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Both TNV and Eat Skull have a serious streak of The Clean running through them, but aside from recording fidelity and dark lyrical matter, TNV are really not too much of a damaged pop band the way Eat Skull and Psychedelic Horseshit are.
Eat Skull certainly seem more diversely influenced and have a wider-ranging sound, especially when you compare a song as catchy and sing-songy as "Shredders on Fry" to their noise-core barrage on their cover of Psycho Sin (on the flip of the "Dead Families" 7"). Psycho Sin is an obscure band of ultra-direct and confrontational HC that is hilariously inept.
If you watch both bands' stage performances, you get a very different vibe, too. Eat Skull turn some of their sweetest songs on record into nasty, mean menaces live. Yet I was impressed that there were so many girls up front at their show in Portland two Fridays ago, singing along to all the choruses. TNV live are also swell, but more about the business of playing the songs faithfully as recorded. They lock into grooves, unlike Eat Skull who are more prone to abstract them. And even abstract the vibe.
One notable connection between the two bands, however, is that Rob from Eat Skull (singer, keyboardist, some guitar) was in a band with Beth from TNV called Hole Class, and they made a brilliant cassette that shoulda been made into a vinyl because it is certainly worth documenting in a more permanent form.
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