Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Belief “The Lost Cause” demo tape, advanced brutish Death Metal from Genova, 1993.
One of the most proficient Death Metal bands from Italy back in 1993 when there were really not so many bands playing this kind of ass-tight kind of brutish music that crossed the lines between technical thrash and brutal death. I remember buying this demo in the parking lot in front of some gig but I lost touch with them almost immediately so I can’t remember much more besides that for the time they were among the most articulated and brutal bands playing Death Metal around. Of course this demo could not stand by today’s standard of intricacy and sound quality but for 1993, it was really on peak, despite some progressive wanking (the Death post ITP influences were starting to spread in those years) and just a handful of ingenuous bridges that never convinced me completely they had a surprisingly varied and complex song-writing and could blast properly and had really interesting vocals. There is a shitload of cool solos and lotsa tempo changes but never indulging too much in Atheist-like fa**otries. A band ahead of its time.
Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Burial “The Forgotten” tape, genuinely massive albeit somehow unripe Death Metal from Italy, 2019 Dismal Fate
Mentioning the term “funeral” while describing this nice little EP might mislead you into thinking about some grindingly slow romantic Death Doom. I will still use it but I will take care to specify there is not a huge dose of romance in here, especially if you take care to read the lyrics. It’s not like some Anathema brought to Death Metal, but more like an ultrasimplified teenage version of Anatomia if they were born in UK in early 1990 (ahah I love to twist things, yep). Burial is a nice youthful two piece that play ultra massive Death Metal with a really superior production and some moments of remote, melancholic mindtrips. They might not be the most complete band of all time but they have a genuine taste for good songwriting and a really massive yet crystal clear sound. Worth giving a try, they also released another recording in 2019 so you might as well get that one from Dismal Fate. Good work thus far!
Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Beyond “Enter Transcendence” 7″, awesome true Death Metal from *gasp* Germany! Yeah, Germany! Iron Bonehead 2012.
You know, Germany is not only home to “highly average Death Metal” bands on Cudgel and late Morbid Records. It actually can produce amazing recordings, and hearing that coming from Iron Bonehead whose catalog of bands is 88% booooring testifies that you can expect great things any time anywhere if you just keep your eyes open and just don’t catalog anything as shit just because of previous experiences. Even MBR released shitty recordings! I am not entirely sold on the packaging, a bit too slick, layout is a bit too modern, but the cover art is killer and lyrics too have a total 1990 vibe, with mutants and all the sick Death Metal shit. Music? This band plays true Death Metal. Great vocals, relentless savage drumming, neat powerful riffs, oscillating between the old swedish and the old south american with a great raw production, morbid guitar solos, well I cannot really find anything weak here even when they momentarily slip to mid tempo. THIS IS AMAZING. If you missed it, get it now 8 years later.
Where do I start? I don’t remember anything about reviewing records ah ah! After a cold beer tonight I just picked out the old box of Cds and tapes yet to review and wiped some dust off a multitude of cool things. Unable to decide where to start I just picked up this one randomly. The letter is date october 14, 2008. Wow Ricky, I must extend my first apologies for reviewing this album almost 4 years later. Eh.
I think I always started by giving some clues on the packaging. Nothing to say here, reeally, it’s just a CD-r with some tracks in it. Still better than downloading mp3s from the Internet of course. The font used may not be the best in the world but sticking to black and white and old horror lartwork reminiscent of old Tales from the Crypt is a sure shot. I have seen professional packages done worse than this (see Extreem records reissues).
Letting the disc spin, I have to say Battered Intestine is not the most outstanding goregrind band you can hear either. It’s always a fine line you’re walking when you try to play mid tempo gore stuff: plainly said CBT are good at it, this “band” isn’t. The record neither noisy nor sludgy nor heavy enough to stand out of the murky waste of gore sludge the scene proposes, it’s just a run of the mill bedroom recording with that metallic drum sound and buzzing guitarwork we heard many times, and honestly the guitar riffs themselves, taken singularly, are atrocious. Better than latest Samael for sure, but not a must buy.
Just in case you want to give it a chance, the full demo can be downloaded from their MySpace page.
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.
From my point of view, after years and years passed listening to Metal and Core, the sum of all the live recordings that deserve to be bought easily stays in the finger of a hand. And I am pretty much afraid this live 2004 isn’t in that list. Honestly, I like Bathtub Shitter, I really do… I have bought all their 7″ and listened to all of them a few times, but my narrow Doberman cranial box struggles to understand why I should listen to these songs with a broken sound and crowd shouts in the middle. I am probably the last person in the world to ask about live recordings, and well, I assume for a live it is good quality after all, but I just find live recordings completely useless.
The Cd looks pro, it has a color booklet, lyrics, photos collage and all the routine stuff in its place, but I really find it difficult to recommend something like this. You know Bathtub Shitter, right? Noisy at times, musically proficient at others, with that little touch of Japanese madness. If you’re a record collector and find challenged by this band’s huge list of releases here it is, get in touch with Power It Up.
Okay, this time I prefer not to read anything about this new release before actually hearing it from start to finish. I remember this is the band who also released a split with Abscess some years ago and according to Power It Up‘s info sheet it’s a collection of Bloodred Bacteria singles. I am not hugely versed on this kind of new grind core, but it seems to be a genre immensely popular in Germany, eastern European countries and in the far north. I personally never got big into it, and according to the sales of my shop back in the days, it doesn’t seem to stick very much in Italy. Maybe I didn’t push it enough… whatever.
The label is doing a good job with reissues in general, starting from a nice packaging with full lyrics and a couple of meaningless drawings, to a careful re mixing of these old songs for an even, better balanced sound. I lost myself halfway in the lyrics, some sort of generic rant that goes from moaning about how liberalism is bad and generic fun stuff. This definitely not the kind of lyrics that stick in the head like Fugazi‘s or Minor Threat if I must be honest. Also I would consider them a little more if they came from a Chilean band, instead of Germany.
From the musical standpoint, the Cd starts out a bit slow. Mostly that boring brand of run of the mill grind you can find on that big box of 7″ with nonsense covers you always find in average punk gigs. You know, the one sold by that guy with the army cap with Warsore patches, yellowish vegan skin and that brand new Driller Killer shirt. However even with the worst cynicism I admit there is good shit in the remaining half of this collection, though. The band seems to have gained some awareness somewhere in 2003-2004 starting out with the Swarrm split (that one is a great band by the way). The vocals are kinda strange, they are not particularly extreme, but their use of multi-layered recordings make them quite personal. The guitarwork has become more contorted without falling in that mathcore shit, but also not purely derivative of Discharge either. I must say there is some personality in this work. What seems to lack however is a good punch. The chemistry seems to have stalled to good levels, but none of these songs gave me even a fair shake. Mostly fast chugs and repetitive shouting. Could be a good choice for those into generic grind, I personally found it quite avoidable.
