer Dave Witte, the band's first album Ulterior sounded very similar to other grindcore bands of the time such as Napalm Death and attracted only modest attention. On their next album Jouhou, they decided to take their music in a more complex, technical direction that set them apart from their contemporaries. After a successful tour of Japan, mounting tensions between the band members caused them to break up for three years. When they finally reunited, they got together to record The Inalienable Dreamless, widely considered their masterpiece, before breaking up for good this time.

Discordance Axis set themselves apart from their fellow grindcore bands with their highly technical playing and Jon Chang's cryptic and personal lyrics, which drew much inspiration from science fiction and anime, particularly Neon Genesis Evangelion. Though mostly unknown while they were together, the band has attracted a great deal of attention and acclaim since their breakup, with the The Inalienable Dreamless being widely hailed as a classic of the grindcore genre.

Band members:

• Jon Chang (Vocals, lyrics)
• Rob Marton (Guitar)
• Dave Witte (Drums)
• Steve Procopio (Touring guitarist, 1997)
• Rob Proctor (Touring drummer, 1995)

Full-length albums: ^note They also have about a dozen splits, though re-releases of the band's studio albums helpfully collect their sides of these to save you from Archive Panic. The only tracks you'll need to add are from the split with 324 and Corrupted, plus Our Last Day, which is mostly comprised of covers of Discordance Axis by other bands, but features two exclusive DA tracks as well as a few exclusives from other bands with DA members such as Gridlink

• Ulterior (1995)^note Superseded by Original Sound Version 1992-1995, which adds all but two of the band's splits and various other rarities. The other two splits are on the Jouhou re-release
• Jouhou (1997)
• The Inalienable Dreamless (2000)

Tropes displayed by this band:

