Archives: Reviews

1 - Anal Torture 2 - Re-Exploring Ways of Flesh 3 - Pleasures of the Moribund 4 - Blood Feast 5 - Scum 6 - Chiavica (Cicala Grind)

“Blood Feast” (aptly named after Herschell Gordon Lewis’ paragon forefather of splatter movies) is the first professional release of Necrotorture, which finally deliver the goods after years of incubation with a stunningly intense MCd for the Brutal Bands sublabel Extreme Underground. The sound of this band has at last maturated into one of the most extreme group we have here in Italy, on par of friends Stench of Dismemberment when we talk about strictly 21th century sound, definitely headstrong in the direction of American no-melody Brutal Death of the coldest, emotionless kind. Musically this is a fucking massacre, a blast of concatenated, super fast and intricate riffs a la Devourment plus the whole range of subhuman growling vocals you can name, from the grasshopper-like “ree ree” to guttural croaks a la Broken Hope “Swamped in Gore” era. Again musically we’re on the lower end of the edible chain, somewhere in the furtherst reaches of extreme Brutal Death, without sounding an inch crusty grindcore or more chaotic Death a la Enmity: everything is lightning fast and continuously deviated, yet there is a balance and clear direction in every song, if they wanted to play something in the vein of the best Sikfuk / Bound and Gagged without sounding random (like Enmity) they really stroke a good blow, Seems like Alex really ejoys singing as the vocals are relentless, sometimes dubbed two or three times over to create a tight texture of grunts and squeals. For those who care only for sheer brutality this is a superior release to look for. Two downsides: song 5 has one of the worse tarantella riffs in the history of brutal music (minute 1.39 to 2.10 of “Scum”, check it out… by the way, did they know there was another song called like this from a little bit famous band?) and second, the cover artwork is a real horrendous, approximative work of computer graphics that challenges in bad taste even Lust of Decay. I understand it was humorous but a hand painted work would have surely hit twice heavier. I cannot tell more becouse this came on cardboard so I can’t even tell if this comes in jewelcase or cardboard slip, nor if there are lyrics anywhere to be read. Anyway cool shit here. Tight as Chuck Norris’ ass.

8 - Song About Machine Gun 9 - 01-09-04 (September) 10 - Gangster Generation 11 - Death is Death 12 - In Gun We Trust 13 - Kill the President 14 - War..? No Thanks! 15 - My Pumpgun in Your Ass 16 - Blood Lust 17 - No More Heroes 18 - Up Against the Wall (live) 19 - About Life (live)

Smersh plays ultra-cool minimalistic grindcore the kind I haven’t heard for years. Now that everybody wants to sound clean and well ordered like Nasum and Rotten Sound, it’s great to hear a band that sticks to the roots of the genre of late ’80s/early ’90s. They remind me a bit of Rot and Intense Degree, with a super sewage, low-quality recordings that sounds like a rehearsal, just with a lot of saturation, just like it used to be. Some intros are ridicolous (Raggae and Rap shit?) and even some songs like number 15 have are made with an humorous vein. Other than that this grindcore sounds quite sincere, seems that Russia still has a lot of contraddictions to sing against, now that here in Europe we more or less live more than adequately. Very chaotic and schizophrenic, socially aware old school Mince/Grind, with Mick Harris-like hyperblasts, can’t sound better. The song titles are quite predictably written in a improbable revision of English… why exactly can’t bands write an English friend and ask for corrections is beyond me. What really bugs me is also that stupid fucking communist flag printed inside and their annoying claims about revolution, this band stands against war but can accept the idea of an armed revolt where thousands of innocent people might die, that’s totally nonsense. Either you’re for peace or for war, period. I just can’t stand left wing grindcore anymore. Anti fascism and anti racism is totally cool with me, but taking communism as an example should be fucking rewarded with a fist in the face, coming from people that lost families and relatives victims of that movement. The music is cool but seeing a band proclaims itself to be favourable to communism annoys me more than seeing nazi war flags or real rape scenes. Communism is total fucking shit, they should suppress that symbol in any advanced country just like they did with fascism. Fuck extreme wings of any politic side. This band plays nice grind but are fucking idiots.

