Archive for December 2012

The best thing about this tape is that I have no fucking idea how I ended up owning it. I cannot for the life of me remember where I got the thing from! Anyway, this is a transparent purple tape containing a live set of Birdflesh performing in Japan. The quality is fairly clear, and the band play all the hits, but it definitely remains at the level of being a completist item for Birdflesh fans; I…

This isn’t as distorted and harsh as I originally thought it would be. The noise slowly builds and builds, and when the hellish garbled drone kicks in fully it is still without any eardrum penetrating fuzz or hiss. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; Torturing Nurse’s rumbling, harrowing soundscape of death is perfect just the way it is. It levels out a bit as it continues and some nice haunting female vocals weave in and…

Welcome to part 2 of my Christmas Day double post! Not sure how many of you will actually be reading this on Christmas but I hope the festivities have progressed satisfactorily for you all. I for one will be no doubt smashed off my face by now on my parent’s free beer. Can’t beat the Christmas visit! This year’s Decibel Christmas flexi is a follow up to last years cracking ANb EP, A Joyful Noise….

Ho ho ho! Merry fucking Christmas! Hope your having a good one and that plenty of turkey and grog is consumed. In line with the festivities, I have planned a double post for today, showcasing both the Agoraphobic Nosebleed flexis put out by Decibel magazine. I’ll start with my favourite – the former of the two; last year’s Make A Joyful Noise on square transparent red. These flexis are an absolute bastard to get in…

Look It’s been a good while since I last reviewed a tape (the Electric Wizard one that went up yesterday was written months ago), so seeing as I bought a few recently it’s high time I did some more tape posts. This is my first ever Merzbow purchase and potentially an in-road onto a long slippery slope of trying to collect all his shit. I went through the same fad in 2007 with Agathocles, and…

So if you weren’t at the London show when this 7″ came out, you were pretty much boned for an original copy! Represses exist on 7″ though thanks to Rise Above, and the EP was released more nationally as a free copy by the good folk at Terrorizer magazine, on the excellently under-rated format of tape and with a couple of extra tracks thrown in for good measure! You though vinyl had a warm sound?…

Every now and then, in all scenes of music, a band or artist will come along and snowball into something massive. Insect Warfare were an absolutely fantastic grindcore band, so at least in that case they weren’t shite as well as overrated. It’ll just be the latter then. Phew. I feel bad writing that because I believe and want decent bands to get the attention and exposure that they deserve, but I don’t think anyone can deny…

This is the first Jesu record I heard and it is still probably one of my favourite releases by him. It also introduced me to Jarboe, which opened up a whole can of worms in my life in the form of Swans (another very long story for another day), who appears here as a special guest, not to mention as a precursor to the pair’s collaboration album that would follow. Lifeline was released on the…

One doesn’t really know where to start when it comes to analyzing the works of Steve Albini, and if I’m honest I’m still a total amateur on the subject; although I guess Songs About Fucking is a great place to start considering it is rather well known. I kinda worked my way backwards through the world of drum-machine propelled music, starting with Agoraphobic Nosebleed and other digigrinders, then onto Godflesh and other industrial. Big Black,…

Pig Destroyer’s Prowler record is considered a modern classic in the world of American grind, and it doesn’t take a genius to see why. Adding a poetic, dark and downright creepy edge to the hyper-precision blasts helped Pig Destroyer stand apart from the legions of other grindcore acts clamoring for attention; and despite what your opinion is on what Pig Destroyer has become these days, it is very hard to deny that Prowler isn’t an absolute corker…

This here is the fantastic repress on Power It Up Records. Mine, unfortunately, is not the edition with the bonus 7″ (I didn’t know it existed when I bought this, which is a shame as I wouldn’t have minded paying a bit extra for the whole set). This set contains Effortless Regurgitation… on one slab of wax, and the Concrete Human Torture tape plastered onto a single side of another slab of wax. Adorning side…

Om were an accidental discovery for me. I have had the mp3s of Pilgrimage for years thanks to a friend, but I had never truly appreciated them. To me it literally just seemed like SleepLite. What was the fucking point? Anyway, I’ll cut the bullshit and get straight to the point. One day I decided to try and smoke as much weed as I possibly could. I’m not talking “oh, let’s get totally baked”, I’m talking about…

