Month: January 2014

I think this is probably the hardest thing in the ANb discography to get a hold of. Sure, the Insect Warfare split and the Converge split can fetch rather hefty prices, and Tentacles of Destruction is fairly limited, but for sheer difficulty in regards to unoptainability (is that even a word? *edit – no, it’s not), the split EP with Halo currently holds the crown (seeing as I don’t have all the ANb shit yet, I won’t say for definite, but I’d be surprised if anything else is more difficult to obtain). The three original ANb tunes are from the Altered States era (they have that sound/feel, at least), and they are the typical old-school ANb stock of uber-fast drum-machine grindcore punishment. What I didn’t see coming however, was the Slayer cover that takes up most of their side. “The Antichrist” definitely sounds a lot better with Richard Johnson on vocals, but I was never the biggest fan of Slayer, so I could take or leave this cover version. Halo are the polar-opposites to ANb, in the speed stakes, at least. Deathly slow drumming and horrendous guitar feedback and low-end vibes make up the main “songs”, where sparse but abrasive vocals howl over the top of it all, creating a rather unsettling yet interesting listen. Despite it’s snail-like pace, the track doesn’t last that long and I am left contemplating whether to search for more Halo material or not… This was released on Relapse Records a while ago now, and was part of some subscription series. That’s probably why it is so bloody difficult to come by. I’m glad I’ve finally gotten a hold of it though, as it goes towards the inevitable completion of my ANb collection, and it also contains ANb material that isn’t available anywhere else, as far as I can tell.

Ok…so Jesus Cröst do groovy gore grind now? Dunno when the change over happened exactly, but it happened. Don’t get me wrong, the cover art is pretty hilarious considering the usual subject matter of Jesus Cröst’s material…but other than that…shit….I really don’t want to say it, because I hate dissing bands….but this shit sucks ass. Compared to the insane precision and ruthless insanity of material like Töt, this 7″ comes across as a bit boring and as a lazy joke. It sounds like a sub-par Gut mixed with some random brutal death metal band, all the while trying to imitate Jig-Ai / Rompeprop-esque polka rhythms. The whole thing just falls flat on it’s arse. Please, please go back to fastcore, guys! The porno sample over the first track goes on for so long you’d swear that Mortician had a hand in producing it. Things pick up around the end of side A with “Rachid Bouaouzan”, which has a half-decent groove, but other than that, this thing just goes nowhere. I’m not entirely sure if this record is really as awful as I’m making out or if it is just my own massive personal disappointment in the decline in Jesus Cröst’s output. That’s the thing that hurts the most; Jesus Cröst are (usually) so absolutely fucking goddamn awesome. I dunno what the fuck happened here…I’m sorry for the negativity! I’m sure most of you are already know I rarely do negative reviews, but I just gotta be honest with you here… 🙁 This was put out on Rödel Records. Again, I apologise for the negativity but to quote the internet: “I am disappoint”. Maybe this’ll grow on me

Holy Mother, now this is some abrasive shit! Sete Star Sept are currently my go-to band for extra-nasty noisecore skullduggery, and they do not disappoint with this particular slice of shitgrind vulgarity. Violent Gorge takes things a little bit further. Things start off in the noisecore ballpark, and then subtly migrate into harsh noise territory, as it appears the original “band” recordings are cut, spliced, diced and manipulated to create all manner of auditory discomfort. Imagine Suppression meets AxCx in King Tubby’s studio. Ha ha! Uber-DIY and well worth a look-in, you can get this unusually sized 5.5″ slab of tinnitus from Grindfather Productions, Mass Deadening, Aggressive Valley, Death, Agony & Screams and Pan Del Muerte Records.

Joe Pesci play really blurry sounding fastcore, somewhere along the grind highway between sounding like Anal Cunt and (really) early Magrudergrind. At Our Expense! sounds like more of a demo than anything, but it is a great, yet sadly quite short, trip through a grinding world of total speed. Bones Brigade released this CD back in 2009 after some self-released splits/demos and a 12″ four-way which the band appeared on around 2007. After the release of this album, 4 years ago now, Joe Pesci seems to have disappeared into thin air. It might have something to do with The Afternoon Gentlemen being rather busy, but, hey, what do I know? The first thing I notice about the sound here is that the drums are oddly panned to one side, with a slight echo of the track on the other side a split-second later. I’m not sure if the guitars and drums were recorded separately in a rehearsal environment and what I’m hearing is the drums bleeding through on the guitar track, but it takes a while to get my head around this confusing anomaly. Oddities aside, this CD is a fucking animal! The guitars are an endless blur, rarely stopping to break into the odd riff, and with the drums the standard speed is “blast, motherfuckers!”, sometimes slowing down to a crust-punk kinda speed and sometimes even speeding up into gravity blasts. What is this, a death metal record? Ha! 

