Archives: Reviews

1 - Blood Tapped Skull 2 - Elevation Into Disintegration 3 - Human Error 4 - Straight Edgetasy 5 - Queens of the Scene Age 6 - Work Forced 7 - Foetal Grindings 8 - Rape of Sanity 9 - Queer Eye for the Metrosexual

Here we have a quirky grindcore album from a band from down under. I have some feelings about this so let’s try to put things in right order. Musically this thing is good, they state Blood Duster as their influences and well, I think they have a bit of their talent on combining humour and good powerful grindcore with tons of weird variations on the theme, to the point of totally slithering into other genres like funky, hard core or even heavy metal (hear the first Judas Priest riffs in “Queens of the Scene Age”), just like early Blood Duster (maybe up to “Yeeest”) or Cheese Grater Sodomy.. The genre variations are not qualitatively “sky high”, a few slaps on a bass guitar don’t make you Infectious Grooves for instance, however the ideas are there and work since the whole album music relects the theme of the cover artwork: a cartoonish drawing depicting a desaster flowing in the streets, including elements of rape, crumbling skyscrapers, black blocs thrashing shop windows, punks beating helpless civils, firemens driving full speed etc. The vocals are savage and just hop from deathvomit grunts to various tonalities of screams etc. The music is just a total hodgepodge of genres but it works, overally, even if the energy is not always top (as Birdflesh for instance) However even if wild, we’re not to the level of total madness of the Japanese, so basically you got a solid death/grind work with lots of variation, just like the aforementioned or the latest Purulent Spermcanal.

Now I have also to admit I have grown a little bored of hilarious grind. Even if this band knows how to play and I really don’t give a damn about the no-poser attitude they have in the pics (sometimes this obsession of being no-posers sounds as artificial as wearing corpse paint, and what’s that fucking shirt with marijuana leaves??), what is really a turn down is the lyrics dept. These are among the cheapest, most banal HC Punk lyrics I have read in a long time. They can be summed up in Brutal Truth “Time” and “Walking Corpse” plus a bunch of the Exit-13 obsession for smoking. Apart from being total prose, they just keep saying you have to fuck the system and that you’re crystallized in a huge machine that is the bad society… Yawn… how can one still write this shit in 2004? I also admit I have a huge aversion for bands that insert marijuana themes in Grind and Death so maybe this thing touched me a bit on a sensitive spot. I still also think there is some importance in the aesthetics of a band (it’s not all important if a band is shit but it has a small relevance in the whole), I am as bored by this no attitude as much as by those kids with 62 patches of underground bands on their denim jackets. And what’s more I still believe heavy music is about aggression, depression, cruelty, gore or whatever extreme topic you might find, and well, socially aware lyrics are also Ok as well, but they must at least make you think a bit… there is more good in a old Minor Threat song lyrics than in this whole booklet. The song about the scene was described much better by Slapshot’s “Chameleon” than this 10 years old kid thing I read here.

So generally I want to keep on judging the music. It’s good solid, and I think it gives the best when playing a bit more straightforward manner, I guess I have got my dose of Mr Bungle and it suffices. But generally speaking, it’s good and well constructed, even the trips are arranged well.

1 - Certain Death 2 - Undead 3 - Sadus Attack 4 - Torture 5 - And Then You Die 6 - Hands of Fate 7 - Twisted Face 8 - Fight or Die 9 - Illusions 10 - Chemical Exposure

Today is my birthday. They say when one dies or comes close to die, one sees his whole life running before his eyes, so I decided to look hindsight and take one classic that really marked me forever. This time I dug up a klassik that was impossibly important in my musical life. Sadus has been one of my favourite bands for a long time as a teenager, I even painted their logo in sickly green on my backpack when I was in middle school. This album is the epitome of speed, voracious speed that destroys everything with a really unsurpassed class. Here we are in a really weird place stylistically becouse this album stands somewhere between Speed, Thrash and Death Metal belonging equally to all scenes, I really would not think it would be fair to catalog it, just as I would not do it for, say, Pestilence‘s first two albums. This album was recorded after the second demo, under the name “Illusions”, produced by John Marshall of Metal Church (shit band) but the cover artwork was changed when it was repressed by Roadracer (Roadrunner’s subsidiary dedicated to extreme sounds), I wished I could scan the album cover but I have an A4 scanner so it didn’t fit. I scanned the Cd version instead, which is not so common anyway. Now that I have a photo-editing software I tried to bring forth the original image on the cover… well this is the result. I read in a very old fanzine that they decided to change the cover art becouse the two S at the beginning and end of the old logo resembled too much the German SS symbol, but that might be just gossip.

