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Oral Mutilation strikes back after a couple of months from their other demo, and this time things are getting slightly more in order, but not necessarily much better. The medium is still Cd-r and this time it has a somewhat horrible but otherwise colorful cover – honestly the other one in black and white was much better. This one looks like Macromedia Flash cartoon but I guess it’s ok for a cybergrind project.
Oral Mutilation strikes back after a couple of months from their other demo, and this time things are getting slightly more in order, but not necessarily much better. The medium is still Cd-r and this time it has a somewhat horrible but otherwise colorful cover – honestly the other one in black and white was much better. This one looks like Macromedia Flash cartoon but I guess it’s ok for a cybergrind project.
The vocals here are still very deep and gurgling, and the recording level is good enough , but the music itself is extremely unripe, and not just as far as composition goes. The sound is good enough to tell the riffs but it seems it’ only made of medium frequencies without any bass or treble vibes, and it sadly gives the whole work a “live” effect which spoils most of the moshing goregrind fun. Imagine Cock and Ball Torture or Plasma with a recording sound like this. It just doesn’t click. The problem is that recording quality is really mandatory in this genre and if you strip it away you get just a bunch of sloppy redundant riffs. This is not Death Metal, and it’s not even grindcore – it’s much closer to pure electronics if we have to make a comparison and I know you know what I mean when I say filth is Ok but the sound has to be FAT and not FLAT.
That said, training and practice have done their work, even if I still really cannot rate it anything more than a political average. Structures are taking form, and you even get a SOLO on song “Zombiegrinding Braineater”. But that said, this is really little more than frog croaks and repetitive chugs halfway from extremely barebone death metal and goregrind. Let’s see where this band is leading to…
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Power It Up has been a surprisingly active label of late, I have gotten ahold of several interesting releases by them, and this excellent singles collection by the band Haemorrhage is a real high quality thing. That’s what you manage to do with a collaborative band, a serious label and a honest artist to assemble the whole thing (curious thing is this collection cover features the original artwork that should have been used on their split with Christ Denied – am I only one who doesn’t like Luisma’s cartoonish drawing style?).
Power It Up has been a surprisingly active label of late, I have gotten ahold of several interesting releases by them, and this excellent singles collection by the band Haemorrhage is a real high quality thing. That’s what you manage to do with a collaborative band, a serious label and a honest artist to assemble the whole thing (curious thing is this collection cover features the original artwork that should have been used on their split with Christ Denied – am I only one who doesn’t like Luisma’s cartoonish drawing style?).
In biology haematology is the name of the branch that studies the behaviour, coagulation and flow of blood, but in this case it’ stands for the complete dissection and reconstruction of the Spanish band’s long list of excellent Eps. Apart from a couple of covers from Dead Infection, Carcass, General Surgery and a less famous Spanish punk/ska band called Kortatu (which I honestly didn’t know), all the rest are Haemorrhage songs taken from various album recording sessions. But even if one already has all the singles, you have some added vanilla: one bonus track, liner notes (hell yes, these are MANDATORY in every re-release) and a completely remastered sound. This is one of the nicest recollections I got so far. Even if vinyl is still the real shit, it’s good to have this on Cd for car stereo purposes. But don’t miss the Eps if you find some of them, they all look quite killer (IIRC the first one was on blood red vinyl, I always thing of the old Atrocity logo – the one with the eyes – every time I see that cover).
It’s also very interesting to hear how the sound becomes more and more claustrophobic and heavy with every release, and how the short haired singer gets more and more confident with the vocals, starting from basic harmonized roars but moving inclreasingly towards malignant phlegm filled ripping snarls.
There is no point in describing how Haemorrage sound like maybe, but for those who don’t know… they have started out as a Death Grind band highly influenced by the Carcass – Xysma – General Surgery movement (hear “Decom-posers” for a good sample) but then developed in something definitely more groovy and somewhat less purely grinding. Their latest works are full of crusty moshpit riffs and a more definite overall structure with more Death Metal but also more punkish reflections – but the blood obsession remained intact all the time, thanksfully, and so did the vomiting vocals and all the rest. You get a good spectrum of the band’s abilities by getting this Cd. Good shit.
