Holy shit this is some of the grooviest goregrind stuff I’ve heard in a long while! I just wanna get up and dance around the house, or more preferably a muddy field in the Czech Republic. I’m glad to be set to release a 4″ record of this guy later this year – that is something I am greatly looking forward to. Pairing the nasty sounds of early LDOH with the “vibe” that I can only associate with the Myspace days of goregrind, and taking the groovy riffs and pitch-shifted vocal styles along the lines of Rompeprop, Dehydrated Tissues packs a hell of a gory punch! Gore Junkie was written and recorded entirely by the one member of the group; Bobby Maggard. It was also self-released on his own label, the aptly-titled Regurgitated Stoma Stew Productions. You can get this record (and hundreds of others) directly from the guy himself so check out his stuff!
To celebrate the recent “fixing” of my record player so that it now plays records smaller than 6″, here is another 5″ review! Where can one possibly go wrong with a 5″ full of Gang Green covers? ANb’s cover of “Alcohol” is punchy and bouncy, and is virtually flawless with Randall back on the mic. That’ll do Hull, that’ll do. I am unfamiliar at this point with Armageddon Nuclear System (more commonly known as ANS) but they do a damn fine version of “Let’s Drink Some Beer”, and also contribute a short original song to the proceedings, which is a bit odd but I’m cool with. Out on a smorgasbord of colours thanks to Tank Crimes.
Now this IS interesting. I suppose just like me you have always wondered what happens when you mix Anal Cunt’s offensive comedy / hate grind with pitchshifted goregrind from hell? Ha ha! Well, the end result turns out sounding a lot like Bowel Rot, who have managed to surprise me with some originality regarding the mixing up of sub-genres. I can safely say I had never thought of this type of mix before. The guitar work is sludgy and down-tuned just like early AxCx, but the typical riffs and blasts are over-lapped by frenetic goregrind blasting and horrendous pitchshifted vocals, which really does make for an interesting listen. Some of the song titles are absolute gems as well. We can thank No Effort Recordings for bringing us this 35-track album on a fairly professional looking CDr format.
Nearly a year in the works, Ohio’s one man harsh noise and power electronics magician Arseterror finally meets the ongoing experiment Life is Easy on the format of split tape. featuring roughly 20 minutes of music from each artist; Arseterror first with the 20 minute maddening contribution, “Camptown Racist”. Life is Easy contributes two unreleased drones from 2007 that have been festering away in the vaults for years. Strictly limited to 15 physical copies, all hand made and assembled with disgusting hentai artwork and lovely jubbly pink ink! comes with a tape only bonus track “Josie”, which can never be heard anywhere other than on this tape! I put this out myself on my part-time label Pointless Records – so if you want a copy just hit me up with a tradelist or drop me a message on Facebook. You can also add Pointless on Facebook here (2021 edit: links be dead, bruv).
For me, Endtyme stands apart from anything else in the Cathedral discography. They have done dark before, sure, one needs not look further than the debut album to realise that, but that record is a whole other sack of decapitated witch heads. Here, Cathedral are chuggy and enormously groovy-heavy; and in a certain way take their groovy doom and smash it head on with the styles on display in the debut. Once I read somewhere a quote that more-or-less said “Endtyme proves that Cathedral can still bang heads”, and that pretty much sums it up. “Melancholy Emperor” remained a Cathedral staple and ended up even on the Earache best of called The Serpent’s Gold, “Whores to Oblivion” is catchy as shit, even featuring something that comes close to harsh noise at the end! Talk about variety! “Alchemist of Sorrow” is one of my favourite Cathedral songs, the opening lines of “I am Midas in reverse, my gold has turned to lead” are possibly the best example of Lee Dorrian’s vocals ever (it’s either that or “Huggy Bear? Oh yeah!”). Released a fuckload of time ago on Earache Records and strangely, this pressing was confined only to CD, which is very unusual for a band like Cathedral.
I’ve never been a big Linkin Park fan, even though Hybrid Theory was the first album I ever bought with my own money when I was 11 years old. I’d lost all interest by the time the second record came out, but when the third album came out around 2007 the band (or more likely the label) came up with the idea to release the singles off that album on mini 7″ picture discs, which was pretty cool. I missed the first one but ended up getting Bleed It Out and Shadow of the Day before realizing that my money was better spent elsewhere. I’ve tried to sell Shadow of the Day to no avail but will keep my hands on this version of Bleed It Out as it has an absolutely fucking wicked remix of “What I’ve Done” on the flip-side IMHO “What I’ve Done” was the last half-decent Linkin Park song, and this nastier, dirtier remix was right up my street, and makes it worth keeping this record. Out on Warner Bros., that I won’t be linking to.
