Brainiac were 'cute weird', whereas SFS were truly unhinged on Severe Exposure, so them.

Severe Exposure is a great point with the band where they were moving into their second act that was less noisy than pigeon and brought in that fucked up synth stuff from Machine Cuisine. The big thing to me about Severe Exposure was bringing James Apt on board, who was a tremendous partner to Rick, and counterpart to John. At that point they kind of gelled with that creepy/weird/funny personality too. They also had some crazy catchy songs like Dark Companion, Rabies, Parlour Games and Board the Bus.

I'm gonna throw it out there that Law of Ruins is a completely worthy bookend to that lineup that evolved the sound in a great way without being, like, a reactionary pivot a la Machine Cuisine. It's definitely a more moody, atmospheric record but damn, stuff like Sea of Tranquility is just relentless rock.

edit: I remain completely in the weeds with Paranormalized, which was on paper a solid follow up to Severe Exposure, but never quite landed with me. I don't know why that is.

I never saw Brainiac nor listened to them in the ‘90’s but I lived in Boston from ‘92-‘98 and saw SFS many times and listened to their records. So I have to forget live prowess and just go with what I have in my collection which is a few SFS records and the last two Brainiac records on T&G.

After careful review and while admiring both bands I choose

SIX FINGER SATELLITE

twelvepoint wrote: Fri Oct 06, 2023 10:20 am Severe Exposure is a great point with the band where they were moving into their second act that was less noisy than pigeon and brought in that fucked up synth stuff from Machine Cuisine. The big thing to me about Severe Exposure was bringing James Apt on board, who was a tremendous partner to Rick, and counterpart to John. At that point they kind of gelled with that creepy/weird/funny personality too. They also had some crazy catchy songs like Dark Companion, Rabies, Parlour Games and Board the Bus.

I'm gonna throw it out there that Law of Ruins is a completely worthy bookend to that lineup that evolved the sound in a great way without being, like, a reactionary pivot a la Machine Cuisine. It's definitely a more moody, atmospheric record but damn, stuff like Sea of Tranquility is just relentless rock.

edit: I remain completely in the weeds with Paranormalized, which was on paper a solid follow up to Severe Exposure, but never quite landed with me. I don't know why that is.

agree with everything here.

still cannot get into anything on Paranormalized. Nothing lands.

However, Law of Ruins is a masterpiece. Everything about it, each song, the packaging…the whole deal.

I saw Six Finger Satellite opening for Shellac the first time I saw them in 1996 and though I think I had heard Pigeon and the split single with Green Magnet School, seeing it live in the Severe Exposure era was not anything I was prepared for, they were intense and deeply off-putting, truly abrasive. One of the handful of times I was completely weirded out by a band.

Even though I didn't really enjoy their performance I still bought a couple of records (I bought their last copy of the "Clone Theory" 12") and figured I would give them a chance. Which, I am glad I did as I ended up really loving the music.

I was also abusing speed, never seeing the light of day due to my work schedule and was generally a hate-filled, sweaty, near skeleton, so that probably helped. Your mileage may vary.

Law of Ruins is a masterpiece, their great fuck you to life, the universe, everything. Paranormalized is a bop.

Brainiac were great live and toward the end I think were about to really break into something else completely though obv their arc was cut short.

Six Finger Satellite