• Anti-Love Song: Many of their songs could be interpreted as this. "Jigsaw" is the most obvious, and "Loveless" becomes one thanks to Lyrical Dissonance.
• Career-Ending Injury: Downplayed, as part of the reason Rob Marton quit the band is because he developed seizures from standing too close to the amp during shows. However, he remained able to play guitar and now plays in No One Knows What the Dead Think with Jon Chang.
• Careful with That Axe: Approximately half of Jon Chang's vocals. He alternates between high pitched shrieks somewhat reminiscent of Seth Putnam^note Who stops by for a guest performance on the band's set at CBGB, available on Original Sound Version and deep, guttural death metal vocals.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover of The Inalienable Dreamless makes it look like a mellow ambient or Progressive Metal record, when it's really high octane grindcore. The dissonance between the cover and the music is very much intentional on the band's part.
• Darker and Edgier: Even by grindcore standards, Merzbow's remix of The Inalienable Dreamless is especially punishing. (Though, as with most of his remixes, it's arguably tamer than his usual fare.)
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Or maybe Early Installment Lack of Weirdness. Ulterior is a much more conventional grindcore album than their later material, bearing a distinct resemblance to the early material of Napalm Death.
• Epic Rocking:
  • The final track on the reissue of Jouhou is a strange example; even excluding the silence at the start of the track, it lasts for around sixteen or seventeen minutes. Subverted, however, in that the band's actual performance only lasts for three minutes of it; the rest is ambient sound from the venue after they finished playing.
  • Merzbow's remix of The Inalienable Dreamless runs for some 16:30.
  • "Berserk" and "A Leaden Stride to Nowhere" are this by grindcore standards, running for 5:05 and 4:07, respectively. However, subverted by the former, as it isn't a grindcore track at all and doesn't even qualify as rock music. ("A Leaden Stride to Nowhere" also arguably has as much to do with Doom Metal or Sludge Metal as it does with grindcore.)
• Genre Shift: "A Leaden Stride to Nowhere" is a lot slower and doomier than the rest of the band's music.
• Groin Attack: "Castration Rite" has a self-inflicted example.
• Heavy Mithril: Jon Chang's lyrics are layered with cryptic references to his favorite sci-fi novels and anime series. About half of The Inalienable Dreamless is inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion, with song titles like "Angel Present", "Pattern Blue", and "The Third Children" giving it away.
• I Am the Band: Jon Chang, at least for the first two albums, as he was responsible for most of the songwriting and was the only constant member of the band. This decreased around with The Inalienable Dreamless, which was much more of a group effort and ended up being all the better for it.
• Indecipherable Lyrics: Trying to figure out the lyrics by ear alone is all but impossible. As with Converge, it may help to think of the lyrics more as accompanying poetry to establish the mood of the song than as what Jon actually sang (well, screamed).
• Last Note Nightmare: Insofar as it's possible for grindcore to provide an example of this, "Drowned" on The Inalienable Dreamless sort of does - its sudden start after the four-minute Doom Metal-influenced "A Leaden Stride to Nowhere" is the musical equivalent of a boot to the head, and it ends almost as suddenly as it started.
• Lead Drummer: Dave Witte was responsible for much of the songwriting on The Inalienable Dreamless and has gone on to have a very successful career since the band ended, being a highly prolific session drummer with over a dozen different bands, including Melt-Banana. He is currently a full-time member of Municipal Waste and a few other bands.
• Leave the Camera Running: The reissue of Jouhou contains an untitled bonus track which consists of about 10 minutes of complete silence, 3 minutes of live performance, and then more than 13 minutes of ambient sound from a venue that the band had played in Japan. According to the band, this was meant as a sort of commentary on the difficulty the band was facing at the time (they actually broke up for awhile after recording Jouhou before reconvening to record The Inalienable Dreamless, then breaking up again for good).
• Limited Lyrics Song: "Loveless" and "A Leaden Stride to Nowhere".
• Minimalistic Cover Art: The Inalienable Dreamless simply has a picture of the ocean along with the band and album names.
• Metal Scream: Jon Chang is legendary for his banshee-like Type 3s. He's not too shabby at Type 2s either.
• Miniscule Rocking: Being a grindcore band, this is natural. Most of their songs don't go past 90 seconds in length, with the very longest on any of their albums, "A Leaden Stride to Nowhere", being a little over four minutes. ("Berserk", from the 324 and Corrupted split, is five minutes long.) It's Zig-Zagged a bit, though, in that their songs often pack the complexity of much longer music into short running times due to the extreme tempo at which the band performs their material. Many of their songs contain very little repetition, meaning that a ninety-second song may pack in six or seven riffs. Jon Chang's next band, Gridlink, arguably took this even further. Also, the constant usage of Siamese Twin Songs renders this a somewhat tenuous proposition, with many song transitions qualifying more as suggestions than as solid boundaries. In short, as often as they provided straight examples of this, they're still not your typical grindcore band.
• Mood Whiplash: The slow, plodding "A Leaden Stride to Nowhere" is immediately followed by "Drowned", the fastest and most aggressive song on the entire record.
• Motor Mouth: Given that it's grindcore, this trope was probably inevitable, although Jon Chang is arguably an extreme example even by grindcore standards.
• Nobody Loves the Bassist: They didn't even have a bassist, much like Pig Destroyer.
• Occidental Otaku: Jon Chang. His next band Gridlink would go even further with the anime references.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Their first two albums compared to The Inalienable Dreamless, though Jouhou also has its fans.
• Precision F-Strike: In "Castration Rite".
  "I can't help
  Help but laugh
  As I take
  Knife in hand
  And castrate my fucking self"
• Purple Prose: Their lyrics could get very verbose.
• Rock Trio: For their entire existence.
• Scary Musician, Harmless Music: Inverted. The band's music is ferocious but the band members themselves are a bunch of laid-back, normal guys. (Though Jon Chang has admitted he can get a bit critical in the studio.)
• Scenery Porn: Again, the cover of The Inalienable Dreamless.
• Shout-Out: Many to Evangelion, as well as The Culture, Watership Down, Final Fantasy VI, Ikaruga, and Philip K. Dick, among others. Most of them are very oblique.
• Siamese Twin Songs: Many of their songs are designed to flow right into each other, to the point that a listener not looking at their music player might have difficulty picking out many of the song divisions (though "A Leaden Stride to Nowhere" into "Drowned" is pretty obvious). "Use of Weapons" into "Compiling Autumn" is a particularly stealthy transition.
• Spiritual Successor: Has one in the form of Gridlink, Jon Chang's next grindcore band that also writes about anime and video games. They are also similar stylistically; Discordance Axis was one of the most technical grindcore acts in their day, but Gridlink is if anything even more technical. Jon and Rob would go on to form No One Knows What the Dead Think shortly after Gridlink's demise as the second spiritual successor, with yet another dose of their well-established mathgrind sound. (Meanwhile, Gridlink's guitarist, Takafumi Matsubara, has begun a solo career, and his debut album Strange, Beautiful and Fast also serves as an example of this trope to at least Gridlink, if not also to Discordance Axis [despite him not being a member of Discordance Axis] - it's highly technical grindcore in the vein of both bands.)
• Surprisingly Gentle Song: "Jigsaw" is much more melodic than the songs before and after it. Aptly enough, there's also the song "My Neighbor Totoro" from their split with Def Master, which isn't even a grindcore song. And while "Berserk" is quite ominous, it's an ambient song that has nothing to do with metal.
• Uncommon Time: Goes with the band's highly technical sound. Time signatures such as 7/4 and 11/4 show up frequently.
• Word Salad Lyrics: They often border on this, especially early on. While they often have a general theme of isolation, self-loathing, and failed love, much of the imagery is very obscure and some lines just don't make much sense on a surface level. This is intentional, as Jon Chang has said that he wants every listener to have their own interpretation of the band's music.

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