It’s been absolutely yonks since I last reviewed a 5″ and upon receiving this I was horrified to find that my current record player doesn’t player the little fuckers because of the auto-return function. Now, my old deck is a mixing deck and plays them fine, but it doesn’t have a pre-amp, and therefore lacks volume when connected to my current, all-digital stereo set up. I wasn’t exactly in the position to rush out and buy pointless pieces of electronic equipment, so there was only one thing to do; rip the bottom off my deck and have at the return mechanism. Die bitches! Two pieces of plastic and a spring later, the auto-return function is no more! Success! The only side affect to the surgery is that the platter now spins continuously when the deck is plugged in. Oh well. More incentive to turn the thing off at the mains when I’m not using it. On to the music then! Unholy Grave unleash another distorted, grinding number upon us. I am almost convinced to switch my “rediculous collectability” obsession from Agathocles to this band, as Unholy Grave’s stuff on splits is always nasty and as far as I have seen, mostly original tracks. Maybe I am wrong in my newbie-ness (is that even a word?) but collecting all their stuff instead seems a lot smarter and less-difficult a move (apart from those lathes you put out, you bastards). One thing I don’t get with Unholy Grave however is the “singing” that is employed alongside the harsher vocals, I personally don’t think it fits but I guess it makes Unholy Grave. On the flip-side I can’t be so enthusiastic about Nak’ay; not that there is anything wrong here – the band are a great example of no-nonsense grindcore – it’s just that Unholy Grave tend to overshadow them a bit. A seriously good discovery however, and I will be checking them out in the future (or so I intend to; I seem to be very “scatterfuck” when it comes to music, especially genres). We can thank a large collaboration effort of excellent grind labels for bringing this 5″ into the world, and I implore you to check them all out because they all have an excellent array of releases. Limited to 1000 copies, all of which seem to be black. Labels:Haunted Hotel Records, Crucificados Pelo Sistema, Insurgency Records, Everydayhate, To Live A Lie, Drop Out Records
If the name of this record and the artwork above screams out to you – “Porngrind!” then guess what? You’re fucking wrong, bitches! What we have here is an ear-melting cacophony of rancid fucking gorenoise. Ok, maybe not flat out noise but noise-core. Don’t forget the core! It reminds me of VRV, the way the drum machine is pushed out to the max and just left to blast away unhindered, when all the wasps in the world come out of my speakers (the guitars, if you haven’t guessed). Over the top are the treble-worrying pitchshifted vocals. Lovely jubbly! Out on Ecclesia Inferi Records and limited to 40 copies on CDr only! PS There are no disc images because there is just a plain CDr. I also can’t find a link for this, but if I come across one I’ll update this post.
I’ve lusted after this collectable for a good while, and I finally saw it on Discogs at a decent price so I nabbed the bastard! I gotta be honest though, after all that waiting, I was a bit disappointed to find out that this Accident Prone-released 7″ is fecking one-sided record (don’t get me started on one-sided records!). What also surprised me is that there are no original songs here, just three early Cattle Decap cuts re-recorded in Spanish. Go me for researching! Although, I find myself asking the question – “what was the point in this exercise?” Apart from the odd Spanish sentence at the beginning of a track this just sounds like Cattle Decapitation.. That isn’t a bad thing, don’t get me wrong, but I just fail to see the point in this 7″, other than being a fairly mediocre gimmick. Am I missing something here?
I first saw these guys by chance when I went up to Bristol to catch Weekend Nachos. Little did I know until a few days before that the show was an all dayer, filled to the brim with some of the best fuckin’ grindcore bands the UK has to offer right now. Despite the fact that I had completed the Ultimate Burger challenge (I won’t go into it) pre-gig and was in a state of too-much-protein-lethargy for the entire day, I had one hell of a blast and got turned on to so many new bands. I guess it got me right back into grind! It was the kick that I needed, the reminder that the underground was still alive somewhere and I was just too blind to see it. So when I heard that this 7″ was coming out on a collaboration featuring the excellent Dead Chemists Records I nearly shit a brick in excitement. Gutted for the band that this didn’t end up coming out on Southern Lord, but it sure as hell made it easier (and cheaper) for me to get a copy right here in the UK! This spins at 45 so it doesn’t last very long, but it doesn’t need to; it’s punchy and in your face and gets it’s point across quickly. The production is great, echoing the band’s extremely tight live sound a thousandfold on record. This totally doesn’t sound like a 3 piece.
