Website has been upgraded to WordPress 2.3.2 latest version. I will customize it tomorrow and fix some details like plugins and CSSs. I know the site looks nice but terribly broken, since the new WordPress version will probably make little changes in the front interface, I take the chance of this short holiday to fix some details. I have TONS of promos waiting for reviews, I apologize with labels and bands, I assure you I will do better once I fixed a few things on the website.
Later now (my first beer can chicken is awaiting me tomorrow and I need to get up early!).
This “6 Way Split” (don’t ask me why they didn’t give a proper title to this Cd) includes tracks from a couple of grind-noise bands named Epileptic Fist Fuck, Grumo, Phlegm Thrower, Satsugai, Malignant Germ Infestation and Bukkake Violence Kommando. Roughly linked by the theme of porn (which seems to be a way too recurrent topic on the more recent shit-grind) musically these bands differ more than sligthly on their approach.
Epileptic Fist Fuck cannot definitely be described as a goregrind band at all: their complex guitar work, triggered double bass and double vocal style that comprises a more froggy, controlled approach sets them on a ledge closer to strictly “brutal death” bands in my opinion. Not properly Devourment nor Lividity, we’re talking about something a bit more modern. I guess this could easily be a Lacerated Enemy release if you know what I mean. The lyrics are not present but the song titles are a bit in the vein of Incestuous, Retch or Waco Jesus, just to name one of the more acclaimed bands of the moment. I am not particluarily enthusiastic about bands where the drums sound like morse code, but it would be unfair to say they also blatantly suck. They play a decent brand of Brutal Death with multiple vocal layers, a clicking drum sound wchich is defintely not the best, and some miscellaneous ideas thrown in. I hate the funny bridges like “never had a blowjob”, this thing is getting quite boring don’t u think?
I already knew these Grumo songs, this band keeps playing their simplicistic, bare, punkish high-school semi-goregrind with some signs of improvement in the field of song writing, but it seems the ideas a re a bit stale. The recording is still quite bad, the sound way too thin for a sludgy goregrind band, but in the end I appreciate the noise bursts of rage a la Anal Cunt. I would personally hack away 80% of the riffs and crappy shouts and change the recording to something way more massive, and we could get something fun to hear. I still cannot bear Italian lyrics but I am slashing at an open wound ehe.
Phlegm Thrower is so far my favorite in the bunch. Totally crazied, sick goregrind with machinery like vocals and a sound so sick and dirty it makes the headphones fizzle. Not ad bulldozing as Carnival of Carnage, but definitely a good shot of insane noise-gore-grind with super intestinal vocals. It always seems as if this guy is about to puke big chunks of vomit. I heard this sound on a japanese movie I saw once, when this girl was filling a vat with retch and drank it all back. This band is damn sick, I will make an exception to the rule of being sick of drum-machine bands, as this is actually fun. Everything here is casual, but in a deranged way, not for amateurish efforts. Cool.
Satsugai are not doing anything very special. They sound a bit like a cheap version of Gonkulator with extra high-school grind thrown in. There are hints at the Meat Shits, but mostly it’s a bunch of riffs roughly sewn together. They squeal, they shriek, they croak, but when things get interesting a new French intro gets between the balls, and well, that’s not what I personally expect. The recording gome and goes, and it really sounds little more than a rehearsal. Not rough and not sick enough. And those Sikfuk like vocals are not very fitting the songs either. I step further, thanks.
Malignant Germ Infestation is nice.They remind me a bit of Anal Probe Android. Very artificial sounding, even close to rave music, but with bullfrog-like vocals. The drum machine is definitely cold, but this time it fits the scheme quite well. Here we have curious hybrid of heavy disco electronics and sludgly goregrind which I somehwat liked. This is probably not something I will hear often, but the whole thing has a sick reason to exist. I don’t even know how to explain. This is however much better than stuff like the latest Gut or Space Shiters – by a fucking score. Very weird, and possibly the strangest of the 6 bands contained herein. I still prefere Phlegm Thrower, but this comes definitely second.
Bukkake Violence Kommando is also a known name here at the Nuclear Abominations headquarters. With their Meat Shits-esque 1 second songs, frequent porn samples and furious roaring noise they make up for one of the most interesting bands in Italian ground. They could probably put even less silence between the songs, as there are a lot, but I won’t complain. They have a good, nasty, sick, sound and personality and get my full support. This is noise-shit with an eye towards the past when noisecore was retransmitted through hand made tapes. Good shit.
The layout is, as usual, routine 3 minute Photoshop work, with stretched band pics and unreadable data. But what the fuck, one day we might as well miss these days of genuine artistic incompetence ah ah!
Oh shit, this is nice. Grindfest from Poland keeps popping sick Cds like a fat rabbit milady. Holland’s masters Intumescence collect here 6 years of insane sludgy goregrind (of which admittedly a good part are live tracks). Total respect for their choice of covers (Carcass, Exulceration and Dead Infection, the fourth one is by that super shit gay band called goatsnake – no capital letters for this fags, this shit is so fucking trendy today), which are pretty explicative of the kind of grind they offer, a kind of goregrind with an imprint which it seems has been forgotten nowadays, a work of a real band with real drums and a honestly sewage sound – not studied beforehand to sound vintage at all costs, you know, shit like Striborg etc. The vocals here are a grume of blood and spittle, deep and sticky of yellowish phlegm, the sound super-low and grating, almost in the vein of Carnival of Carnage even if not THAT noisy. I like the fact that the guitarwork too is not crusty or rock’n’rollish either, the riffs are totally unmelodic and twisted, even if quite simple. I got a bit bored of all this happy party sludge grind for east Euoropean post-festivals: this stiff is really sick and disharmonic, as grindcore used to be in the beginning, and I mean late eighties. Even the live tracks have their own fascination, not particularly worse sounding than the “studio” tracks. The sound manages to stay thick, and the whole thing reeks of mold and shit, absolutely cool. Good blasting and goregurgling like this genre is meant to be. Full thumb up for me. Buy or die etc etc. The packaging is the only kind of weak spot, difficult to read, and quite basic, just song titles and little else, with paper a bit too thin to stay rigid in the booklet, but otherwise not real terrible after all. We need more goregrind like this.
