Agoraphobic Nosebleed / Apartment 213 – Split 12″ (2007)

July 23, 2013
Agoraphobic Nosebleed / Apartment 213 – Split 12″ (2007)

Apartment 213 are fantastic, muddy as hell powerviolence-fused grindcore. This is all well and good, but they are annihilated here by the material on the ANb side. We all know splits aren’t competitions, but sometimes one band will just totally outweigh the other. Sorry guys! It is with a small irony then that Apartment 213’s vocalist guests on all the songs on the ANb side.

The Agoraphobic stuff here is unlike anything else in their catalogue. From what I can tell, the sound seems to be stripped down to just bass and drum machines? I’m not entirely sure if Hull’s guitars are tuned excessively low or it is just basses in use here, but shit, it sounds amazing! Enough fuzz and groove to give Om a wake up call, and enough heaviness to compare with Filth-era Swans; this is bass music at it’s finest! The only ANb long-timer to appear here is Randall, performing (as usual) with an enormous amount of venom. Coupled with Steve 213’s powerviolence grunts, the songs on offer here really are as angry as you can get.

I love all the songs, but “Unwelcome Remarks” is probably my favourite out of the three, containing some of the greatest ANb lyrics ever; “I’ve never known a cokehead to forget a line”, “I’d rather piss on my own hand than shake yours” and “Simon says ‘watch your fucking mouth around the other fucking adults'” all of which sound a bit unusual when isolated but make up one of the angriest songs ever made. Holy shit! Out on Relapse Records.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *