At Action Park
At Action Park is a post-hardcore noise rock album? by Shellac, released in October 1994? on Touch and Go Records?. It can be considered a "post-pigfuck?" album, and aptly reflects the state of early math rock as it was growing out of the post-hardcore scene and becoming established in the mid-1990s?.
1. My Black Ass
Largely based on a plodding, moderately dissonant groove with funk rock? syncopation, verging on the alternative metal? riffing of a band like Helmet? but with a sharper, lankier guitar sound. At the heart of the track are Steve Albini?'s snarling vocals, lyrically illustrating a portrait of the lives of and effects on Black Americans? in and after the Jim Crow period. The last minute of the song is dominated by a bright, dissonant, droning strummed chord and jumpy, insistent drumming before returning to the original groove one more time as Albini shouts the song's title.
2. Pull the Cup
An instrumental?, this track hones and focuses in on the funky, syncopated rhythms of the previous, starting with minimal, scratchy guitar and drums interlocking before bringing in a more active and complex angular bass riff which carries the rhythmic momentum as the guitar alternates between the scratchy, groovy plucking of the verse and being more openly strummed in the chorus.