Japan’s Amputated Vein records has planned two new releases out today! Malodorous‘ “Amarathine Redolence” and Vulvectomy‘s “Putrescent Clitoral Fermentation”. Get this stuff straight from the label.
Earache has just released a deluxe version of Napalm Death’s classic “Utopia Banished”. Don’t ask me, I prefer the first two (as usual) but that was a great album nonetheless. Comes with an extra DVD!
Brutal truth is recording a new 7″ for bones brigade. A limited amount will be printed on white vinyl (300 copies). The title is “Machine Part +4”
The first thing that ‘s hitting my eye right now is that this French guy at Head Split Design is without question quite good. His design works tend to look a bit similar but the job he’s done on this release is really worthy of note – flawless design, excellent artwork, choice of colors, placement of text etc. Real nice from every angle. Uh, Swedish only lyrics, nice.
On the music side, Afgrund hasn’t changed much since the split with Relevant Few that I reviewed not long ago. I might say something like “that’s how Rotten Sound might sound if they were Swedish”, but the truth is that there is something slightly different going on here. We can take a band like Gadget for prototype, but the sound here is only moderately dissonant, slightly darker, and with some extra range in vocal style. These guys are young but pummel hard at their tools, in particular the drummer has some stamina to display. I am appreciating the production of this work too, but when one talks about Swedes on this field of music you can generally count on quality. The sound is balanced, and thick even when blurring in faster riffing. The songwriting is solid too, actually there is really little one can complain about on this album, except maybe those few annoying mid slow tempos in songs like “Afgrundssjal” (che palle…). My personal opinion? Well, this stuff is fast and powerful, with just a few distant hints at trendy “dissonant” melodies that plague the genre (as in the song “Katarsis”). I believe this is one of the best bands in their biz, some riffs sound even like they were taken from old Extreme Noise Terror. That’s a plus. Honestly speaking however I prefer a slightly rawer and more unrefined kind of grind, as the one advocated by bands like Skitsystem or Retaliation, or even better some of the oldest straight in your face kind of English proto-grind or noise core bands… this is really a bit far from my field, even though i am able to appreciate it.
One neg thing: I had the chance to see the band live a few weeks ago and I have to say it was quite a boring and unpleasant experience. Nothing really memorable, there just was no real punch and things just seemed to slip out of the stage without much mark left behind. This is a way better band to hear on Cd than to see live.
When I hear albums like this one, I really find it arduos to connnect. I have difficulties choosing where to start, coordinating my fiongers, trying to come up with the right words, becouse 99% of my brain just wants to sit back and listen, being dragged within the wounds of christ to drink and bathe of his pain. The room where I am typing was cold, but even colder – unnaturally so – is the miasma of Death that now fills it. Absence of life. Decomposing life. Pure necromantic spells that drain warmth and happiness.
Well first off I’d like to say that “Sepulchral Voice” is my favorite Sodom song ever – the choice of using it as a label name is brilliant (well, we’re on the lines of Deathlike Silence but when we talk about songs like those, we cannot criticize) – not much but that’s the most clever thing I can think of as of now. Do you have the idea of how fucking good this is? Seriously speaking, this music is Evil with capital “E”. I’d like to hear what politicians and religious people that found the Devil’s speech in albums by the doors or led zeppelin albums would think of something as dark as this. There is surely a lot of Celtic Frost hovering among the tracks, and a tidbit of earliest Mortuary Drape‘s theatrical evocativeness – but most of all, there is class, the class of a deranged painter covered in sperm, dried blood and drool drawing the lines of his own insanity with the colors of fucking hell. In every field real artists know how to weave a masterpiece with just a few strokes, and this album reflects this concept on music. You don’t have overly complicated guitar riffs. Actually most of them are quite simple yet arranged with such a taste and elegance that everything flows like black blood running smoothly from an altar of sacrifice* – simple fragments of dedication to the cult of evil arranged with meticolous taste. I love the vocals – the last time I heard ones so malignant was in Immolation‘s “Dawn of Possession”, but they’re just the right complement to a balanced macabre ballet of death and putrefaction. Ave to the lord of Flies, Asmodeus rex.
*Curse of the damned / Confronting the evil you dread / Coalesce into one your shadow and soul / Soon you will meet the undead
Much better we go with Diorrhea, even if i wouldn’t have dared to say so judging by the pictures alone, ahah, what a lame ass I am sometimes. Actually Diorrhea deliver a powerful grind attack with the occasional idiot speech inside but not as pervasive as in Fetus Eaters (I don’t know hos is it in other countries, but in Italy if you play grindcore you have to make funny faces and speak about idiot stuff between the songs, that’s routine). Diorrhea is actually quite a bastard beast and play straight to the face old school grind with whacked ultra fast chords and shit, I definitely like it. The vocals are not very powerful, but the shrill sound isn’t bad either. You got some extra growls but they’re just a marginal thing. The riffs are basic, there are a good share of blasts as in the old school tradition yet we’re quite far from the Swedish mates. Fast, cutthroat grind with double vocals and no super-polished bollocks. Get this stuff if you’re into grind, it’s quite good.
