On Swimming, Suffocation, and Cloud Rat

Swimming is my exercise of choice.  I somehow manage to dodge the low-flung-dung life tosses my way and hit the pool religiously three times a week.  Ironically, I achieve very little on a daily basis without music to motivate me, and headphones don’t work well under water.  As a result, pool time is orchestrated by the music in my head.  The soundtrack is a litmus test for the albums I’ve got in rotation; how memorable are those riffs?

Yesterday my underwater mental playlist started with Cloud Rat’s grind-punk masterpiece, Moksha.  This album is the finest piece of grind to come into my life since Wormrot’s Abuse.  From top to bottom, the riffs, beats, and screams comprise a virulently addictive catharsis.


Moksha is only available on LP at the moment, with no legal digital downloads to be had (although a release on Grindcore Karaoke is rumored for the not so distant future).  To get my hands on the digital download, I bought the LP.  I don’t even own a turntable, but I wanted to own this album; it’s that good.  But I diverge; Cloud Rat move me and make me move.

The needle on my swim session soon skipped to my latest obsession, Suffocation’s Pinnacle of Bedlam.  I’ll be writing much more about this album shortly, but my ears say it’s their best work in 18 years.  These tunes pack ridiculous mojo.  The riffs have been consuming my consciousness and were easy enough to conjure in the pool; I whipped myself into a windmilling fury with these songs in mind.  At one point I was convinced I could punch through the tiles at the end of the pool and swim through concrete.

I always come home from a swim with a deep desire to crank the stereo and actualize my metal reverie.  Rather hilariously, though, the inevitable water in my ears taints all music with a warbly, weeble-wobbly perversion; the pitch shifts unpredictably. I’ve had some really good laughs at how weird music sounds with an earful of pool water.  But it goes away, and I rock another day, and swim the next.