Call it "minority metal" or maybe "gonzo metal," the musical creations of San Francisco's
Flattbush bring a chaotic blend of speed metal, hardcore, and aspects of Philippine culture to their 2003 debut album,
Smash the Octopus. Musically, it quickly becomes evident that
Flattbush owes much to the chaotic freakouts of
Mike Patton-fronted outfits like
Mr. Bungle and
Fantômas (former
Patton associate and
Faith No More bassist Bill Gould actually produced this album) and, to a lesser extent, math-metallers like
the Dillinger Escape Plan (only looser and less meticulously conceived). Lyrically, the band's incendiary political diatribes and multinational, multiethnic social awareness peg them as spiritual cousins to fellow immigrant-composed groups like
System of a Down and
Rage Against the Machine -- but
Flattbush is as likely to sing their lyrics in English as in the Tagalog and Kapampangan dialects. Splattered together, all of the above alternately sound like
Napalm Death gone world music ("Better Off Dead"), the aforementioned
Patton projects ("Question Authority," "Napalm," "Expose and Oppose," etc.), or simply
Agnostic Front sung in Martian ("Batas Militar [Salvaged Style]," "GMA Is a US-SOB," etc.). The bass playing is particularly mind-blowing, but the whole is still a tad too self-consciously bizarre to actually coalesce into very many identifiable tunes. Still, for sheer outrageous invention,
Smash the Octopus makes for a challenging listen -- think
Captain Beefheart from Hell and enter at your own risk. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia