Category Archives: Grindcore

BOLESNO GRINJE (Hrv): “Nitko Mas Ne Vidi…” Cd 2006 Deathbag

Ah! So Blythe was serious when she was talking about her Deathbag records and this Bolesno Grinje release! This means I am the only cunt who’s not able to release a Cd on his own, dammit! Anyway the Claudia fuckin’ Schiffer of Grind Core started out with a grand debut for her label with this Cd, quite different from the previous material. For once, I can tell there’s real progression here, from every angle you eye it. Dropped the fleas, the packaging is real top level, the lyrics are finally understandable (if contorted) and what’s even better, the music has bloomed into a schizoid and thoroughly original pulp of Grind, Death and general extreme music elements. First off the production is sharp and well balanced, the sound has a bit more emphasis on the metal side, with some intreesting turns which even reminded me of some Neurosis stuff and the songs really difficult to pigeonhole. There is just a track which I cannot swallow easily and that’s “Uvdek Problemi” which sounds a bit too emo-progressive post-something at first yet even this one branches out quickly into a plethora of different styles, all at the same time. It is interesting how this band manages to explore and define a sound of their own yet paying homage to a lot of distinct genres. It’s one of those concoctions which just amalgam finely and without sharp contrasts. Surely there is a huge English/Swedish crust vein, expecially in the vocals, but heaviness and complexisty are definitely borrowed from metal. Yet I wonder: to this day, after hearing bands like Nasum and Rotten Sound does it really mean something to talk about labels? Whatever, even if I am still all for teenage gore bands, my critical sense admits there is something big developing here, this band is developing fast, with a lot of logic and inner consitency. Simply put, for being one of the very few bands I can think of from Croatia, this is absoutely the best I know from that country. Were I in you I’d buy it, eh.

EXHIBIT-A (Aus): “Home Dentistry” split Cd with ROADSIDE BURIAL (Aus) 2008 Grindhead

No. I am not really going to take it. A few dozen tracks written between 2000 and 2001 and exhumed just for sharing plastic with Roadside Burial. I admit this band is slightly more savage and deranged, and all in all it’s nto so bad, but i don’t feel very merciful these days. This band is fast, chaotic, has some shredding Japanese like screams and a monster gruff sound, which is fine, but it really leaves much after you listen to it. Even if more varied, the constant vibration of the high screams soon make this listening a test of patience. It might be okay for a listen, but not so much as to spend your money on I am afraid. I really start to miss old dirty grindcore of the eighties/early nineties and the bulldozing energy of Last Days of Humanity – these bands really have no much soul. Still better than post-Nasum washing machine gind but even this Australian prototypical drunk grind is getting a bit overheated.

I like the weirdo approach and the unpredictable song writing, and I loved the crdue way the tracks are hacked so you can hear the moment one ends and another start. But it’s a bit little for a band to stand out of the drowd today. From Grindhead I loved Eyetofuk much, much better.

ROADSIDE BURIAL (Aus): “Such Is Life” split Cd with EXHIBIT-A (Aus) 2008 Grindhead

Roadside Burial is ex-Volatile, a rather unknown band, at least here in Europe, who supposedly played grindcore. Personally I have never heard Volatile, even if the name is so fucking cool…(1, 2, 3)… NOT! A two men band with a terrible sounding drum machine isn’t exactly what usually stirs interest in me but considering how many times I have been wrong by judging Cds by the cover lately, I swear I am putting myself in trancelike state while listening to this record so I can be as objective as possible.

Let me see… the vocals are cool, of the two-layered kind you know. The riffs are little more than crust core a la Discharge lus some metal added. These drums are unbearable so let’s skip them for once. Well to say this stuff is unremarkable would be a desperately honest judgment. If this band was from Czech republic and had Bizarre Leprous routine 2 second shit cover I would have already thrown it in the “average death metal” heap. Being a Australian band with a 15 year background, I want to convince there is more here than a bunch of riffs written after a dope party over a totally anonymous drum machine program. No – really – this is not bad stuff, but so incredibly average I would barely recommend it unless you have 5 euros in your pocket after a bad show in a local squat and need to go home with something new. There are still good bands around that have to be exploited (since we talk Australian ground, get the latest Cemetery Urn album – pure gold), I see no need to go with this, not to mention the artwork on cover is really routine too. Good guitar sound, cool vocals, if nothing else.

VV.AA. (n/a): “Fudgeworthy Records Compilation” compilation Cd 2001 Fudgeworthy

This compilation might be seven years old, but filthiness is always actual. Fudgeworthy record is THE label to go to find raw, noisy, ugly forms of music ranging from punk to black metal of the most horrible kinds. This compilation is a collection of recordings that only appeared on vinyl, and the nicest thing is that, since the master tapes were lost or nowhere to be found, Charlie decided to transfer the songs directly from the vinyl! And the result is the farthest you can find from “professional” or “tolerable”, ah ah, every part of the sound is completely fucked up, including constant crackling, abrupt volume changes etc. I didn’t check but i am pretty sure everything is strictly “mono”! There is so much stuff here a precise review would be impossible to do, but consider you get to warm up with the gentleman G.G. Allin with his unfathomable political correctness made punk rock, one riff basic punkish shits Slough (best logo ever, look after their 7″) and Out Cold. Following the noisy hard/core crust from Jesus Chrust, Undinism, Rupture shoulder to shoulder with a tidal wave of total noise-grind annihilations with Minch, The Meat Shits, Captain Three Legs, Anal Cunt, Final Exit (their tracks are really, really incomprehensible ahah, COOL!), the ultra brutal Twisted Truth and and Brazilian legends Rot (one of my personal faves). Some metal stuff is also included, but definitely not pretty either. I am not a lover of this band but Groinchurn surely belong to the more “metallic” side of the compilation despite a bunch of accelerations – but the best goes with Impiety, Pest and Gonkulator… real catechists! You get a bunch of songs per band, and every one of these are crammed in a single track, ah ah, there are not even sing titles!! Personally my favorite here is Black Mass of Absu, something you could definitely slash your wrists at, total noisy doom/ambient shit like you never heard before. Killer.

The layout of this compilation is total shit, but that you could already tell from the logo, made up of turds and flies. Honestly even if I adore this crappy sounding music for maniacs, I would have liked a better booklet, maybe woth something more that just contact addresses. Small record covers and a liner note or two per record would have been the least. Anyway this is not stuff for high-class collectors. This record is ugliness incarnate and so is the packaging, and I go with it finely.

Lincoln Love Log (USA-Il): “Illnoise 2-Piece BBQ” Lp Cd 2007 Black Hole

This record is the perfect example of how sometimes expectations might be terribly, disastrously failed. A two-piece band from the Heart of Illinois, which was supposed to inherit the greatness of Impetigo, Lincoln Love Log had all the good chances to be great. Fernando of Black Hole has great taste for music and he’s a real veteran of the scene, not to mention a great artist when it comes to layout works. The artwork too is super slick and made by no other that Stevo himself. I was expecting pure hell. Everything was screaming for killer splattery grind with a nasty sense of humour.

Let me say things straight… WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT??? This might be the lamest, most boring, most useless band I have heard since a long time. Hidden behind a curtain of lo-fi noize, is just pure nothingness. Random weak riffing, cheap vocals like the worst Necrophagia  ever recorded, on a clumsy union of gay stoner riffs and boring mid tempos. Even with the best of intentions, I cannot understand why someone would actually listen to this crap for more that 3 seconds. I would spend my money better on Anal Cunt – at least they’re fast and vulgar, this band is just plain nothingness. Could trade it for Lullaby demos and i would be the one making profit. Fuck this crap, complete nonsense in a bad way – c’mon I love noise and incomprehensible music, but we’re not talking about extreme noise this time, just trendy mediocre shit for teenagers into drugs and that kind of stuff for losers. Which is worse than filling 30 minutes with just barfing. Fuck. Boycott this garbage.

NOISECORE FREAK (Can): “Apathetic Infant Skull” split Cd with ASK HEROIN SALLY (Can) 2005 Dead Six

I have been considering whether to review this split as a single album or into two separate parts becouse Noisecore Freak and Ask Heroin Sally are basically the same band, both one-man projects lead by this guy from Canada that goes by the name of C. Stepniewski. In the end I gave it the privilege of two separate judgments, since they’re extremely different in approach. The whole record lasts little more than 15 minutes, roughly split in two, so you get a very short, yet intense window at the world of Noisecore Freak. The band is aptly named, as this stuff is both freakish and noisy, even if a bit too mechanical-electronic in sound than what I identify as pure noisecore (i.e. 7MON). These ten scarce minutes are a constantly spastic, uneven, interconnection of blurs of hyperblasting speed and one second stops, crazed drum machine and pissed off screams in the best of Japanese tradition. I generally hate dissonance in grind, but this guy hides it well beyond layers upon layers of barking, grating sounds.  I am pretty sure this is the kind of stuff that get hard ons to lovers of the Relapse style of bands. Hectic and vibrating with energy, it is maybe a bit too precise in its chaos for my tastes – I am not much into these modern disharmonies a la Luddite Clone or Discordant Axis even when backed up by powerful grindcore. Short but intense.

ŁEB PROSIAKA (pol): “Wielkie Otwarcie Parasola w Dupie” Lp Cd-r 2007 Mad Maggot

We have come to Mad Maggtot’s fifth release this time on Cd-r. A full-length album by the funny-comedy-core band from Warsaw called Łeb Prosiaka – which honestly I never heard of before. Even if the band looks completely demented on stage (see Birdflesh) with their delirious sponge slippers and all these idiot emocore girl stars and pigs on their booklet, the music is excellent and devastating grindcore with a really powerful, deep metallic mince core vibe. I admit I also have some sympathy for easter European languages, and the Polish accent gives this album an extra line of exotic hardness. The writing is simple, yet fluid and just as repetitive where needed. Throw in two or three good riffs and a song is done, just as in Black Metal aha! Songs here are classic 1 minute on average, even if you should not expect impossible speed and hyper blasting a la Napalm Death. I won’t say I would personally buy this myself, but it’s an excellent choice for those into savage, hysterical, spastic and somewhat deranged mince core. Some songs have a weird dissonance but far from Dillinger gayness, just what’s needed. I guess if one has to appreciate something in this band is their careful arrangement of fury, distortion and hilarous shrieks. Good vocals also, not the same old cigarette cough typical of crust. Interesting even if I do NOT support ironic grind.