Don Vito
II
Tremor Panda
By Jose Fritz
The spectrum of insanity is vast in both breadth and depth. It is expressed graphically in early texts as stretching from one dark depressed extreme to the other end, with each being an equally frantic joyful extreme. I remember when Mindless Self indulgence put out their first album -- it was the polar opposite of what emotional appurtenances the last ten years of metal had been feeding my brain.
At the time I expected them to become wildly popular and start a massive movement of equally manically charges bands, but this didn’t come close to happening. They developed a loyal cult following and were sadly dropped by Elektra. But such is the way of my eccentric taste. My love is a curse, and so I also curse Don Vito to this day.
They come to us through a conduit filled with the carcasses of the card-carrying bands of the “Chicago Sound.” They have a strong structural resemblance to Oxes, which is to say as little repetition as humanly possible and with copious rhythmic noise rapidly backpedaling to obfuscate the remnants thereof. They also bear more than a passing resemblance to Last of the Juanitas and Shellac, which is hard to avoid when already resembling Oxes. Their short instrumentals remind me of The Mae Shi, with their frenzied rapid pace.
The band is from Germany, so their bio is constructed of very cute broken English: “Playing live is the greatest ever!!. Don Vito will rock anything and everything. We love to get love from the audience and urge them and ourselves on by yelling and screaming at them.”
In all seriousness, the band takes everything interesting, fast, complex and fist-pounding about rock and compresses it into a 50-second song. It’s like what S.O.D. did for thrash except it’s its collective IQ is high higher than Billy Milano’s Blood Alcohol Content.
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