1 - Capando Cochis 2 - Mutilazion Dissecionica Putrefacta 3 - Crestas de Gallo 4 - Putrefaccion 5 - Violacion a Cuchillazos 6 - Torturando Vaginas 7 - Sin Cara

Violador is a band that quite clearly shows that distortion and guttural vocals alone don’t make a Death Metal band. Despite utterly porcine vocals (in the vein of Pigsty) that grate continuously and a load of good accelerations, most of the riffs are totally Thrash Metal, just down tuned to sound heavier. The cover artwork is a really terrible drawing of a girl ass up waiting for torture, which even if very cheaply done, makes this Cd look very old school, the inner booklet is also terribly done, with distorted pictures of the band members wearing bloodsplattered white shirts and hugely effected fonts, but in the overall, it nicely looks primitive. Musically like I said before, the main trait of this recording is the vocal tune, sometimes super compressed alla Sikfuk, other times deeper like a pig squeal. I think they can work a bit on the mid tempos, since the acceleration have enough impact but when the music slows down the riffs are quite sloppy, and there is that strong Thrash Metal vibe that never leaves the sound. All the lyrics are in Spanish which is interesting, they even printed two of them in the inner cover. Well maybe they could fit more with a human layout. The booklet reads that there are two bonus video clips but I cannot find them anywhere, too bad.

7 - Uropatia Obstructiva Bilateral Cronica 8 - Colitis Ulcerosa (Colonoscopia ano intestinal) 9 - Trombosis Intensiva an los Ductos Arteriales 10 - Morgue (Sanity's Dawn cover) 11 - Vulva Fermentacion 12 - Glomerulonefritis Posestreptococica 13 - Purulent Reflux Esophagitis (Feculent Goretomb cover)

Hipermenorrea, translated as “excess of menstruative blood”, is quite different from Excrement in that they don’t play splatter Death Grind but more of a cold Gore Grind very close to Catasexual Urge Motivation or better a Lymphatic Phlegm with real drummer. The guitar sound reminds me a bit of early Impetigo and the vocals are just that low croak, with a strong echo which adds to the sensation of distance and inhumanity. You generally have this completely grave, super distorted bass sounds which almost fuzzes through the speakers. Hell I totally love this shit, including those nasty kilometer long pathological titles, and hey there is even a chainsaw raging at the beginning of their second and fifth songs! Always welcome. My comparison to Lymphatic Phlegm comes from the fact that there is a distant, depressive melody in the background of this gore monstrosity. a loose continuous chord which is disquieting in its sanguinary simplicity. Seems like this kind of guitarwork is more effective than simple muted string chugs, in that it creates a really oppressive atmosphere. They might not have mastered the job like Lymphatic Phlegm but they’re a honest compromise expecially considering the drummer is a human and no shitty drum machine. Two covers out of seven songs sounds a bit excessive to my ears but who knows, maybe they just put them in as extra material. Great vocals on this, real splattery.

1 - Intro 2 - Surgical Exorcism 3 - Bestial Infection 4 - Septic Funeral 5 - Blasphemesis 6 - Welcome to the Morgue

