Category Archives: Reviews by letter

GONKULATOR (us-ma): “Second War in Heaven” Cd 2000 Fudgeworthy

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Whoa! Gonkulator is a band that makes Revenge sound as polished as Oasis. No kidding, I seriously doubt you can find something as filthy and unrefined as this band – it should not surprise Charlie also plays in a band generally associated to punk/grind sonorities. For unrefined I do not mean just badly recorded as in early Burzum or Striborg – as if someone poured water on the speakers – nay, that’s filthy but also weak. Gonkulator is filthy to the core, as if GG Allin tried to play Black Metal with a cheese grater. With all this shit going on, how could one not like them? You must be open to really bad production and extremely basic music writing, but I personally found this Ep entertaining. Drumming is just little more than violent beating, and the riffs just a noisy scattering of chords, but hey man, the spirit is alive here. The vocals are a bit too filtered maybe, but they just blend to perfection in the chaos vortex that crackle and fizzles all beneath. I really don’t know how much tongue-in-cheek humor there is in Gonkulator, but they’re among the coolest Black Metal bands around these days, just crazy and chaotic, and uncontrolled like the art of the Devil should be. Too bad it’s several years I don’t hear of them. The packaging is decent to my appeal, and includes a good fold out artwork by Scott Lewis. All in all super cool shit. Respect!

SEMEN (mex): “Deposito de Semen” Cd 2005 Half Life

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This new Semen Cd I got from Half Life stuck me real hard. It’s a fantastic example of real goregrind the kind that seem to have disappeared in the last few years, with all that huge hedgepodge of mid paced cyber-bedroom projects. It’s really relieving to hear once more real grind shit, without super productions a la Nasum and shit like that Semen plays down to earth goregrind, and plays it with real fucking instruments and no fucking harmonizers or other shit – just plain gore porn hysteria. The riffs are not really bone crushing but the general sound is so sick and putrid that you can really go over it. The vocals are deep and gurgling, and the whole recording so dirty you can hear crackling all the time due to the poor sewage bintage recording that however manage to keep the sound full and powerful. Just like goregrind used to be you know, very early Malignant Tumour and stuff. The layout of this album doesn’t really shine, but stays in tune with the general goregrind attitude, a bunch of lesbians and cum filled cunts, and a scattering of terrible fonts butchered with tons of cheap filters. Disgusting and sincere, I really like this stuff.

NOCRATAI (ita): “…Must Be Hell Living in The World…” Cd-r 2007 [demo]

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The cool guy that handed me this Cd told me – word by word – that I was not going to like this shit. Actually I don’t like it very much I admit, but there is a sense of complete despair and misanthropy lingering over these tracks which fascinate me nonetheless. Basically somewhat derivative crude Black Metal to start with, it really gets to another level when the industrial samples and loops turn in. Nocratai is able to assemble a balanced commistion of grim monochrome metal of darkness (I’d prefer to say – grayness) and cyberpunk isolationsim, skillfully drifting among the whole grey spectrum of despair, agony, inhumanity, grotesque. All in all this stuff is not only recorded surprisingly well, but I am quite impressed by how competently this shit has been made. I was expecting some amateurish tracks made up of quick Cubase loops and some of those obscene popeye vocals, but instead I have come to dig it, more and more as the demo turned towards the end – sometimes it reminded me the intricacies of Deathspell Omega or Arkhon Infaustus – yet there are no real resemblaces to these bands. Good work on the cover too, simple work but classy – if the guy is also the one doing the drawings you can color me impressed – very Mignola-esque! Real good for a genre I really marginally follow and often scoff at.