So where to begin? People today like to talk about how talented Steve DiGiorgio is and stuff, but the real point is that this band really had an equal share of talent from all the musician not just the fretless virtuoso, as the songs are tight and, damn, so fucking FAST! Okay now we might have faster bands today but they likely don’t give you the “sensation” of being dragged at light speed through the universe and back in 29 minutes (Hey, so much fuss for “Reign in Blood” and this album was as long!). It’s just the chemistry of it all that works so splendidly. The drums ae a constant rumble, capable of tricky changes, and this was the very first time I heard a band with a bass solo that I can think of, but really what I loved in Sadus were those atrocious nasty vocals. I can’t remember of anybody with that damn shrieking, nerve twitching note, it was really a pity that Darren lost totally this trademark after the second album “Swallowed in Black” becouse the third one already gave signs of rust (not to mention the last stuff…). The atonal, squawking shrills were something perfect and unique in that blend of boiling rhytmic structure and hyperfast techncial riffing. Lots of people had serious problems with this way of singing, and they disregarded the band becouse they couldn’t attune to them, but today we’re probably used to that (especially after all those horrible 4th generation black metal shit we get every day on MTV). All the songs have abrupt breath-cracking tempo changes and all the rhymes in the lyrics were uttered so quickly they almost sound like a spelling exercise. Really I can’t stress how much I fucking love this, it’s one of the great masterpieces of thrash and death alike, nothing for me has really equalled the sense of deaththrashing, headbanging, neckbreaking speed I got from “Illusions”. I also liked the lyrics, as they were so twisted… there was a neat tinge of negativity and sense of catastrophe related to a faint environmental conscience in them. Sure we have zombies and butchery, but also a wasteland of chemical desasters, nuclear sickness etc. and everything just fits the music so perfectly. Sick green cover, a big nuclear reactor symbol overimpressed on the Cd, lyrics that talk about radiations and chemicals, bass lines that remember boiling concoctions… man this is genius,

We’re not much distant from the demo material however, as the first 2 (and third too) demos were already 99% mature for print. They also have been recently reprinted however, so try to get one copy of that repress (I don’t know if the sound quality has been retouched however, but the original demos are great anuff). I heard Displeased is reprinting this cult classic, so if you don’t have this monster, wait for it to be released (hopefully in a proper way).

1 - Consumation 2 - Cadaverous Sculptures 3 - Butcher Knife Phlebotomy 4 - The Ravenous Addiction 5 - Cadaverous Sculptures 6 - Re-Animate 7 - Ripped, Chopped, Severed 8 - Ruthlessly Scissored 9 - Exit Mortality

I always thought Mortal Decay was one of the best Death Metal bands around these days, ever since Kelly left Deathrune to join them, and I was lucky enough to get a demo of the band early on (hey, I need to write a Deathrune review one of these days, that was a fucking great band). Anyway there is a problem when you realize such a masterpiece as “Forensic”, and it’s that you have to keep that level of intensity even when you change more than 50% of the line-up (seems there is 3/5 of the band is made up of ex-Insatanity members, I made a interview with that band in 1996, I’ll try to post it). The vocals have changed a lot this time, less deep and orcish, and much more articulated. I must admit I am not 100% satisfied by this album. Sure it rocks, but compared to the previous one something is amiss. I loved “Forensic” becouse the music was always evolving… every riffs was fading as a new one was dropping in, and you get the idea of a constant mutation, you know, like the metamorphosis of the Xenovore in Alien. The vocals shifted constantly in a continuous monstrous evolution… Well this album is still 100% Mortal Decay, yet there is a real sovrabundance of solos, drum tricks, technical showoffs etc. While we had all of these in the previous album, here things seem as cut and pasted in a too classical manner. We are not one but two full feet behind this time, just take the opening riff of “Butcher Knife Phlebotomy” and strip it of distortion and you almost get an Hard Rock gallop. Really I have heard this album thrice and still feel like there is nothing to discover. Fast-slow, fast slow, solos everywhere… forgive me but it’s been quite a delusion. There are some riffs which are really hateful tarantella, everything seems just fucked up. How could this happen to a band like this? It’s as bad as the new Abscess, and I am saying a hard thing… The packaging is good stuff from the exterior, starting from a real delightful Par Oloffson work, though the interior is rather bare… just yellow font on black, the graphic artist should have taken 3 minutes to assemble it. Honestly, I won’t buy this album myself.