Holy mother of fuck this is some fast fucking grindcore. This shit puts shame upon a whole world of bands claiming on “fast” and “brutal”; Töt is a short, sharp explosion of anger, distortion and all the blastbeats left in Holland. I guess it helps that the production is proper high-end and crystal clear, giving Jesus Cröst all the professional space they need to fully unfold their maelstrom of football-themed fastcore fuckery. Soccergrind? Maybe not, but at least it sounds amazing! Opener “Taurin 400” really sets the pace and bar for the rest of the record; a blasting and pummelling assualt of the senses that lasts a mere matter of seconds. It is hard to really tell the tracks apart by name, although there is the odd riff casually thrown in for good measure. Other than that though it’s all blast blast blast, fast fast fast! I guess Jesus Cröst know what they are about, and just get the fuck on with it, and quickly too. If you know what you’re looking for in your music and this happens to be it then look no further my friend! Ha ha! The “Bonustrax” live recordings from OEF 2008 tacked onto the end of the record leave a lot to be desired, however. I’m not sure how an accurate portrayal of Jesus Cröst live these recordings show, but this is pretty awful. The band here sound nothing like the amazing band on the studio tracks here. This is also available on a white 10″ but I bought it on CD first so what are you gonna do…out on France’s excellent Bones Brigade records.

According to the ever-reliable source for information that is the internet, Top 40 Hits is considered a bit of a disappointment in the worldwide circles of AxCx fans (or at least it was upon it’s initial release date back in 1994). But, you know me, I don’t give a fuck about what the internet says (lawls, hardcore) because for me, Top 40 Hits shows AxCx at their messiest, blurriest best. Granted, this record is missing the offensive content that the band would become so well-known for (well, if you discount the fact that the band is called Anal Cunt, that is), but this is still a stone cold noisecore classic. The first few times I heard this in my teens I wasn’t too sure what to make of the whole thing. Seth had it up for free download (possibly against Earache’s permission?) off his old website, back before AxCx reformed for a final time and Seth replaced his personal webpage with that of Wicked Sick Records. The first few songs are mixed so low that the first thing the record will have you doing is reaching for the volume control with a confused expression on your face. I have come to learn that these tracks were mixed this way in order to rumble the living fuck out of speaker cones, and maybe even damage them in the process. Cheers, Anal Cunt! Despite the mushy, low-fi blur tracks that carried over from the previous LP (only on a much lower frequency, ha ha), we see the first budding AxCx jokey tracks. Tracks such as “Art Fag” and “Shut Up Mike” are a nod to what type of stuff was to dominate on future AxCx records. The best thing about Top 40 Hits however, is the full and amazing production that the band finally dedicated to their small selection of sludgy, doom-metal-paced tracks. Some of the best Anal Cunt tracks are their slow, Eyehategod-esque sludge epics. Seth Putnam is a fantastic vocalist, and to confine listening of his talents to just Anal Cunt is definitely a waste; the guy was an absolute legend vocally, there is no doubt. So all in all, Top 40 Hits does seem like a bit of a jumbled up mix of styles that don’t really go together; it doesn’t help that it seems that the sludge songs, jokey songs and blurry, old school noisecore songs all seem to have come from different recording sessions, which totally annihilates any chance this album had at attaining a flow. I think maybe that this is what put a lot of people off when it first come out; that AxCx had literally just thrown out a whole bunch of shit on one CD and called it a new album. But once you get over the flow issues, you can appreciate each parts for what they really are; fucking amazing! Ha ha! This was released on Earache back in 1994.

