Category Archives: Australia

Corpse Molestation “Descension Of A Darker Deity” demo tape, 1992

Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Corpse Molestation “Descension Of A Darker Deity” demo tape, chaotic brutal madness of Death made in Australia, 1992.

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I understood you like me reviewing older stuff so here it is, one of the biggest jewels of Australian extreme metal and one of the greatest demos of the genre: pre Bestial Warlust in all its gory and dismal schizophrenia!
Jesus fucking christ, this stuff is so savage and at the same time so intense and raw it feels like the sound of a million deranged butchers cleaving flesh in a dungeon cellar. You know aussies can be out of their mind but here we got that formula transfixed to some of the heaviest, ghastlier Death Metal of all time, still scary after almost 30 years. The overall sound is massively choking and uncontrolled, heavy and deep and vaguely Autopsy/Goreaphobia in feel, but then things get out of control and all the folly of primitive Oceania stirs in chainsaw in hand. The vocals are a sink that grinds human waste, the guitars vibrate with sheer madness, the drummer is just fucking possessed and to top it off, the production is ugly, dense and filthy as every black/death/grindcore release is supposed to be. There is really little to add besides everything here is perfect, including those handful of samples and slow grinding moments of demonic despair. A classic among classics, and to think this is 1992???? It’s fucking un-be-lie-va-ble!

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Bowel Fetus haul, splits with Offal and Canker

Foto 08-04-14 20 23 52 Bowel Fetus splits with Offal and Canker

Bowel Fetus was a band active for a couple of years from 2004 to 2008 which concocted a weird mix of Doom and Goregrind. Glen, the man behind this project, was so kind to send me a couple of promo Cds together with some old stuff I ordered from him at the time. Even if the band is probably dead by now (Glen if you read this, get in touch!) I feel like reviewing these two albums just because fuck you, that’s why, the band was awesome. And besides, it had a really nice logo.

Bowel Fetus / Offal (Aus/Bra) “Putr-essence” split Cd 2008 The Hole

Offal is the only still active band among those featured in this post. I don’t know how much Andrè from Lymphatic Phlegm considers it a side project rather than a fully certified band, but in any case this stuff is quite good. He started Offal as a tribute to Autopsy and Impetigo, but I could dare to say they don’t really sound much like neither, except for the horror movie samples. If I had to attempt some comparison, they really sound like some of those old Carcass-inspired demo bands from Scandinavia (or Fennoscandia) of the late 80’s-early ’90s like demo-era Xysma or Traumatic, clearly less “pathological” than these. Most of the songs are mid tempos and the varied use of vocals is decently done. While I definitely dig the genre, I think Offal lacked here a bit in pure sewage tase in the arrangements.

Bowel Fetus here deploys two tracks of his top-level Gore/Doom in the vein of Catasexual Urge Motivation meets Autopsy meets dISEMBOWELMENT and you know, for a one man band this stuff was definitely good. Just like CUM, slow crushing riffs seem to linger forever just to be replaced by furious Mortician-like blasts all the while floating on our beloved sick Autopsy dissonance . What’s more impressive in my opinion is that while certainly the songs are not overly complex, Glen doesn’t throw in a single wrong note in these tracks.

The case is cardboard which means start looking for a plastic film as soon as possible if you get it because it gets ruined very fast. The sleeve contains also a lyricsheet which is quite unusual these days, at least for Offal, since Bowel Fetus, afaik, has no lyrics. Oh and the disc itself is a beauty, red both sides.

https://www.facebook.com/offalgore

Bowel Fetus / Canker (Aus/) “Fetal Toilet Treats / Drink My Urine You Straightedge Cunts” split Cd-r 2005 Fecal Matter Discorporated

Ah, FMD, one of my favorite underground labels. Pure DIY mentality and lots of musical deranged psychosis. Fecal Matter grabbed Canadian goregrinder due Canker and Bowel Fetus for one hell of a spliit here.

Bowel Fetus opens up their side whose cover this time delves less into gore and more into sick scat-urine imagery. The sound itself is here also extremely deep, rough and bass-heavy. with a weird background noise similar to some electronic component gone awry. I really like thes etracks, possibly the best, heavier and sicker Bowel Fetus recorded. While the slow Disembowelment/CUM bridges are present in the second song “Clown Suck”, Glen decided to go knee deep into the goregrind soundscape here, maybe as an homage to the label. Te vocals are too a deep liquid yet very low gurgle, perfect for the job. All in all this is a flawless recording.

Canker’s story, for those new to the name, is seriously spine-chilling as both members of this band committed suicide in respectively years 2006 and 2007. Their sound changed quite a bit over time and these tracks are a bit on the noisy/garage side with one of the strangest mixes I have heard especially for the percussions. Songs are typically 1 minute average with a bass-guitar sound that is more like a broken string but at least apart from the trademark goregrind vocals everything here is played with real instruments, so much so you hear “recording” sounds in the background at the start of every song. I have listened to so many bedroom goregrind projects over the years that hearing honest garage sewer shit makes me feel almost nostalgic.

