Category Archives: Reviews by letter

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

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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.

KIJU (Ita): “Demon(n)cracy” Lp Cd 2007 Hardebaran/Twofatmen

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Holy christ, I am frozen in indecision. This music is the farthest you could find from the theme of Nuclear Abominations. I really do not have any tools to criticize this stuff, it’s just beyond me. There are traces of late Testament, maybe Pantera (even if I don’t know them well) in the sound with that overuse of aggro riffs and that Meshuggah-like lyric style. I think that if this band was from NY the arists would probably wear bandannas. It’s a cross of modern Metal-core-something, maybe modern Thrash, no clue. Mostly it’s about chugs, choruses, vocals a la Sepultura/Sick of It All. I am so distant from that scene today I don’t even know if they would call this band Hard Core or Metal, maybe it depends on the hairstyle of the one listening ahah. If you have shaved hair and goatee maybe you could like this album. Really, I cannot give an honest opinion, sorry – personally I find it rather uninspiring, but this is a kind of music that does not exist in my life. I’ll file it under Thrash Metal for lack of better terms even if this FAR from Blood Feast or Whiplash (which is the Thrash for me). I am pretty sure no reader of this zine will like it, though – but many that hate it could. Your choice.

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

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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.

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

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Three cool experimental tracks share recording space with one of the latest Noisecore Freak works. I am not sure how serious this Ask Heroin Sally project is for Mr. Stepniewski, but it surely is interesting in its lucid folly. The band offers a nice example of noisy ambient music with an elegant and progressive use of samples that overlap upon a layer of drone-like loops. The music is slow and funereal, elegantly futuristic but always smooth. The use of loops is moderate, and always set up with some logic. Sometimes the sound hisses but it’s never a violent thing, it’s mostly a sound that wraps you in like typical New Age gone horribly bad. Only towards the end the noise screeches become predominant. This band strays quite far from grind, as it’s mostly an experiment on dire frequencies and creepy loops from what I hear – but sincerely I have no tools to understand if this stuff is done properly or not. Personally I find it nice to hear, even if I also find it extremely unlikely that I will ever look specifically for it in the future. For those looking for an unlikely balance of extremes this split might be a good choice. The whole album concept, including the cover artwork, is coming straight from the deranged mind of the creator C. Stepniewski. Not impossibly effective, but very complete in its short running time.

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

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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.

RAICES TORCIDAS (Slv): “Digital Metal Flesh” Lp Cd 2007 American Line

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Even admitting that science fiction is not my favorite metal topic (it wasn’t even with Nocturnus or Hawkwind), I must say this Cd comes in a surprisingly deluxe format. Sci-fi is a strong concept here: futuristic post apocalyptic machine wars a la The Terminator appera on lyrics, cover, layout and all. The package contains a double disc that includes a DVD containing a detailed footage on the recording of the album. A huge folding digipack with thick glossy booklet and slick digital art: things have been done seriously here, with tons of computer graphics and a very accurate layout. I still prefer black and white, but things here have been done quite well. I just plainly don’t like computer graphics, be it Lust of Decay or Putrid Pile.

I had to make some research on the band, whose name I never heard of before. Raices Torcidas is from El Salvador, and comprises some members that also swapped lines with Kabak as well (great band – this one I knew!). I was surprised to read that this is their THIRD full-length, I must be very ignorant on the El Salvador metal scene.

I was pretty afraid that with all this advanced technological stuff all over and the terrible opening aggro riff I was in for some Fear Factory-like modern metal monstrosity. Well, I was quite wrong. Their sound is not sick or grisly but they play pretty good, decent Brutal Death anyway, with an excellent if uneven production, swine vocals, distorted guitar and all the rest. This band sounds pro and powerful, with tons of those tremolo riffing so dear to late Cannibal Corpse, Putrilage and Enthrallment. I liked much their multi-layered vocal approach, even though in the end we’re not listening to anything impossibly brutal or memorable. Good and honest Brooootal Death Metal of new generation but played with passion. Good and very focused in the end. Something to appreciate.

But I still prefer gore.

GOSPEL OF THE HORNS (Aus): “Realm of the Damned” Lp Cd 2007 Invictus

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I am not sure why sometimes my tastes just change from one year to the other. I used to consider Gospel of the Horns a good band, with a retro thrash touch which was simple but honest. The songs on this album however have managed to bore me heavily even before reaching the 20th minute. The sound is deliciously “Celtic Frosted” and just none of the guitar riffs here is a let downer. Yet something is definitely missing, and that’s the total lack of bursting rage… it’s like a perennial intro that never ends, a kind of constant mid tempo that erode me. Surely you can headbang at this stuff, thanks to choruses and epic riffing and all the classic Asutralian stuff. Yet the total lack of bestiality is heavy here.

Once upon a time I used to pass through the whole discography of a band before hearing a new album, and I admit I didn’t do it this time, but I have the strong impression that the previous releases were a bit rawer and heavier than this one. Sometimes this “Realm..” just sounds like plain Metal without the heaviness, and that’s not something I dig much in a band. Thrashing riffs abound, but none of these have the same intensity of the real ones from the good old eighties. If you want good Thrash Metal get “Power and Pain” by Whiplash, not a band from 2008. And too bad the vocals are just plain bad. Raspy but quite weak.
Best thing on the whole release must be the booklet: the cover art is inspiring and the lyrics are just as powerful. Excellent work has been made by the studio who worked on the layout. This looks damn professional. Not my kind of Metal, even if not disastrous. Sufficient to stir some attention here and there if you ask me. Definitely didn’t deserve an Lp version, or such popularity – though.