Oh my, “original pirate grind”. My senses are already on alert. Let’s start with a superficial exploration. This packaging looks better than anything I have seen so far from Grindhead, even though there is just a meager flyer in place of the booklet. Too bad for the bad Photoshop trick on the logo, but the cover art is nice. Obscure and pretty much gory. The lyric sheet is non-existent but the song titles are already quite bad – “pillage plunder grindcore”. What the fuck. The pirate concept is new in Death Metal afaik (Running Wild is NOT Death Metal ehe) – that is fine – but the really curious thing is this band considers itself grindcore. Cool. This is not grind by any standards.

Digging in the bio, I discovered this band is a kind of side project of Rotting Stiffs, a hopelessly generic brutal death metal band with routine chug riffs and mid slam tempos – from Cali. Ugh. Also, I don’t think it’s listed as a mini but I proudly refuse to call a 14 minute Cd a full length, I hope you’ll forgive me.

That said, I have been spinning this cd twice so far, and I admit this is not too bad. Yesterday I read a review on Teufel’s Tomb about how completely mistaken the band comparisons are in the majority of today’s zines and bios. I hope that guy forgives me if I hold his theory. This band has nothing to do with Dying Fetus, Anal Cunt (What?), Cannibal Corpse (??) or Assuck (Ehhh??????) – as stated on their bio. They have no power chord slams, no crusty grind grooves, or anything else in common with these bands. They basically play honest, down to earth Brutal Death with a decently suffocating, super low, dirty as hell sound. Not stellar, but better than Rotting Stiffs or a lot of the mid tempo slam garbage I hear today. Actually this band is quite intense, even the drum machine doesn’t sound too artificial, kinda Atavism meets Malignancy meets Putrid Pile, for lack of better comparisons. They’re not very advanced but simplicity is power sometimes. Not a must have, but worth some coin if you want a quarter of an hour of fun. Gory and bass-saturated. Nice.