Archive for May 2015

Static Age is probably my favourite “early” Misfits release (even though it wasn’t released for sometime after). Earth A.D. is fast and even heavy, Walk Among Us probably the most legendary, but Static Age the most solid and consistent. Static Age to me, feels like a true long player, despite the fact that these songs have been released here there and everywhere over the last 30 odd years or so, in various guises and mixes….

Phyllomedusa is a frog-based (yes!) goregrind band from, I believe, the US. It’d be easy to write this off as a gimmick but Phyllomedusa has a long-running, high quality output of over 50 albums of frog-based goregrind and gorenoise (2021 edit: and the rest!). Lunatic Girl And Her Frog is probably one of the more better known Phyllomedusa albums – I’ve seen it frequently in the past on forums / YouTube / Facebook groups etc….

Gut’s The Cumback is perpetually the best and worst comeback record of all time. How do you modernize the sound of a band whose lo-fi dirges shaped the porngrind genre so much? Why, with rap metal and dodgy electronic passages, of course! What The Cumback lacks in genuine grind it makes up for hilarity and dodgy European porno vibes. If you can see past the filler (and there’s a lot of filler – you could…

Another long-awaiting comeback that paid off by the truckload! Eyehategod have been brewing their self-titled return for nearly 14 years, so it was understandable that fans were getting a bit itchy. But, like I said, the wait paid off. This album is absolutely fucking incredible. You’ve got the classic Eyehategod vibes as if they never went away, but they’ve given them a cleaner, modern spin. You could argue that the mud and sludge surrounding Eyehategod’s…

I was a big COF nerd when I was a teenager. Thankfully, the lust for hammy symphonic metal didn’t follow me far past the age of 16, but I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t jam any Cradle now and then. Cradle of Filth have a long, meandering, hit-and-miss series of records, but Vempire is my absolute favourite by a country mile. You cannot beat the atmosphere, songwriting and musical dexterity on display…

What a gem! Brutal death metal is over-saturated as fuck (and I’ve made no secret of mentioning that in nearly every death metal post I do) and every time I load up a YouTube vid, a Spotify link or even put a CD in the stereo (imagine such sorcery!) that has some spiny logo and a compromised / disemboweled female on the cover, I sit there and wait for the disappointment to come, to wait for…

Wow, this is an unusual one! Take death metal tunings and riffs, the swagger of crossover-thrash era d-beat and the lyrical content and delivery of punk and hardcore, and you’ve got Emissaries Of Syn. Imagine all this “dark hardcore” type of stuff that is being peddled by Southern Lord given an injection of British authenticity and humour. It’s like Black Breath but with Mitch Dickinson from Unseen Terror on vocals. This EP kicks off with…

I’ll admit to have never heard of Sedem Minut Strachu before they were recently announced for this year’s Obscene Extreme Festival but hey, as much as I like to pretend I’m the all-seeing eye of grindcore, there’s oceans of the stuff out there I’ve yet to hear. Overmasonnizationated Twist is a surprisingly coherent romp through a strange mixture of harsh noisecore and harmonica improvisation. The drum sound is clear as fuck, which is refreshing compared…

I have been beyond in love with Jucifer (or maybe it’s just frontwoman Amber Valentine ;D) ever since I saw them playing in Temples Fest last year. They have always been one of those bands that I wanted to check out but I never got around to doing so. I was expecting some half-arsed female-fronted stoner rock bullshit that’s all the rage these days, but Jucifer tore me a new arsehole and blew away most…

Urinary Tract Infection From Severe Pus Clots is one of Bobby Maggard’s more prolific and well known projects, this one bridging the gap between noisecore and goregrind very nicely. Demo 1 contains 98 bursts of pitchshifted bile-inducing noisecore madness. A lot of this stuff kinda all blurs into one but this has a really good vibe and it’s absolutely sick as fuck. The bass is a bit furry and the Myspace-as-fuck Rhythm Rascal drum programming…

Rainforest by Clams Casino is probably my top contender for favourite driving music at the moment, especially during the night time. Rainforest is as dense and multi-layered as its moniker suggests; overlapping, almost distorted layers of electronic auras mingle freely over retro drum programming and ethereal vocal tomfoolery. Honestly, the whole thing is a bit disjoined but each individual track works so well in unfolding its own world that you don’t want it to end….

This is my first (and loooong overdue) experience with Death Toll 80k, the noisy grindcore machine that has eluded my ears for so long! What an unstoppable mess! This is the grindcore that I fell in love with; dingy, flat-out, unstoppable blastbeat carnage with a cheeky smattering of riffs thrown in for good measure. The order of the day though is mind-boggling grinding carnage. Get it down your Gregory Peck, son! Sete Star Sept have…

I’ve really been jamming the guts out of this album for the last few weeks. Fistula mix sludgy, messy doom a la Eyehategod with elements of crust and hardcore punk. I personally think that any genre of metal can be vastly improved by adding musical elements of (or just the spirit of) crust punk (Darkthrone’s The Cult Is Alive being a prime example; a vicious bastard of an album that followed a long string of…

It says a lot when your favourite album by a band is a covers album (Undisputed Attitude). Add to that the sea of shit Slayer have been peddling both recordings wise and sensationalist news wise the last few years, and sprinkle that with me happening to catch a series of lacklustre live performances over the last five years or so. Cumulatively, I could be forgiven maybe for overlooking the fact that Slayer do actually have…

Destructive Explosion Of Anal Garland (who possibly take the award for most unreadable logo ever) are a Czech goregrind band with brutal death metal influences. Sealing Off The Vagina By Sewer Lid has a lot of slam-style parts and farmyard vokills associated with the realms of death metal but the overall vibe is one of groovy porno grindcore. It’s got vibes of Jig-Ai, RazorRape and even Ahumado Granujo (just look at the cover art), but…