This is one of that kind of releases I always freak out for: South American splatter-gore Metal, with outrageously explicit covers, lyrics and sound. Both the bands on this Cd already appeared on the Mexican Gore Mafia compilation but hearing a handful of tracks on a real release sounds even better. Compared to Flesh Grinder, Disgorge or Rotthennes this cover artwork seemed a bit mild from afar but once I watched it closely I found it deliciously gross and totally gore. Fuck yes. It’s somewhat akind to Disgorge‘s “Forensick” in concept but instead of a simple sculpture (IIRC the Disgorge cover symbolized an abortion happened during a car accident where the bitch was ejected from the car) this time it looks like a real thing. There is also a little bit of blasphemy in the gore concept of this band which sounds just as cool. Musically the band sounds like a simplified version of Disgorge or Exhumed indeed, even though the clear vocals are neatly separated from the guttural ones, and well, maybe not as effective, despite a slightly impish, malignant tune, they sounds far from early Carcass and more like Necrophagia which is not a good thing. Vocals apart the music is sheer chaos, violent and blasting. I tend to love a rough sound but generally better when it is saturated with basses, when here you have an almost “live” sound which is devoid of bass and high tunes, so the result is kinda flat was it not for the hammering snare drums. From track 4 on, the sound becomes thighter and fatter though, so the music highly gains from it. I love the sound in these other three tracks, there are even some wicked harmonics which adds to the feeling of sickness and a solo as well, so they must be definitely tracks recorded in a second moment. They are still a bit too much in the vein of Disgorge but that’s definitely not a turn off for me. Absolutely enjoyable, real Carcass worshipping patho splatter shit. Hell seems like these Mexicans have the right attitude towards gore that lacks in the Eastern Europeans (always getting too much fun on these topics, I have had enough of stupid grind).

1 - The Valley of Death 2 - Play Dead? 3 - Masturbating on a Corpse 4 - Seeking More Dead Bodies 5 - New Classification of a Lunatic 6 - Prepare to Putrefy 7 - Shut Up and Wreck Something!! 8 - Stabbed Eight Times with a ten-inch Butcherknife 9 - Bitch-tightroduction 10 - Human-Steak 11 - Amputorium Chop Off (extra-vocal version) 12 - Gastric Oozed Rejects Embalming Abhorrent Heaps of Liquified Innards Cataclysm 13 - Brutally Skinned Inevitably Ending with a twist of the Garrote 14 - The Man Who Outbutchered Bundy 15 - Re-infected Audio-Dopefient 16 - The Dead Will Walk the Earth (again...) 17 - Dystrophagical bits of Meat 18 - Lecherous Abscess 19 - Sacro-festered Gutties 20 - Ripped from the Inside 21 - Ranchous Tromboflebitis 22 - Frenzied Stabbing & Psychopathic Strangulation 23 - Unrelentless Plunder, Death, Sadism and Reprensible Bloodletting 24 - Thunderstorm of Puke! 25 - Crystalized Splintered Crotch 26 - Tutored in Wildly Depraved Torture & Methods of Murder 27 - Live @ Radio 'Patapoe' A'Dam 10-11-2002 28- Utterly Insane 29 - Carnal'risticated Phobagoreum 30 - Trial of Torment and Suffering 31 - Two Eyes & a Tail 32 - Rot'n Roll 33 - And the Stench Became Unbearable... 34 - Rotten to the Gore 35 - Tore My Sack 36 - Mass-chaotic Vile Gutteral Punkin' Sickness 37 - Smoke from the Vomit 38-42 - ? 43 - Making You Wish You Were Eating Your Own Faeces 44 - 1001 Reasons to Kill 45 - Payperlimb 46-48 - ? 49 - Toxoplasmosis 50 - Grotesque Side-effects of a Rotting Cadaver 51 - A Story About Six Hairy Tits 52 - Mastik-tronik-gore Militant 53 - Gonorrhoica Club-mix 54 - Tumour-terrorist-live-show 17.05.2003 55 - Too Large for Digestive Capacity 56 - Clotted Atomic Cybersluts from Hell 57 - Stirred, Jackhammered Torso 58 - Muscophagical Elektrodome-intergalactica 59 - You Don't Want to Get Into This...

