Cool, a band from Brubank (California), home of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Fetus Eaters. It seems some demented humour has spilled out the Disney Studios down into Fetus Eater‘s rehearsal room somewhen in the past… their blend of crackbrained free grind is actually funny, but not annoying. some of the spirit of Schnauzer, Minch and Pissed Off Orgasm definitely has migrated here, although the music seems a bit more controlled than in the early days of noisecore cassettes. Fetus Eaters have broiled a solid bunch of crazy songs all about free screaming, nasty cartoon-like shrills and a bunch of grunts mixed with Green Beret-like grind and some Metal as well. While I like the spontaneity, I admit I have grown a bit bored of this kind of approach to grind, might it be that I hate Mr Bungle and similar “weird but with intelligence – hey man, I study philosphy in Bologna, please give food to my dog while I fix my dreadlocks” projects. Who knows. The good thing is that while savage and schizoid, the band doesn’t seem to lose ground in regards of brutality. Some tracks have actually really cool bridges, yet the continuous yells tend to a be a bit unnerving on the long run. I have some complaints on the packaging too – first off I generally don0t like greyscale booklets, they just look cheap – I think you could do a much better job with simple black and white and with the same money – but that’s fuss, ignore this comment. Second, reading the booklet was an agony. Not cryptic with style as in Demilich… more like let’s grab a cheap front from a random website, scatter the text around and let’s write nonsense shit like “some people actually like Manowar”… oh come on, I found that kind of humour cheesy even in 2nd grade school. While the dorection is good, I was expecting something more. But that might just be me… I am not much into experimenting lately.
Category: F
FETUS EATERS (USA-Ca): “Da Vinci Core” split Cd with DIORRHEA (Ita) 2007 Grindmind
FUNEBRARUM (USA-Nj): “Conjuration of the Sepulchral” split Cd with INTERMENT (swe) 2007 Conqueror of Thorns
So Funebrarum is finally back after the brilliant full length “Beneath the Columns of Abandoned Gods” released 6 years ago and the deluxe gatefuld 7″ “Dormant Hallucinations” which I sadly skipped (for a serie of reasons I won’t go through right now). It has to e pointed out how this band actually preceded a few years the recent “old school” gimmick of the last 2-3 years, as it was really the first release to completely and courageously tribute the old Finnish/Swedish scene on an album that is close to perfection.Releasing these two new songs as a split with Interment is surely a fitting choice as the band is still obsessed with the glorious and majestic sound of early nineties Finnish/Swedish Death Metal (which is my favourite genre ever as well by the way). Everything on these few minutes is still sweating old school grime, crusts and mold, and is as dark as the deepest zombie hole – and the sound is now, if possible, even slower and crunchier than before, resulting in a sticky web of sonorities that almost seem as if the tracks were recorded at 45rpm and played at 33. Like said before, there are only two new tracks in the album, considering one of the other 3 is an intro and the two remaining Abhorrence and Grave covers. I would use the same words that I used when I described their previous album but actually something has changed in the Funebrarum sound, and it’s that they have become much darker and heavier since the last time. The vocals are now very, very deep and the sound really fat and clogged by bass frequencies. I really love the new sound even if the riffs, by the contrary, seem a little bit less sicker and twisted.
The cover art is still done by the most supreme of the vintage artists Chris Moyen, even though there is a sligth blue/violet filter over it which seems quite odd – I’d have preferred pure black and white a release like this. But anyway this is meant to be a “nocturnal” release so I’ll go for the dark night shades. All the influences by bands like Abhorrence, Funebre, Purtenance etc are still huge here, so if you want good shit one must really check this out.
FURBOWL (Swe): “Those Shredded Dreams” Cd 1992 Step One
The almost unknown label Step One from Uppsala released in 1992 the first full-length of a very interesting band. Furbowl was born a few years after Joahn Axelsson left Carnage (he was on “The Day Man Lost”). Far from the grindcore sonorities of early Carnage, Liiva composed with Furbowl one of the most interesting and underrated albums of the entire old Swedish Death Metal movement. The guitar sound is the one we know: pure “Pieces”/”Left Hand Path” mush, down tuned , loose and obscure. Composition-wise, however, Furbowl never pointed much towards aggression alone (thanks god we had Grave for that!), even if some songs have actually a good number of killer riffs (“Sharkheaven” for one). The songs are really well thought, and apart from some attempts at trying to experiment beyond their abilities (the Typo’0’Negative vocals on “Razorblades” are definitely useless), you get here a real brilliant chunk of elaborate Swedish Death, with excellent hateful vocals, disturbing harmonies, and a dose of heavy R’n’R groove far beyond its time. It has to be noted that this band was made up of only two members – Liiva was doing all vocals, bass and guitar, while Max Thornell was responsible of percussions and a bunch of extremely well arranged keyboards. Sometimes the music becomes somewhat symphonic, but in a Pan-Thy-Monium / Master’s Hammer way, not mellow – the sick element is always present. Furbowl was a band able to blend an excellent selection of aggressive riffs, rocking and rolling grooves and the classical Swedish evocative melodies. I also liked the lyrics, introspective and choked with depression and anger. Michael Amott from Carcass was guest for two solos on this album, and was also the one who produced the Cd. Could be fun to know that the band changed name to Devourment, for a while…FAECES ERUPTION (Hol): s/t split Cd with FLATV5 2007 Grindfest/Urethra
As usual, things get hotter when we are talking about Faeces Eruption. This band plays sick and blasting goregrind the real Dutch way, in the vein of Tumour and Acrotomophilia. Excessively soaked sound, hyper-harmonized hog vocals, gruesomely chaotic riffs that tend to blend in the background and sick pathological song titles. Geert here does everything, from drum programming to bass work, seems like Holland has a good share of one man projects playing Goregrind, maybe an offshoot of their formerly huge electronic music scene. I listened through and through the album 5 times and yet I cannot understand exactly the difference between the two productions as announced by the label. The sound seems quite similar to me but according to the info sheet, the second part should be way heavier with multiple bass lines. What else to say, this is a real massacre to pump up at full volume in the parking lot front of a cinema so you can look the horror on the face of common people. Multilayered grotesque vocals and one million bpm drum bloodbath, so adorable.FLATV5 (Cze): s/t split Cd with FAECES ERUPTION (Hol) 2007 Grindfest/Urethra
Lately I have not been listening to much goregrind with drum machine, it all just kinda got me saturated with dozens of mostly pointless bedroom projects. But I recognize something good when I hear it, and this Flatv5 one man product does a nice work. The best part in the whole project is the songs are made up an extremely good guitarwork, reminding more of moshpit grindcore a la Neuropathia or Ahumado Granujo, rather than sludgy German stuff. The vocals are a mix of liquid gargles and hoarse screams, which are used mostly as an instrument (Sublime Cadaveric Decomposition-style) as I strongly doubt there are any lyrics here. George also uses some burps and animal squeals to spice things up and it works nice. Even if the songs are fast, it really sounds a bit lighter and simpler than the Faeces Eruption part but I admit I liked this band I didn’t know before. Flatvs5 is a project of Definitive Verdict member Geroge Prczaag, which recently moved from Metal to cyberworks. Even if one man projects are usually boring, this is a good band with lots of good ideas. You have to like relentless drum machine gunnery to properly appreciate it – though. Nice cover art , if somewhat clichèd.