I got these two when they were around (I think) 70p each on the Earache store. An utter bargain! Every now and then they put the shit that I assume wasn’t selling down to some retarded low price. Once I went on there and they had Adema 7″s for 10p each. I was almost tempted to make a large purchase and then build a fire out of Adema singles. That would have been a good day! Too bad I snoozed on that opportunity; said Adema records are now an extortionate 99p each. Life is not fair. Anyway, onto the music. Decadent & Desperate is not one of the highlights in the Mortiis cannon if you ask me, but I got these anyway because I do intend to get all of his vinyl one day, even the horrendously over-priced era 1 ambient stuff. One 7″ contains a pretty uneventful live recording and the other a remix of “Way Too Wicked”, which is a fairly cool song. The wax is all black but limited (?) to 2000 copies, and I’m guessing there is a 1000 green and 1000 brown, but I could be wrong.
Crossface aren’t particularly bad for your average hardcore band. I don’t understand hardcore at all so I’ll skirt over this before I say something to embarrass myself and bring down a sea of X-marked fists upon my head. Schnauzer on the other hand is one of my favourite things ever. Why is it then, that it has taken me so long to finally write a post for this, one of my all time favourite 7″s? Why is it then, I have never bothered to check out Schnauzer, ever? Why is it that I have only, since hearing this, bought one other Schnauzer split 7″ to date? I suspect the answer is because I am a fucking idiot, but nevertheless things like this really bug me. How can I be so stupid as to constantly forget this bands existence? Schnauzer hold the perfect blend between musical quality and comedy. The songs here are tight, heavy and loosely centered around grindcore and metal, yet at the same time they are riotously funny as fuck. “Total Lunatic” is one of the best songs ever recorded in the history of the entire universe, ever, and closer “Blasted Beyond Belief” really is the icing on the cake. I won’t waffle any longer, but I’ll just link you some Schnauzer shit and be done with it. Pressed on a combination of black and orange records by Rescued from Life and Shifty Records. PS if that’s not J Mann from Mushroomhead at the end of “Blasted…” then my name is Colonel Cuntsandwich. GIMME THE KEYS TO THE GYM, AND YOU WON’T HAVE ANY FUCKIN’ PROBLEMS!
This EP has a mega-random story behind it. When I was around 13/14, our gang would always chill / play fuck in this one street in upper-Abercanaid. The wannabe-middle class fucks up there hated us, but we had a few friends who lived there so we always hung around there. Not everyone there was bad, but there was the usual crowd of grouchy middle-aged meatbags who despised children. Not to mention, we did play fuck quite a bit, but that’s another story for another time, possibly whilst in a local pub surrounded by old friends and with a belly bursting with beer. I digress. One day this car is pulled up outside one of the houses and a gang of older boys are hanging around it. The boot is open and they are all talking excitedly. I guess one of the lads had parents that lived here. Anyways, after a while one of the dudes walks over with about 10 CDs and asks us all “do you like music?”. A few of us answer “yes” in unison and we get given copies of this CD, whom I assume is the band of the boys with the car. Extremely riveting story aside, the CD turned out to be Press to Ascend, a demo/EP by local jazz-influenced pub rock band, Safehouse. They were quite active around Merthyr for a while but I was too young to really understand or want to be involved in ever going to see them live. It was all a bit before my time. Anyway, time to round this off. Press to Ascend isn’t particularly a CD I ever listen to but it is something I will always keep in my collection, mainly for the memories. Also I think it was the first time I was given something as cool as a CD for free by actual musicians. Holy shit! This was self released in 2003. RIP Safehouse! PS this band is not to be confused with the currently active South Wales covers band Safe House. (2021 edit: Or maybe it is the same band? Fuck, I don’t know.)
This is Volume 4 in the ongoing and extremely extensive noise series entitled “Redlight District” by German record label Shit Noise Records, who really do have a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin attitude. Each release is identifiable by a new colour, and number 4 (or is that IV) is purple. Limited, as always with this series, to 50 hand numbered copies. Painburn open the disc with what seems like a harsh noise-meets-instrument experimentation. Underneath the garbled layers of hell are what seems to be like fuzzy tones breaking through, like a guitar or bass mangled beyond belief. This may or may not be the case, but that’s what it sounds like. Other than that, the harsh sounds go on to produce ethereal highs, an ever-present echo develops over the higher frequencies, and brings to mind a church doused in audible flame. Sassy. Kaelteeinbruch is back yet again with more dissonant, metallic sounds laced with endless distortion and pornographic samples. It sounds like something is being hit, maybe metal sheeting or something large and cylindrical. Whatever it is, it’s drenched to fuck in distortion and played back at maximum volume, with all the whining and moaning you could ever want or need.