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Wow, this Cd looks really nice, this is the best layout work I have ever seen on a Bizarre Leprous release. The layout has been built on the concept of atomic-robot monsters films of the 50-60’s such as tose of Plan 9 and it looks really spectacular. I guess that’s what many Razorback releases also want to look like. Actually the booklet is really bare (no lyric, no pics etc.) but it’s effective.
Wow, this Cd looks really nice, this is the best layout work I have ever seen on a Bizarre Leprous release. The layout has been built on the concept of atomic-robot monsters films of the 50-60’s such as tose of Plan 9 and it looks really spectacular. I guess that’s what many Razorback releases also want to look like. Actually the booklet is really bare (no lyric, no pics etc.) but it’s effective.
Roman doesn’t really deserve to get free publicity on my fanzine since he’s been promising to send a promo of this Cd for months and in the end I had to buy it on a distro stand – but this Cd is soooo good I am reviewing it anyway. But labels consider spending 2 euros for sending a promo for some exposure that maybe could result in selling some extra of your releases, damn. It’s the cheapest advertisement you could ever get. Sell one Cd from yor store thanks to a good review and you are getting back the shipping costs 3 times. Isn’t it simple?
Anyway back on Plasma. I have always been a big Plasma fan and seeing them live was a refreshing bath of bile. They’re among the purest, sludgier, dirtiest bulldozing grind gore you get in Germany today. The style is totally German (1-2 tempos and toilet flush vocals), but absolutely not boring. A solid recording and a lot of clearly distinguishable riffs make this album one of the best out this year. I couldn’t get how heavy it is on the car stereo, I had to put headphones on at home to really appreciate it’s slimy heaviness. Great watery vocals and mosh pit chugs makes the experience real neat. Not very original per se but at least we have some good replacement for Bitch Infection, Gut and CBT which lost some shine with time. And this time we got a real drummer as well, goddammit. Ground stomping vulgar shit of the best kind.
First of all, the title of the album and the cover art are fabolous. I totally share their view. My balls are quite full of this racist scum terrorizing the world. And even more I am full of hearing that the Western Word is the only responsible for their behaviour. Hundreds of years of civilization and all they produced is superstition and kilometers of barren desert wastelands. These shits have to be eradicated from the world, and if the H-bomb that is meant to do that has the colors of blue red and white, so be it. But let’s not digress, Nuclear Abominations is not a political webzine. It is about gore, deformities and sickness. Fuck.
The layout and graphics are not stellar for a label like Olympic but the job is well done and amateur errors are missing altogether this time. I don’t like the choice of colors and the yellow glow/embossing on the logo but that’s how it is today.
Hearing Internal Bleeding without Chris Pervelis is indeed very strange, but I admit the riffs are still solid, chugging, 100% NY slam. I wonder how much of Chris did flow through the recording this album – except for the acknowledged part at the end of “This Day I Fight”. What’s undeniable is that the musicwriting here is one score better than anything I heard on Entorturement or 420 – both band were maybe too unripe at the time they were releasing their demos. Who knows, point is, this album takes everything these guys recorded before by the balls and shake. One should not forget that Internal Bleeding is over 15 years old, and it was one of the very first bands to start the NY style slam shit. So don’t annoy me with shit like “unoriginality”. A bit of guilt maybe they have, since this is a genre which is extremely dangerous to play, the line between a solid mosh indicung massive riff and a tarantella is blurry. Lots of young bands are now playing very, very boring monkey-core-metal trying to follow these steps. But Internal Bleeding always did it quite well, and despite some recording difficulties, I did like early Internal Bleeding as well. Expecially with Frank Rini on vocals (someone told me he’s a policeman today. Ah.). And still today they are able to crush bones.
“Onward to Mecca”, as said before, is still focused blindfoldly on the single rock solid stop and go riff, with huge guitar sound and shit. And I cannot really tell any weak points. This record is steeled in an armor of brutal chugs and boulder heavy chords. The music flows well and sometimes Pyrexia (more) or Dying Fetus (less) really spring to mind, and I think the vocals are the only slightly weaker spot. I think hard-core screams can be an extremely powerful weapon, if the tone is right, but these vocals seem more agony moans than pissed off spews. The recording, for the first time ever, sounds real powerful and beefy, it was really time we could hear this band with its rightful sound.
For fans of NY slam chugs blam blam metal I think this album stands well on top of your shopping list. Good shite. “It’s time to pay, it’s time to die. This is The American Fury”.