DESECRATION (eng): “Process of Decay” Lp Cd 2007 Copro/Epitomite

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This album by Englishmen Desecration has the big flaw of starting out with a few seconds of bare drum beats without any backing string instruments. I consider this a flaw becouse the sound of the drums on this album is really atrocious, worthy of the worse Vomit Remnants or Infected Malignity. That said, one has to clarify that the music itself is oddly totally different from what one could expect from the drum sound, as we don’t have routine “cold” star and stripes Brutal Death Metal like the Japanese do. Desecration play a good mxcture of Death and a touch of Grind with raw guitar sound and growling vocals. Ollie’s vocals are excellent and possibly the best thing in the album : ogre-deep at times, at others phlegmy and disgusting or even piglike. The riffs themselves are not always top notch, the mid tempo power chords placed at regular intervals in every song are a bit too “aggro” “Machine Head” for my delicate tastes, but in general I have managed to appreciate the album from start to finish – there is also a good share of relentless accelerations and incomprehensible grunts which generally raise the heaviness of the work.  I don’t remember much of the previous albums but I remember I liked the 7″ quite a bit – I cannot really trace any parallel right now. All I want to stress is that I would really appreciate if they cut away all this terrible stop and go palm muting stuff, it’s really unnecessary.  

The idea of writing an album on the concept of a decomposing body reminds me of The Todeskings (the cult Buttgereit movie dedicated to Death and decomposition), and reading the singer Ollie has some professional first hand experience on the file of dead bodies, I assume the lyrics could have been an interesting read. We don’t often read true English people writing lyrics. Pity.

The cover art and layout are also quite appalling, garish and plain, with wrongly placed graphic elemnts, terrible cheap photoshop effects, and grossly depixelated pictures. Epitomite should consider changing graphic artist.

VV.AA.: “3-Way Penetration” compilation Cd 2007 Rotten Roll

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Germany’s Cunt Grinder surely give a lesson in perseverance to all those bands impatient of getting a contract on some random label (not that today it’s such a difficult thing). They have self produced 5 (or 4, depending on the source) full length albums so far (!!!) before hitting this 3 way split on Rotten Roll (I am 100% sure this is the second label that I know with this name, the old one was from South America or something – I need to check my archives). Apart from a funny G. G. Allin cover “Kill the Police”, their 8 song share consists in solid, phlegmy Death/Grind with a lot of cool vocal overlapping. I was not able to understand all these fucking German intros but I guess  they have to do with some misogynist talk which I always share (ehe). Bitching apart, here is a good dose of classic porno-gore-grind mid tempo chug, the cool thing is that instead of using the standard Dead/Gut sick grunt formula, here we have several sick vocals that overlap and give an overall feeling of bestial orgy. There are actually some faster beats but I won’t define them as blasting.  All these tracks are quite cool actually, sludgy without sounding a CBT clone, and enough Death Metal to have a concrete structure. I’d give them a 7.

Satan’s Revenge of Mankind (always from Germany) instead didn’t impress me much with their previous full-length album, so dangerously close to the plainness of the routine goregrind of Space Shiters. These tracks, however are somewhat cooler. The snare drum has now a sound so damn clanky that it makes Pungent Stench sound like Sepultura, but I still like it. The sludgy, slow parts are deliciously German in style (CBT, Bitch Infection etc.), and actually there are real fast blasts ripping the songs away from a perennial mid tempo. The vocals are grace and damnation of ths side however, sometimes decently frog-like, but at times they really sound a bit struggling -gone are however, the real terrible barks a la Bestial Devastation – thanks Satan! There may be no really memorable moments in this SROM side, but these tracks are nonetheless cool German mid paced fun – optimal for slamming rhytmically the arms in the air like an idiot at a beer fest. Good shit to hear when drunk, even if even I have to admit this stuff is a bit inflated these days. 6.50 in my book.

In my opinion Hymen Holocaust (Holland) hits the right spot a bit harder than the two disc mates. Their sound is so sick and sewage, the distortion fermenting with rot and grime, I cannot but feel some sympathy for this son of a bitch. The riffs are actually a bit boring taken singularly, but the song flow is reinforced by the messy sound and a super sick array of gargling vocals. This is a band that plays Goregrind the way I see it, with a disgusting vocal style that really sounds as if the singer is about to puke anytime. I have no idea how artificial they are, but the final effect is quite good. To tell the truth, I am not a huge fan of Cliteater, and to me this Hymen Holocaust project sounds a bit better than the main band. Contrarily to the previous bands also, there is no sign of bulldozing German chugs, but have instead a more omogeneous Brutal Death/Grind sound with some slow chunks of slam galore scattered in. Seven fifty, sir.