The packaging is the typical FMD CD-r with home-made color xeroxed covers in a plastic sleeve. Both bands recorded urine and scat-themed songs for this split, and the cover artwork corresponds.

https://myspace.com/cankergoregrind

SUBTERRANEAN FECAL ROOT (USA): “Anthems Of The Antisocial Underground” full-length Cd 2008 Grindhead

sfr-aotauAfter all my rants about grindcore being nowadays too perfect and too controlled, one might think that I could be thrilled by a band like this American noise-shitcore Subterranean Fecal Root, with its freakish nonsense and a sound that could remind Impetigo‘s “Revenge of the Scabby Man” + Pile of Eggs on acid stretched into full length album + a bucketload of retardedness right? Fuck no. This is not just a demented album (which, in some particular occurrences could even be fun), but just nonsensical, non-revolutionary, non-hazardous mashup, lacking the fresh random brutality of noisecore acts like, say, Minch or Captain Three Legs. I am usually entertained by shitcore, as far as it’s played with heart, or at least gives me the feeling that something, some boundary, some parameter has been broken. I have the feeling that this album was just a carefully planned project destined to put you a win win situation: if it gets praised “cool”, if it gets thrashed “fuck off we hate everyone that is the greatest compliment for us”.

Of course the band sucks, the absolute worse being these annoying childlike vocals, and they take great pride in stating that their music is made to suck, and I’ll be completely honest, these guy are so completely retarded and untalented that in the end I started to appreciate this album. Not that I will ever give it a second spin, but these dickheads could be funny. So what you have here is a shit-noisecore recording with a bunch of samples and some paradoxical ideas. I am certain I have thrashed this record so much someone will attempt to get it so in the end these assholes have won their prize ah ah. What a twisted game  is this, isn’t it?

As usual my 2 cents on the packaging – very standard stuff. A rushed thank-list with a bunch of the same boring humorous lines, a huge tracklist with no lyrics, and a logo with embossing and other terrible Photoshop tricks. Here you have it.

BEYOND TERROR BEYOND GRACE (Aus): “Still Human Still Humane?” MCd 2005 Grindhead

This is Beyond Terror Beyond Grace‘s debut, a young band from Australia’s Blue Mountains, and it consist of four short tracks of a non-defined mix of extreme music styles. The opening riff is a total killer hyperfast blast of violence strongly influenced by Rotten Sound, Jigsore Terror, To Separate The Flesh From The Bones and the likes and made me hope for the best… if things were following that line all the time we could have had something real interesting if not overly complex or catchy. However there is a big flaw that I spotted almost immediately,and it’s that these songs are made up of riffs so eterogeneous that it feels like hearing Praxis or Mr Bungle (well not exactly to be honest but you get the point). While that opening blast was full of energy, the mid tempo Death Metal slam that follows close is among the most boring I have ever heard, kind of Internal Bleeding stripped down to play even more basic sloppy death. The vocals are a schizoid chamaleon which vary completely timbre from grunt to screams according to the underlying riff, and something weird happened when those got higher: a cold, pine smelling breeze entered my room and I could hear the penguins approaching from beyond the mist… Ah! No really they sound more new black metal than Grind, but that’s just a matter of perspective, I guess I could get used to them if we get over the bigger flaws. To tell the truth, I hate the Death Metal slam mid tempos in here, but the faster riffs range really from average to excellent. They should really drop the useless parts where the vocals become guttural and keep the faster parts only, or just try to improve songwriting of the slower bridges, becouse those are real lame. As it is, this is neither fish nor meat as they say here. The Cd has a very short duration, just like 9 minutes or so, but I guess it explores clearly what the intent of this band is. The guys look very young so we can expect some serious improvement I think. I hope the singer is just growing his hair, and not keeping that cut on purpose, though (ah ah, j/k). Nothing much to add to this, working a good layout when flames are involved is real though and well, it doesnt work in here either, but this is an Ep so things might have been made with some hurry. The cover depicts a man or a scarecrow shrouded in flames, and little else. At least the quality of the pics is sharp.

BEYOND TERROR BEYOND GRACE (Aus): “Extinction|Salvation” Lp Cd 2008 Grindhead

ghr022The super shitty cover made me fear for the worse since the beginning. Math-Nu-Post kind of shit a la The End, you know, that kind of intellektual wannabe kind of photography full of shades and blur that guys with emo haircuts like so much. All in all the packaging is not bad, but is so desperately clichéd it gave me headaches.

I remembered the name of the band so I dug back into old Nuclear Abominations reviews and picked it up so I could remember what I thought about them. Uhm. I wasn’t exceedingly critic so maybe something good might come out of this one. If you wish have a look at what I thought of their previous Ep, check that old review I just imported into the new website.

I don’t know in what kind of mood I was back then, but surely the fact I just came back from a Revenge/Angelcorpse gig yesterday won0t help them much. When I attend good gigs, my temper for generic bands tends to shorten. I keep this short: this new BTBG album is boring. The vocals are just as generic as you can imagine. Same old formula of the raspy shrieks meet guttural growls, but neither of them sounding special, both basically a single note “baaah baah baah”… there is some good blasting coming from the drummer but these riffs seems just repeated over and over. If I struggle to isolate the instruments I realize what an impressive kind of shit work the singer made to ruin what could have been a decent grindcore album. Put one capable of even minimal modulation and it could have just made this album another story entirely. This is an album that could appeal some grinder that started with Nasum, but I am pretty sure 1st generation ones will be shrugging their shoulders and go after Heresy and the likes.

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

Exhibit ANo. 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 BurialRoadside 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.