Mad props to Mike from Vaginal Necrosis / Dead Chemists Records for sending me this CD for free, you’re a legend! This has been out for a few years now on Parkinson Wankfist and Alarma Records. To be honest, I expected a compilation CD with 100 Myspace bedroom goregrind bands, but this CD seems to contain about 50% Myspace bedroom goregrind bands, 25% crappy digigrind/gabba/noise artists and 25% actual death metal and goregrind bands. Those are better odds than I expected! Ha ha I love crappy goregrind as much as the next ex-Myspace generation idiot, but I think 100 bands would be too much for even me, so I was glad for a bit of variance. What seems to happen here is that all the great bands are slammed at the front, so you get all the epic studio quality shit first before we head into bedroom territory and awful noise territory. I love the concept of this CD and it’s predecessor (which I haven’t heard yet), but sitting through the whole thing is difficult, even for somebody like me. For the majority of people this record would be nothing more than sheer audible hell. My only gripe is that the excellently disgusting artwork by Lou Rusconi has been credited to the now defunct Freak Trash, which isn’t really that bad because Mr. Rusconi’s stuff is easily recognisable.
“Slateman” is one of my favourite ‘Flesh songs, and is a prime example of what excellence can be achieved by simply using a drum machine right. This isn’t particularly heavy or drawn out or even harrowing in any way, but it is the perfect example of Godflesh’s sound. The drum sound is absolutely spot on, I don’t really know what does it here for me but it’s just so right. The bass is clanky and thick, holding down the rhythm perfectly, whilst the guitars wail over the top of everything, kicking into riffage every now and then, bolstering the heaviness and hitting home the beat. Finally, with the vocals ranging from breezy cleans to distant shouts, there simply isn’t a more perfect example of Godflesh. This was released by Sub Pop Records, as part of their “Singles Club” in the 90s. I think this is also available as a 12″ which Earache put out. I want to get my grubby hands on that fucker too, even though it is pretty much the same record on a different sized disc. My Godflesh fan-dom knows no bounds!
I can’t exactly review this as it’s my creation, but I got one in my collection so it’ll have to wind up on here eventually, so I’ll just do a brief run down to plug this fucker. I recorded this bastard of an EP back in 2007, simply by running a distorted B C Rich through a whole world of filters and then recording a cold, mechanical drum beat over the top of it before doing more or less the same to that too. I don’t really know why but I’ve never really bothered to release music that I have made alone, so it took 6 years to get this out, which is ridiculous. You can download it for free here or if you read this around the original post date and actually like it you can get a copy on tape for cheap as chips. Limited to 20 copies on Lines In Wax’s very own Pointless Records label. Summer 2020 extended notes: Falasmaryon was the first in a planned series of 12 or 13 guitar based drones that I began recording in 2007, the second being Valenvaryon, which never got released (yet). The others were abandoned, but I plan to return to them one day. Nerdy losers may notice that the drones are named after the Propylon Chambers from Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, although the artwork itself was just an excuse to use a bunch of old BDSM style imagery. My master tape was way too loud, and I used an old ex-police interview cassette duplicator to make the copies onto blank stock. I ended up throwing that thing out (really should have sold it on tbh). Musically, Falasmaryon is heavy and oppressive. I was inspired a lot by Sunn O))), although this doesn’t sound anything like them. I have a bunch of cassettes left. If you want one, drop me a message on the Contact page and I’ll send you one for free (if you’re outside of the UK, I might ask you for a bit of help towards the postage cost).
I remember back in the day when I first heard of this album. I remember how ridiculously excited I was to hear something so musically challenging. 100 songs? Less than 20 minutes? Bitch please, you must be trippin’! And trippin’ I was when I first got this record in it’s original 3″ CD package from some crazy-mainstream outlet like Virgin Megastore or Zavvi (I forget which). I now own this testament to insanity three times; on the original 3″ CD, the double shaped/blank CD package featuring ANbRX II (which is a fuckton of Delta Nine remixes) and on white 10″ vinyl. All pressed by Relapse, of course. The vinyl version conveniently plays track 0 for you right at the start, which was always a nightmare to hear on the CD version because you had to rewind from 00:00 as soon as the first song started. If you wound back too far it’d just fucking cut out, which was a pain in the ass. Agorapocalypse also has this cool but rather annoying gimmick with it’s first track too. When I first heard this at 15 years old I expected 100 micro-grind blasts to the face and was initially disappointed with the electronic passages. I felt like I was being robbed of precious grindcore, ha ha! Although I still think it’s a bit shit that the electronics are cut up into little pieces and passed off as songs, I have grown to like these just as much as the grind on display here. Some of the samples here are absolutely timeless when blended with such harsh noise (there is a lot taken from the film Holy Mountain). I always thought that the 12 Days of Sodom section in the middle of the record would be excellent as an EP in it’s own right, as something crazy like a 4″ or something. So yeah, I’ll go ahead and cut this off now before I ramble for seven thousand paragraphs about every single micro-song on this record. I’ve kinda fizzled myself out on grind these days but Agoraphobic Nosebleed remain one of my favourite bands of all time and this record stands in the halls of awesome grind as proof that such sonically mindfucking music can exist.