The layout of this Cd is cheap beyond belief, main weak point of this release. As normal for recent goregrind releases, it just looks cheap. The choice of colors is appalling, and even if for once all the images seem to be the right resolution, the way the elements are placed are almost as bad as old Necroharmonic Cds. I guess it’s time for goregrind to start curing a bit more its looks.

ATROCITY (USA-Ct): “Contaminated” Ep Cd 2007 Open Grave

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Hey! This is indeed a welcome surprise. I was not sure if this was the same Atrocity from Connecticut that I knew, but aquick glimpse at the logo and my doubt disappeared. I have known this band since the self-produced 7″ recorded on Hogbitch something like 18 years ago, I thought the world entire forgot about them! I was indeed curious to know what happened to these guys, but I quickly lost all hope. While the two records were well distributed here in Italy (they ended up in almost every 2nd hand vinyl store in the country – grindcore was never a big thing), I really do not remember of having read many interviews or news in underground publications. It just seemed to be one of those bands which just hover at the borders of the scene. A pity indeed becouse the grindcore they produced was of quite neat quality.

So. The band is back. But before concentrating on new material the guys from Torrington have decided to rehearse some old songs and update the form to year 2007. Well… we have been lucky. No overproduction, no trendy emo dissonance, no cheap aggro metal riffs. Atrocity has returned in terrific shape. They got the good taste of not washing the sound at all. The trademark classy vocals and raspy guitar sound are all here. If one looks for South American noisecore I am afraid this band could seem a bit outdated, or maybe not too fast, but I think it’s the sublime commistion of two genres going hand in hand that makes this new stuff brilliant and fresher than ever. The vocal style is reminiscent of fucking Terrorizer/Nausea and even early Morbid Angel if you know what I mean. Great shit, distorted but powerful. They might have no impossible all out blasts but the riffs are powerful in their simplicity especially when the guitar sound reminds so much of Sadus‘ “Illusions” (well, to my ears at least). Good grind/death from the past, the main flaw is that it is too short, I really need more from this band – hopefully we could hear some brand new tracks soon! Good to see the lyrics have been reported in the booklet, they are standard antisocial grindcore lyrics but worth a read.

The packaging is also quite bare but very clean and stilys, must be the best one I have seen so far from Open Grave. Besides, support the label and buy this Ep, they are doing a good job and are very active despite the relatively young age!

INTERMENT (swe): “Conjuration of the Sepulchral” split Cd with FUNEBRARUM (USA-Nj) 2007 Conqueror of Thorns

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Fuck, the Swedish guitar sound a la Entombed/Carnage always makes me cum like Peter North on acid. Interment is a band that really sound like it was taken straight from 1990. It is great to hear that they did not lose the touch despite the passage of time, a lot (almost all) of the bands that were formed the same year as Interment completely lost “it” by the mid nineties. Maybe they just fell into hybernation and they still think we’re in the year 1990 ah ah! Guess what a surprise when they receive letters without flyers and find out that Entombed plays commercial shit and Matti Karki has turned fat again.

The sound, the rhytm, the general writing and even the lyrics are all taken straight from the golden age of Death Metal, and I do not mean Interment sounds like a relatively recent band with a vintage sound (take Deathevokation of Pentacle) – it is a band really sound exactly like a band from that period. I even found some traces of early Napalm Death sonorities, Autopsy and other trhash/grind acts from the 80’s in the mix, and these are influences that modern band trying to play vintage just don’t have, period. The vocals are not terribly deep (also in typical Swedish way), and for once you will be able to discern the phrasing without reading the booklet. But the killer part in this release is the guitarwork which is HUGE, with all those vaguely harmonic riffs a la late Nihilist or Dismember, grossly fat sound and all the headbanging rage of lost centuries (now tell me “Breeding Spawn” is not a Carnage song).

Madame et Monsieurs, another release not to be missed.  Killer Death Metal lyrics as well, totally flawless.