Category: Reviews by Country

  • SPEARHEAD (Eng): “Decrowning the Irenarch” Lp Cd 2007 Invictus

    SpearheadBefore I start the whining, let me state that this Cd looks real terrific. The design here is tremendous, woefully elegant and definitely classy. The cover art is not only intricately beautiful, but it also reflects a very strong concept that permeates the whole release. War. Struggle as the means of man to overcome mediocrity and avoid corruption and degrade. Historical references appear as pictures of iconic representations in a sleek sepia packaging that is perfect even in the choice of fonts. This is really beautiful to look at. I was even remotely intrigued by the lyrics and foreword on their take on the irenarchs of the past and present.

    I always find it a bit difficult to find parallels between boys that play musical instruments on stage and maybe participate in a few weekend full contact sessions with paint guns and real soldiers that see their friends torn to pieces by shrapnels, that visit places where real people die including your strict relatives. But the philosophical message here is strong and that’s not the weak spot on this album: it’s the music that really fails here. This album is one of the best examples of hideously generic thrash/death metal I have heard this year. Sure ly some riffs are nice, and they even attempt a killer echoing “ugh ugh” during the first fast opening riff in the best Celtic Frost tradition, and the solos are actually thought out and cool – but the scattering of good chords and soporific mid tempos is quite hard to understand and to find any coherence in. It’s like that movie “Memento” where all the scenes are cut and pasted backwards. You hear the same mediocre galloping riff 8 times, and then a completely different one drops in, coming from some third grade band from Melbourne. It’s as if someone cut the film in the cassette master and hastily taped it together randomly. This again doesn’t mean they inherently suck, they’re just totally unbearable because thrashing energy never bursts out, always squeezed in a vaguely Australian styled neo “denim plus million patches” Thrash Metal composition that really tastes like Kosher meat without seasoning. The vocals are terribly banal but for once I won’t twist the knife in the wound. This band is definitely not for me, even if the premises were good it lacks completely of catchiness. If only they could take an inch of old Vader or Sadus they could as well be something. As it is I could barely keep my lids open after 10 minutes of mono-frequency vocals and semi identical riffs. Not as bad as the previous one but still light years from being interesting.

  • EXHIBIT-A (Aus): “Home Dentistry” split Cd with ROADSIDE BURIAL (Aus) 2008 Grindhead

    Exhibit ANo. I am not really going to take it. A few dozen tracks written between 2000 and 2001 and exhumed just for sharing plastic with Roadside Burial. I admit this band is slightly more savage and deranged, and all in all it’s nto so bad, but i don’t feel very merciful these days. This band is fast, chaotic, has some shredding Japanese like screams and a monster gruff sound, which is fine, but it really leaves much after you listen to it. Even if more varied, the constant vibration of the high screams soon make this listening a test of patience. It might be okay for a listen, but not so much as to spend your money on I am afraid. I really start to miss old dirty grindcore of the eighties/early nineties and the bulldozing energy of Last Days of Humanity – these bands really have no much soul. Still better than post-Nasum washing machine gind but even this Australian prototypical drunk grind is getting a bit overheated.

    I like the weirdo approach and the unpredictable song writing, and I loved the crdue way the tracks are hacked so you can hear the moment one ends and another start. But it’s a bit little for a band to stand out of the drowd today. From Grindhead I loved Eyetofuk much, much better.

  • ROADSIDE BURIAL (Aus): “Such Is Life” split Cd with EXHIBIT-A (Aus) 2008 Grindhead

    Roadside BurialRoadside Burial is ex-Volatile, a rather unknown band, at least here in Europe, who supposedly played grindcore. Personally I have never heard Volatile, even if the name is so fucking cool…(1, 2, 3)… NOT! A two men band with a terrible sounding drum machine isn’t exactly what usually stirs interest in me but considering how many times I have been wrong by judging Cds by the cover lately, I swear I am putting myself in trancelike state while listening to this record so I can be as objective as possible.

    Let me see… the vocals are cool, of the two-layered kind you know. The riffs are little more than crust core a la Discharge lus some metal added. These drums are unbearable so let’s skip them for once. Well to say this stuff is unremarkable would be a desperately honest judgment. If this band was from Czech republic and had Bizarre Leprous routine 2 second shit cover I would have already thrown it in the “average death metal” heap. Being a Australian band with a 15 year background, I want to convince there is more here than a bunch of riffs written after a dope party over a totally anonymous drum machine program. No – really – this is not bad stuff, but so incredibly average I would barely recommend it unless you have 5 euros in your pocket after a bad show in a local squat and need to go home with something new. There are still good bands around that have to be exploited (since we talk Australian ground, get the latest Cemetery Urn album – pure gold), I see no need to go with this, not to mention the artwork on cover is really routine too. Good guitar sound, cool vocals, if nothing else.

  • PROFANATICA (USA/Ny): “Profanatitas De Domonatia” Lp Cd 2008 Hell’s Headbangers

    PROFANATICAI decided to exhume an old review from the previous website (remember you can access all the old reviews by clicking the “old reviews” link in the sidebar) just for the occasion. Like I used to say, Profanatica was one of my favorite Black Metal bands, to receive their new album is a fucking event. The question is: will this reunion work? Or we’ve just been lucky with Archgoat?