What I’ve got here in today’s post is Bongripper’s 3rd pressing of Satan Worshipping Doom, which I wisely picked up at Roadburn in April. The band release all their records themselves, and it is now worth a small fortune on Discogs. Also, this is going to sound rather bizarre, but I see this as less of a record and more as a reminder, or a testament, to the band’s fucking mind-blowing set at Roadburn festival 2012. I gotta…

Imagine how stupid I felt after shelling out for the super-ultra-mega-wicked-limited edition of this record that was ONLY available at day one of Roadburn 2012 when I found out there was actually less to it than the normal Relapse package and a few quid more expensive! Bitch please! In a European world where records cost an average of 20 Euros each I was not impressed. Never mind, I guess it is the same record regardless,…

(2020 edit: It’s worth mentioning that in the last 8 years since this review was written, I have grown up considerably, and now appreciate The Burning World for what it is. Either way, here’s the 2012 review in its original format, some of which is also a bit factually inaccurate, so please take it with a pinch of salt.) Hmmm, this is going to be a controversial one for me. I don’t know how I…

This is one of the chunkiest metal productions I have heard in quite some time. Nothing Violates This Nature is an amazing performance from start to finish; mixing the blistering ferocity of grindcore with the, dare I say it, artsy hardcore edge of stuff like Converge, even Dillenger et al. (2017 edit: I have since discovered that not only is Converge drummer Ben Koller in the fucking band, but this record was produced by Kurt…

As much as I facking adore Fukpig I can’t help but get tits-bored of this album by track three or something. I almost feel bad writing this, but this record is equal amounts nasty, heavy and boring. I know that it is hard to be original in the d-beat/crust corner of grind and punk, but even when Fukpig bring their own rather unique black metal-esque distorted tinge to the table, the combination of different outcomes is still disappointingly low….

(2021 Edit: You can thank Photobucket once again for shafting me out of the images of my record collection. Please enjoy this watermarked piece of shit! Ta!) I never thought that I’d end up with some of this band’s lesser available stuff, so I was chuft to see some excellent vinyl on sale really cheap on the recent Cemetery Rapist / Anal Penetration UK tour. This was the ridiculous price of £6, which is great because I never…

I don’t normally like post rock type stuff. Sure, I appreciate what the genre is all about, the sheer scope and beauty of it seems fantastic on paper, but for the most part I just can’t see passed the whole twinkly-twinkly-becomes-epic-climax-in-7-11-minutes thing. Ugh. Build, bash, repeat. Wow, that’s art, man. What I like about Year Of No Light however is that they retain the post rock epic and meld it with something more dark and…

For me, Pentastar is the essential first listen album for Earth. It combines the dizzying drones from the first few records with the unusual penchant for traditional song structures that would pave the way for the band’s later, more clean and folky shoegazer efforts. This is the last Earth record to fully embrace the wonders of the fuzz, and for this reason alone it must be worshipped! What I have here is the excellent value…

(2020 Update: Scorn is now back and released a new EP and new full length in 2019! Yay!) Sadly, Yozza (released in the arse-end of 2011) was to be the last thing that Mick Harris would put out under the Scorn moniker after 20 long years of pushing the boundaries of underground electronic music. Looking back now, it is hard to believe how far ahead of the times Scorn was; playing something that was the…

What I have here for review is the 1997 Morbid Records (RIP) LP release of Humarrogance. The sound is that of the usual Agathocles stock, if not a little crisper than most recordings. The tracks blast and grind away with impressive mincing fury until it comes to an abrupt halt at the start of track eight, “White Horse”. This song has a strange rock and roll vibe to it, and it is very refreshing to…

Gorgonized Dorks may be painfully noisy in their approach to grind, but at least they do it right. Odd keyboard tones accompany crusty drumming and a highly-punk-influenced guitar and bass performance. It’s highly infectious stuff, torn apart by vocalist Katz’ harsh laments. If you like this or not will depend entirely on your tolerance for the noisier, more distorted side of grind. Not so much can be said for Xanax Feast, unfortunately. You can barely…