This was one of my first proper tastes of goregrind. I’d discovered the genre online, but this was one of the first records I actually owned, so it holds a special place in my heart (hahaha). Goreblast is an absolute festering mess of piccolo snares, shifted vokills and all the fuzz in Germany (or is that Goremany?). Imagine Putrefaction In Progress-era LDOH but slowed down to a doom metal pace and with actual song structure. Throw in a couple of cheekily punky numbers and a myriad of weirdly blasphemous themes (not a usual staple of the goregrind genre, I’ll be honest) and you’ve got Satan’s Revenge On Mankind. The tray card reads “Satan’s Revenge On Mankind is anti-vegetarian and pro-atom”. That pretty much says it all really. On the inner by the disc is the slogan “Satan, Gore & Meat”. That fucking NEEDS to be put on a t-shirt. Opener “Vaticandestruction” is a sprawling wreck of a band warming up to disturbing samples, before said band burst into a hat-trick of SxRxOxMx classics; “We Come To Eat You” followed by “Gorevolution” and “Hyperbrutal Splattersatan”. Some tracks fall into the comedic theme of something altogether more Anal Cunt (“I Hate Music”, “I Hate Nature” and “Jesus Loves You Because He’s Gay” as examples), whilst others spin off into something else entirely (“Invoking The Glorious Sado-Nuclear Extermination Of The Christian Plague” and “Infernal Christ Corpse Hacking Butcher Command On Behalf Of The Great Eternal Master Of Hell’s Purifying Fire” anyone?). My personal favourite however is “Angels Taste Like Chicken”. Groovy! Throw in a bunch of awfully fantastic artwork and silly musician names and you have the recipe for the greatest goregrind in the universe. This was one of the first CDs that Rotten Roll did, and along with the Splatter Whore debut record, that label was off to a fucking flying start back in ’06/7. So if you’re into goregrind and are yet to hear the delights that The Almighty Mr. Goreblast and his band of heathen swine invoke, now is the time!

While most grind leans towards hardcore and hardcore punk, some of it leans more into the death metal and thrash territory. P.L.F., on this release at least (to date, the only thing I’ve heard by them), play some chuggy, metal-heavy grindcore. The production is huge, the drums sound amazing, and the vocals are low and rumbly like the good ol’ death metal stock. The riffs though, are much more thrashy, yet retain that nasty, venomous edge that is required for the grindcore style. There are like a hundred bands called Nashgul, or some variety of that spelling. I remember seeing some crappy black metal band with this name up in Leeds a few years ago, but that’s another story. I prefer Nashgul’s stuff here over P.L.F. (that’s not a diss at them, though, their shit is great too!); I just prefer the over-all sound here, although it is a close one. Thrown into the vicious grind mix, Nashgul also bring some moments that aren’t a million miles away from some d-beat vibes, and this mixes things up greatly. It sounds fucking amazing.

This is my first experience with Mesrine, although it’s been a long-time coming; another one of those bands that always escapes checking out! After seeing Entrails Massacre in OEF I decided to buy some of their shit and I got this split, which introduced me (finally) to the wonders of Mesrine. Boasting a no-nonsense approach to the world of grind, Mesrine seem to form some sort of heavy hitting bastard child of traditional grindcore and hardcore riffs, not dissimilar to a mix between Napalm Death and later Phobia stuff. Entrails Massacre don’t have an ‘as-condensed’ sound as Mesrine and their hard-hitting yet heavily-compressed studio work. Entrails Massacre’s tunes are a bit more rough around the edges, but what they lose in studio slickery they make up for in sheer grinding performance. This awesome 7″ is limited to 525 copies on the Uranium Overdose label.

I think that Watchmaker are one of the most under-rated grindcore bands ever, which is weird considering this record was put out on Earache (through some deal that they had with Willowtip). In grind circles I never see people wearing a Watchmaker t-shirt, in fact I don’t think I’ve even ever seen one for sale. I never hear people talking about Watchmaker, or recommending Watchmaker; and this goes for online as well as in the flesh. It’s weird because, Watchmaker aren’t some one-hit wonder band; they have several CDs out, so somebody must be listening out there? If you’re a Watchmaker fan hit me back on Twitter or Facebook for the love of all that is grind-holy! You must be out there somewhere. Ironically, after all that talk of under-exposure I discovered Watchmaker back in my ‘confusing’ teen years when I still trifled through a Kerrang! magazine if someone was daft enough to pay money for it and then leave it in the sixth form common room. There was a tiny album review for this in an issue; and I can’t remember if it was good or bad but the striking cover art and the words “grindcore” and “Kill.Fucking.Everyone.” stayed with me forever. When I got into grind properly I finally bought this from the Earache webstore, which was my first one-stop shop for grind back in the day. At the time I thought the production was a bit muddy but with much more exprerienced ears I can retract that thought; Watchmaker play an interesting, and almost artistic approach to grindcore. This CD in particular always reminded me of a cross between Circle of Dead Children and the short-lived act White Eyes, even though vocally the bands don’t come close. I guess it’s just the vibe I get off listening to it. There’s also a lot of elements of Insect Warfare type of shit on here too, but don’t be misled to thinking that Watchmaker are one of those million-thousand carbon copy grind acts. At a sensible 19 tracks in length, Kill.Fucking.Everyone. is actually pretty long (for a grindcore record). I implore all fans of the genre to check this band out, it’s some pretty cool stuff!