(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Chokebore, hailing from Hawaii, emerged in 1993 with the powerful and sinister single Nobody/Throats To Hit. That apocalyptic, funereal sound permeates all the songs on Motionless (Amphetamine Reptile, 1994). Singer Troy "Bruno Von Balthazar" Miller navigates through dense, dark, and violent harmonies, and his vocal theatrics give dramatic weight to Van McCoy, Sadavia, and the title track. Hit Me, with its Rod Stewart parody, might be the most accessible song on the albumif it were recorded more professionally.
Rising from less gruesome depths is Anything Near Water (Amphetamine Reptile, 1995), partly thanks to improved production and partly because the jagged harmonies of Comeback Thursday are outnumbered by attempts like Bad Things to reinvent the ballad. These, in turn, lead to the almost melodic approach of Weightless and Lemonade, agonizing songs that still find a psychic equilibrium within the very extreme tension that threatens to tear them apart. The martial trance of JJ Slow and Wash condenses innovation into a highly dramatic genre, whether psychedelic grunge or noisy slo-core.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Relocated to Los Angeles, the band recorded
another psychological nightmare and abyss of melancholy paranoia,
A Taste For Bitters (Amphetamine Reptile, 1997). Standout tracks
Days Of Nothing, Ghosts,
Narrow and Ruin Your Day merge the apocalyptic fury of
Midwestern punk bands with
Nick Drake's agonizing folk ballads.
In many ways, Black Black (Boomba, 1998) could be their best album,
or at least the album that best defines their ideology
(the lengthy The Rest Of Your Evening, one of their live favorites,
Speed Of Sound,
The Perfect Date, Alaska).
The EP Strange Lines (Redwood, 2001) fares much better, thanks to two
psychedelic rockets like Sections and Be Forceful.
Troy Bruno Balthazar's first solo album is the humble collection of lo-fi
ballads Sweet Receiver (2001).
It's A Miracle (Pale Blue, 2002) mostly sounds
like a solo project by Troy Bruno Balthazar in the role of the introverted
songwriter (Person You Chose, Geneva) and occasionally returns
to a noisy band sound (She Flew Alone). Chokebore's pieces are slowly
but steadily becoming well-formed ballads, thereby abandoning the loose,
free-form, eccentric format of their early days. At the same time, the
tenuous "slo-core" of the early days is returning to a more traditional
style of story-telling.