    In short, I will tell you that this is really one of the top 5 Black Metal albums of the year. Ask someone with a brain what Black Metal is and you’ll get similar answers. It has to be misanthropic, alienating, mesmerizing, insane, demonical, inhuman. All these elements are still present and strong in Profanatica‘s sound, goddamnit! And in a perfect balance as well. This is one of the bands that paved the genre and they still do it brilliantly. You don’t get the evocative ballads of Burzum or the merry sing along riffs of Watain here: just unrefined, raw Black Metal force, a sticky black fluid that absorbs life and happiness flows out of the stereo once you put “Profanatitas…” on the turntable. This is also one of the best releases from Hell’s Headbangers so far too, it was a cool relief to hear that some bands actually withstand the test of time so well.

    Just like it should be for real Black Metal, there are no fancy evolutions here: everything is stripped to the absolute minimal – drums are just a constant droning sound in the background, an almost tribal hypnotic beating. The riffs have the crushing, slow force that pressed nails in jesus’s hands and feet. The vocals a lacerating lament, gargling with hateful spite for living things. I cannot think of a better expression of good old fashioned BlackMetal. You can almost figure yourself in the middle of a bestial orgy, surrounded by the smell of sulfur and brimstone, black robed priests with leper gnawing human bones and virgins fucking with goats and dogs. This is definitely a must-fucking-have album.

    The artwork is cool but the booklet is a little bare, just folded cardboard. Thinking about it a second time, it fits the release – but I’ll personally go for the vinyl. Get the 12″ version if you find it, its force is doubled on old school vinyl with all the pops and crackling. Again, absolutely a must have.

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

    Demos and rare shit
    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!

  • VV.AA. (n/a): “Septic Shock – 4 Way Split” Cd-r 2006 Septic System

    Septic Shock - 4 Way Split
    Septic Shock – 4 Way Split

    Hey so finally I got something from Septic System records to show you for your delight! First off this is not a pro-done Cd but a Cd-r that comes in a plastic bag, but for sure these graphics are accurate. I have seen pro silver discs in way uglier packagings. The first thing I thought when I got this 4 way was that it looked a bit like a release from Fecal Matter and actually, the layout has been done by The Rev, eh! It’s dripping so much shit and goo you don’t know how to handle it ah ah. Total scat gore aadoration! The bands contained herein are quite distinct in sound, and are arranged as follows:
    RAPIST WITH NO PENIS plays a very noisy breed of gore/grind with drum machine. The vocals are gurgling deep, but not completely fucked up, you can still understand this guy articulates something with his mouth, even if the roar is quite low. Musically this is mostly very simple mid tempos goregrind with some loops and skillfully placed samples (the last song has that popping noise that sounds like the 80’s hit “Pop Corn”, ah ah). The sound is very, very rough, but we’re still in the realm of the understandable, mostly we get very distorted sound with a lot of dirt, but the riffs are still clear. I’d reccomend this band to lovers of mid paced sludgy goregrind and a knack for fetid sounds. 7.50 to me.
    BOWEL FETUS strikes here with his trademark, foul apocalyptic concoction of sick Death Metal a la Autopsy and vocals that remind the sound of the chain stays of a bycicle falling off the sockets. This single song in the 4 way is still totally Autopsy in feel, but degenerates slowly into a wasteland of quicksand, Doom, muck and corpses a la Disembowelement or Halo. I cannot tell exactly how much I love this shit, everything is just arranged in the right fucking way: great guitar distortion and fabulous chords of doom, a realistc drum sound, and nasty boiling vocals… No shit here, I think this could be really a ultimate band, one of the 10 best in the world today if they got a vocalist like Gurge of Lord Gore. Mind ye, I think these vocals are okay, and they’re probably the only element that stitches Bowel Fetus to the Gore Grind genre, but I have the feeling with some different vocals, we could really have some astounding, spectacular results… nonetheless a full 9.00 fucking here!
    BASKET OF DEATH is completely space noize stuff instead. This is the chaotic, wicked kind of noise grind that only far easteners seems to be able to produce. The drum machine is beating a totally gabber disco tempo, with 100% artificial sound, but above that, everything seems to be allowed. Frequencies and distortions, guitar loops, multiple layers of distorted vocals, even sampled parts of what seem rehearsals of traditional instrumental bands. The cool thing is that there’s always different things moving at the same time, so you can concentrate on this drone bass sound in the background or the muffled vocals or whatever is up and always get something different. Ahone must be crazy to hear this stuff, you get the impression of hearing a cassette which has been overdubbed ten times with Boredoms and a score of other noise bands. An 8.00 is deserved
    OUTHOUSE keeps following the Noisecore line, but a bit less refined than Basket of Death, mostly you get impossibly rough shit a la Anal Birth but instead of a constant wave of noise, you get a more mid tempos, short blasts of fury and oversaturated vocals above a thick carpet of fuzzy noise shit. There are some samples here as well, but you don’t get the same impression of listening to several albums simultanously, this stuff is a bit rawer and siimpler. There are some spoken vocals as well in the mix, and a good half of this track is just a long dialogue. I’d give this band a 7.00.

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

    594This 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.