Non Compos - The Rats Know Him & Smile When You Hate

Recently, a friend of mine emailed me asking about a band he was sure he heard from me and that he hadn't heard in a long time. Great...this ought to be fun. Let the guessing game begin! He then said the only thing he could remember was a line that repeated over and over... "I see the stars in your eyes...I see the stars in your eyes".

Easy! Non Compos!

I knew nothing of this band when I bought "The Rats Know Him" except it was on Tortuga Records and was some how affiliated with Hydra Head. At the time that was a stamp of approval in my realm and I was left with my jaw dropped. Shit...left with my jaw ripped straight off my face lying on the floor! Ahhh...the satisfying sound of hate. Noisy, heavy, sick and unforgiving...in-fucking-tense. Kind of like the most demented aspects of Today is the Day; the honed, chaotic perfection of Deadguy; and the filthy, sludgy goodness of Cattlepress all rolled into one. This makes "broootal" hardcore metal bands these days look like uninspired pansy assed chumps. (I know, I know, that's not saying all that much anymore.)

It's hard to find much info about this band via the ol' inter-web. They were from Burlington, Vermont and I guess they used to wear orange prison jumpsuits and black masks when they played live. (Easy up, this is before those d-bag Slip-Not turds!) After taking in the greatness of "The Rats..." I discovered their earlier album "Smile When You Hate" on Wonderdrug (when they still had the "Mentis" attached to their name) which is also great, though not the classic I feel that "The Rats..." is. I talked to some of the Tortuga guys at a Krazyfest a long time ago about them and they said they we're trying to talk them into doing another album. More recently I heard rumors of a reunion and new album via their Myspace. Yet, even that was a while ago now and seems unlikely to happen.

"Thank you and die slowly."

Here's a video for the song "58", the opening track from "The Rats Know Him".