1 - A Desired Surgical Procedure that Interferes with the Change of Sex by Reconnecting the Urinary System as a Result that the Prostate Releases a Fetid Secretion of Gonorrhoea Caused by Insufficient Genital Hygiene 2 - Urethral Shock 3 - Pleurourieczema Caryapiocianeuse Pitodenal Release With the Loss of External Smegm 4 - Lybidoous Symptoms for Clitoral Pyorrhoea ... 62 more (give me time)

Ayeah! I really like this shit! This band has everything was missing in Tumour in my opinion. Here we have the mighty Urine Festival, among the very first cyber-goregrind projects ever, dissected early on from the ribs of an early incarnation of Last Days of Humanity (probably the bone just fell off due to severe infection and suppuration of the necrotic flesh around the smoldering pus filled maggot swarming ribcage, ah ah!). This Cd looks simply delicious, the layout semi professional, if the pictures were of correct resolution here might have had something of the level of a Black Hole release, if we talk about graphics. The borders are bloodstained and you get these nice photos of surgery over severely infected genitalia. The chick in the cover has been probably sewn for reconstruction after infibulation or something similar, becouse there are stitches everywhere and a catheter jutting out of her fucking great lips. The choice of using small, unreadable fonts in dark green on red might be debatable but it might not be totally out of place. this is not a simple release after all, so why you should have a nice time reading the titles?

So Urine Festival plays cyber-gore shit or porn-gore with drum machine or whatever. I have been following this band for a long time and it was fantatic to hear a full length Cd at last had been released by the man Marc himself and his fantastic Klsyma records (finally back on the scene after the not so recent Last Days of Humanity/Stoma) . Here we have again the fantastic, gurgling, boiling water effect vocals we loved so much in Tumour, yet what differs here is the rest of the instruments: things are totally blasting and ton heavy here, with real churning brutal riffs; sometimes this band even remind me of Catasexual Urge Motivation, when things go totally fast and crazy. The distortion of all string instruments is fucking brutal, as heavy as old Squash Bowels or Dead Infection, yet the drum machine, even when blasting, is programmed to give the feel of constant breath-cutting pounding, so you never got a release from the thick fog of fetid urine miasma and genital infections this band assembles. Songs here are real short, averagely running from 4 to 30 seconds, ending up at just 30 minutes before the ending 35 minute long 66th track (soo Satanic! Ahr Ahr). Some porn samples in the mix just to give some break to this maelstrom. The samples are not always in the beginning of the songs, but mostly scattered, like old Meat Shits (cult). The Cd is really not overly varied but as I said with “Consume the Forsaken” by Disgorge (another cult album, yet totally different stuff), that’s what probably makes it possible to hear an album like this for hours without tiring. Track 66 sounds like some experimentation, here we have the two guys fucking from the beginning of the Cd once again screwing some meat. You hear this moaning and grinting for a 30 minute fuck with jazzy drum tempos in the background as if someone had placed a mic in the middle of a rehearsal room, but in the end you get a bonus 30 seconds track.

Super heavy and sick, yet the drum machine and totally inhuman vocals might not appeal people into Brutal Death Metal only, independently how furious. But this is an important release indeed, as it was really among the first on this kind of experiments. If one wants to hear how a cyber-goregrind band sounds I’d definitely suggest this!

1 - Shitfaced 2 - Ceasarian Stich Ruster 3 - Skagwhoreskanskslutbitch 4 - Mountain of Filth 5 - Sex Offender 6 - Cum Dumpster 7 - Amputee Delight 8 - Erotic Oxygen Deprivation 9 - Outro 10 -Diarrhea of a Madman 11 - Abscess Throat 12 - Memorial Day Massacre 13 - Slamhog 14 - An Abundance of Mother Love

