One of the more depressing by-products of the whole rock'n'roll existence (on most levels) is the way folk take a sudden leave of absence only to end up wandering in the wilderness and spending years coming back. It's harder, admittedly, if you're one of those wunderkinds whose absence will be noticed after a while (hello, Lee Mavers), but then again it's equally difficult to re-emerge when people have already written you off as Stereo MC's will tell you.
I doubt very much whether shadowy Newcastle guerrilla types drill (their small letters, not mine) would care to be lumped in with the above 'pop' pretenders, but the fact remains they disappeared from the margins themselves for the past 13 years, having last darkened our doorsteps with a live album back in the pre-Blair era of 1995.
And, it must be said after spending several listens being utterly nonplussed by their 'comeback' mini-LP 'The Last Taboo Of America', this writer can only wonder why they bothered, because the whole thing's a depressingly oppressive and wholly tune-free experience.
Although recorded on Tyneside, 'The Last Taboo...' was mastered by Shellac's Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service, which gives you an idea of the kind of uncompromising post-punk/ post-rock shapes (delete as applicable) it's liable to throw. And indeed it does, once you've negotiated the 'scene setting' first track 'Plan Dalet', which is allegedly the sound of a “war machine warming up for mass destruction”, but simply sounds like a hugely nauseating ambient swoosh turning into a migraine. Following on from this, 'Pitmantic' does immediately launch into gnarly, Math-rock territory: all spiky guitar torrents, twangy tripwire bassline and drums legging themselves up at every turn. It's committed and intense in a sub-Fugazi/ Big Black kinda way without ever engaging, and – scarily – is actually about the best thing here.
Not that there's much else on offer really. Third track, 'Diaspora' fires a similarly predictable post-punk bullet and is doomy, threatening and plain irritating after a couple of minutes, while the other recognisable 'song' is the 'Stripped Repeats' remix of 'Pitmanic', which is so generic and water-treading and downright tuneless, it sent this reviewer clawing around for Bolt Thrower's back catalogue for a little light relief. As for the remaining 'Deir Yassin' and the closing title-track – where a voice over of Robert Fisk declares the “United States of Israel” - well, they're little more than brief slivers of would-be abyss-staring apocalyptic dicking about and should have remained in either the vault and/ or computer repository they were prised from.
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Sure, I'm probably missing the point of all this, but I can remember eras when UK margin-grubbing hardcore types from the Death By Milkfloat, Sink and Snuff through to Bob Tilton could actually inject either tunes or at least presence and humour into their hardcore stance and make memorable records which had a chance of standing on their own two feet a few years down the line. So if 'The Last Taboo Of America' is supposed to represent the current UK hardcore scene's best riposte in the face of the alleged terrorist threat and looming economic meltdown, well all I can say is it's in fucking sad shape.
In summation, then, the best I can say for drill is that they annoy me marginally less than their fellow North-East enigmas Crawling Chaos. Other than that, I see little reason why we can't survive for another 13 years without their nauseating presence.
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