Category Archives: Reviews by letter

TUMOUR (Hol): “4-Way Cybergrind Pornogoremageddon” split Cd with BLOODY DIARRHOEA (Cze), PSYCHOSADISTIC HATERAPIST (USA/Ma), FUCK SAW (USA/Wi) 2006 Bizarre Leprous/Coyote/Urethra/Butchered/Sevared

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Tumour are here again with a couple of new short killer tracks of their characteristically hyper-heavy, distorted one man goregrind. The vocals are still similar to the sound of water drained down a sinkhole, with a sound so heavily distorted it creaks and strains the recording equipment to red herring levels. A couple of short studio tracks bring us to an insane live Beligian show. I was listening to these tracks with professional headphones and I must say besides the strong chattering in the background everything sounds amazingly clear. You won’t believe me but I was able to recognize a few songs from the other Tumour Cds I already reviewed: this shit is mesmerizing sick and darn lovely. I find the label “pornogore” a bit narrow for Tumour, but they surely fit this split nonetheless. In the end the Cd also looks quite good, with a folding poster with Pierre from Braindead’s classic, blood soaked, stylish artwork holding the four covers together.

BOWEL FETUS (Aus): “Demos and rare shit” Cd 2006 s/p

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Demos and rare shit

This Cd-r contains a lot of rare and alternate tracks from my beloved Bowel Fetus, a band able to mix gore-grind with the best of sludgly doom/death. The compilation opens with a ridicolously rare “The First Session” release (5 copies made?). Bowel Fetus here was more like classic mid tempo goregrind with a very fake sounding drum machine, the ability to program it better might be the greatest leap in quaily this band had since these tracks. Some hints of doom are present here, but as normal, the development is not as total as in “Bloodsoaked Doomageddon”. The “Rehearsal August/October 2004” includes tracks 5-8 and include another Impetigo cover, a personal version of “Wizards of Gore” mit cyber sounds, I am afraid the tribal feel of the song is almost on-existant here, but fuck, how can you possibly do as good as the original? The sound is very clear anyway, for a reharsal, but either I can’t hear them, or there are no vocals in these tracks. The riffs are okay, but are mostly mid-fast and that is probably not the real shit for this band. Listening to the last few tracks of this rehearsal, you could hear Impetigo were a big influence for Glen at the time, as they have that feel of punkish groove that was so perfectly deleoped by our gods of Illnoize. The ninth track is pure sludge/drone doom, originally recorded as a bonus for the split tape with Viscera. This is really when this band starts shitting violets as we say here, this stuff is phenomenal, a bit in the vein of “Transcendence into the Peripheral”, with a resounding vibe that always remind me of a empty hangar. Fast Autopsy-worshipping riffs and chain tire vocals are all present in this track, fully developed. The two songs from the split with Gruesome Toilet start with pure noize bursts, nothing more to add to 1 second long songs. But there are also some unreleased ones which have solid structure and rather diverse structures from the classic Bowel Fetus including a weird B-52 cover. The song from the split with Anal Throne is also quite atypical, mostly composed around a single chug, but it ends in a funeral doom leak. The album ends with an Autopsy cover… terrific!

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

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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.