San Francisco's Burmese were a guitar-less trio or quartet (two basses, namely Mike Glenn and Mike Green, and one or two drums, ostly Nate Girtman),
who, inspired by Whitehouse's
horror free-form noise, by the more abstract forms of grindcore and occasionally by Earth's subsonic drones, crafted the dense, chaotic, frenzied and heavy 20 brief songs of
Monkeys Tear Man To Shreds, Man Never Forgives Ape, Man Destroys Environment (2000) plus
the 20-minute noise fantasia Man Never Forgives Ape Man Destroys Environment, a slow-motion hurricane for seven minutes and then a waste land of nuclear radiations.
Emblematic of the rest are the
drum'n'bass apocalypse of Monkeys Tear Man to Shreds,
the nuclear garage-rock of Fuel Air Bomb,
the 20-second werewolf hardcore of Bodies,
the monster metalcore of Blood for Clothes,
and the heavy and agonizing Himalayan Cross Volley.
They turned to midtempo brooding gothic music on
A Mere Shadow And Reminiscence Of Humanity (tUMULt, 2001), notably in
the eight-minute Bukkake Ongaku and in
the more dissonant ten-minute A Proper Excuse,
despite the extreme noise of Broken Legs, Broken Face, Blood Everywhere,
The EP Men (Load, 2004) continued in the gothic vein.
White (2003) was a Whitehouse tribute album.
The EP Colony Collapse Disorder (Rock Is Hell), featuring
Weasel Walter,
returned to the original ferocity.
A Mere Shadow And Reminiscence Of Humanity (tUMULt, 2010), with two
drummers, dispensed with the most frenzied accelerations in favor of nuanced
chaos; but the mayhem picked up speed again on
Lun Yurn (UgExplode, 2011).
Child's Wife
was a collaboration between Burmese and Kowloon Walled City that debuted with
1 (Bad Recording, 2010).
After a long hiatus, Burmese returned with Privileged (2018).