This is not new Tumour stuff but more of a retrospective of old Tumour Eps and live tracks from 2001 to 2005, so the sound is not even and not even the songs structures. The booklet is a complete concept around what is also my favourite of the four Romero zombie movies – Day of the Dead. There are captions from that movie in all the pages of the booklet. The layout could have been a little more creative but considering the average quality of goregrind releases this time the booklets shines. Ah. Basically we have the usual Tumour goregrind with drum machine type of sound, except for a couple of tracks with a real drummer. We also have some backing vocals by members of Intumescence, Kadaverficker, Malignant Tumour and even four tracks recorded in pieces with a drummer from Switzerland and a bass player from USA. At almost 80 minutes, it is really chock full of weird stuff including live and “radio” shows (is that true?). What is still cool about Tumour is that despite the boiling liquid effect of the vocals and the drum machine, this stuff doesn’t sound like a mix of gabber/hardcore techno and grind, but still retain some touch of humanity if we can call it this way. You get in a single Cd a mix of good and less than good guitar riffs but with the same Tumour trademark sound. Towards the end the music become more and more chaotic until erupting in a total chaotic experimental mix of noise and techno beats. You also get a shitload of samples so that no song starts out with instruments, so they’re basically a mean to split songs even if the guitar riffs are very clear (and the distortion definitely not too heavy, which might have been nice here). The Deep Purpleish “Smoke from the Vomit” might raise an eyebrow for fun but I am not very much for funny moments in grind. Hopefully this is one of those rare tracks. The stuff on Goreaholic is generally speaking a bit more intense and the riffs definitely a less sloppy but here is a nice collection of old stuff. I would have liked to see the covers of these releases and maybe some lyrics as well, even if that meant a bit more work on the booklet but generally speaking this is great shit for goregore freaks.

1 - Coprophagical Trauma 2 - Putrefacted Entrails 3 - Vomit Eruption 4 - Tender Meat Mutilator 5 - 94th Anual Rape-Victims Pool Party 6 - Rest in Pieces 7 - Nausea and Vomiting 8 - Genital Mutilation by AIDS Infected Whores 9 - Exercising Porno Poetry 10 - Suck Slut! 11 - Malignant Infected Ulcer 12 - Piano Chord Dismemberment 13 - Raped, Slaughtered and Mutilated 14 - Outro

This cool tape contains noisy, bestial goregrind which what has become a trademark Dutch sound, recorded during the very last days of 2004. The packaging of this tape is absolutely neat, with porn bondage pics over microscope captions of what seems to be sperm (not sure I’m not a fucking biologyst), in any case the choice of colors pink and yellow looks cool. I didn’t aunderstand why there are no pictures of mutilations and amputees since acrotomophilia is a fetish for amputations and mutilated people (hell this is gross) and the slut whose face is covered in sperm in the inner cover had probably looked better with her fucking arms severed ahah. Maybe with eyesockets full of semen too?

There are a couple of funny intros and a fantastic jingle in the middle of the tape which sounds like a radio advertisement for dolls, but well, you have to hear what’s that really about. I’ll just tell it comes with free extasy… Ahr ahr…

Musicwise, Acrotomophilia generates fat, intense goregrind not dissimilar to elephant trumpeting. The sound of the drum machine is just close to perfect (surely less mechanical than fucking Vomit Remnants or even the more grinding Anal Whore), and the blasts are not just continous but programmed with some ideas. They hammer during the fastest parts but you also have some variations when things become a bit less noisy. The vocals are super pitch shifted but not entirely liquid like Urine Festival/Tumour, they’re more like old school goregrind tapes from the mid-nineties, a mix of frog croaks and more guttural minotaur growls, like Anal Birth for instance. The guitarwork is noisy and almost casual but there is a nice touch of fair melody in the very background that reminded me a bit of Lymphatic Phlegm, just keep in mind this stuff is way more chaotic, but probably much of it is due to totally nonsensical singing out of the patterns of the music. It’s a real release of energy ahaha. Here we even have a nice 1 second song called “94th Anual Rape-Victims Pool Party” (at least I hope it is that one ah, you have no lyrics here). The band concept seems to be mixing fetish, sexual violence and gore, but maybe this is where this band needs some more direction. It’s cool to have an all-round sickness approach but maybe some more focus on a theme would have been nice, for instance they could concentrate a bit more on the fucking of amputee children or something like that (pedoacrotomophilia?), you know, they could name songs like “I like to lick shit covered infant stumps”. Ahah. The tape ends with a great moment from Session 9, a fucking intense horror/thriller… I also have no clue if that was intentional but my tape deck signed exactly 666 tape turns at the end of the cassette!!