This Cd is simply horrible. Starting from the cover and packaging it’s a fucking bundle of lo-fi garbage centered on the themes of sexual sickness, gerontophilia and of course, excrements. The pictures used on the front cover (geez, these Japanese people are really the sickest in the world) and inner graphics are totally fucked up grabbed plainly from the Internet (many I have seen multiple times), with fist size pixels and not the farthest idea of a border or taste for layout. As you put the disc on the Cd player you recognize the shit inside could be nothing but scat-gore grind, with super sewer sound, phlegmy vocals, some thin shrieks and abundance of movie samples. Like for the artwork, there is no talent or finesse here, just I don’t give a fuck gore-grind, plain and simple. The Cd is kind of divided into 4 parts, the earliest songs are the most recent ones, and in my opinion the best ones, there are a few in which the singers starts clearing his throat from the phlegm and the guitars really become so cruchy and downtuned they almost sound like they were frying fish and chips on the speakers. As the Cd proceeds, you basically get earlier and earlier material, until the last track which was recorded back in 1995 (damn, already 11 years?). No need to add this delirium is really my kind of music, fucked up sound and everything, and I couldn’t retstrain from buying it after 2 seconds had elapsed from the start. The real flaws on this disc however are a fundamental lack of a real ogre singer (I wonder what this band could do with a better use of harmonizers or a inborn talented phlegm-master like Stevo of Impetigo) and the sound of the guitars which gets thinnner in the bonus tracks (from track 10 on) but as said before the last tracks have been recorded later so… Fucking great, even the radio station samplers in the end. AH!

1 - Scars of The Crucifix 2 - Mad At God 3 - Conquered By Sodom 4 - Fuck Your God 5 - When Heaven Burns 	6 - Enchanted Nightmare 7 - From Darkness Come 8 - Go Now Your Lord Is Dead	9 - The Pentecostal

True, I have always supported that Deicide have faced an unexpected and inexorbale backfire after that legendary album “Legion” which has been their masterpiece, not to mention one of the most unique Death Metal records ever released. Although I have to admits that in this album the group has returned to indeed remarkable qualitative levels. “Scars of the Crucifix” is not perhaps a meisterwerk of absolute innovation but it is for sure a turning point for several aspects which the band carried out thus far as steady marks of their unique sound in the past 10 and over years. First of all the album is indeed varied, complex and at the same time kissed by a remarkable compositiva consistency. To begin with, the Hoffman bros have loosened a bit their vice as far as their “noise” integralism on solos is concerned: this time they are present, even vaguely melodic and give a character of artistic maturity to the entirety, which however remain pure bonegrinding Death Metal , with the mythical blasphemous lyrics without too many excesses of circumlocutions (“Fuck Your God “etc), vocals that seem articlated with clenched teeth, and the trademark blast beats. Undoubtedly this is the best thing that I hear from their part since “Legion”, and I add that in some points you wonder if you’re still listening to Deicide… In any case the last Deicide is indeed something to hear at least once, personally I think this is indeed a really beautiful album: complete, with a sky high recording quality (good ole Morrisound), and a shitload of blasphemous black energy. For those who were about to forget about them, here is a good show of what they’re still able to do. Superb!

1 - Still 2 - For What Cause? 3 - Crestfallen 4 - Death and Destruction 5 - Unreachable 6 - The Sentinel 7 -Wake Up the Dead 8 - Fuel 9 -Rid the Darkness 10 - Failure 11 - Connected 12 - Inget Val 13 - Incomplete	02:03 14 - Empty Souls 15 - Anew 16 - Tear You Apart 17 - Dethrone 18 - Förbrukad 19 - Remote 20 - Enigmatic 21 - Tema: Skit

Will Relapse ever stop to find great talents? And will Sweden ever stop to provide them with fresh meat? I have their split with Exhumed but failed to recognize all the due potential of this band, I guess I was too excited after the gore gore imagery of Exhumed to give them more than a fast listen. However in short we’re talking about the modern branch grind core, the one with superior recording quality and drum blasts that split the second in sheer precision, Gadget have the same charming rage of great bands like Rotten Sound and Cerebral Turbilency, although they have trade some of the earliers groove for some of the latters consistency and overall tightness. I do NOT care much for songs like “Failure” which is just a bunch of the same old bollocks: slow dissonant sonorities with a veil of sadness like the other million postcore (what’s the name of this shit today? Metalcore?) bands out there. When they blast they really touch remarkable levels of intensity, but when these parts set in… oh my… Erase track number ten and you get a really fantastic show of grind with the right proprotion of muscle and mind. Top notch.