TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION
An intense, brutal and unforgiving slab of grinding death metal. Everything about this is huge, from the production, to the riffs, to the overwhelming feeling you get playing this at full volume. This has been hyped quite a bit since its release and you can really see why. Expect a dense barrage of total sonic annihilation. If that’s your thing, get stuck in.
Bongripper are one of those special bands that can be heavily enjoyed whilst driving or playing games. The absence of vocals seems odd at first, even in such drawn out doomy compositions, but those mesmerising riffs are there to take you on journeys my friend, and on journeys you will go! Things are a bit shorter here than on say, Hippie Killer or Satan Worshipping Doom, but that’s not to say things are not just as good.
When Sol Invictus came out I struggled to accept it as a canonical FNM record, purely because it sounded so much like ‘X’ Mike Patton project, rather than a record from a band that I have come to know and love. But, I realised eventually (forgive me), that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? When has FNM ever done a record that wasn’t different from the last? I absolutely loved the lead single for this album (the infinitely-marketable “Motherfucker”) but it took me a while (see above) to get into the rest, but this is a solid FNM record as any of the classic stuff. I wonder if they’ll do any more? Cheers!
Fallout is a pre-Carnivore, pre-Type O Pete Steele project. I suppose it really is just proto-Carnivore, and lays a bunch of themes that would come from both bands (Carnivore in side B and Type O in side A). I love the art, I love the sound and I love the vibe. Perhaps most importantly, I love having the chance to look back at some stuff Pete was involved with “before he was famous”. Good shit!
Banger! As with most things grind-related, it barely lasts 10 minutes, but what’s here is gross, ultra-fast blasting mayhem from both parties. The Nak’ay side is slightly longer, but both bands absolutely kill it on this split cassette. Glad I got myself a copy. Originally released in 2015 on vinyl, and then 2016 on cassette.
I’m unsure why Stalaggh changed their name to Gulaggh. I should do a search and find out why, but I’m not really that interested. The main real difference is that the Gulaggh project, or Vorkuta at least, is far less focused on the noise aspect of the group’s sound, and more so on the screaming and wailing supposedly delivered by patients at a facility for mental health. Or whatever. We’ve all heard the story of Stalaggh, but it’s up to you whether you believe it or not. Anyway, this is harrowing stuff.
It’s nice to see Scorn back again with yet another puzzlingly-sleeved record. What on earth is going on here? What a mixed bag of vibes! The art of course jarrs heavily with the intense and paranoid slow-mo beatscapes (is that a word?) that the wizard Mick Harris has cooked up for us this time. He’s back with his mixing-desk-as-a-weapon approach to dark electronic music, and of course I will always welcome more Scorn here on Lines In Wax with open arms (or ears).
Sixth House Is Risen is a little experiment I made out of noise loops, synthesizer apps and a little box of fun called a Korg Monotron. Honestly, there’s hours of fun to be had with one of these, and Varken was a project born to release some of the noise I’ve made. It certainly helped whilst working from home in the original pandemic, where internet issues were rampant and I had a lot of downtime (and no baby boy!). Maybe I’ll do more Varken stuff some day. Hopefully I’ll put this on a limited run of cassettes sometime soon. It was nice to make noise again, at least.
Labia Majora play blasting, satisfying goregrind in the old school style, but with the new school production sound. The blasts are fast and rabid, and the whole thing is over before you know it. Golem Of Gore are quickly establishing themselves as THE band to split with, and its easy to see why. Blasting, horrible, nasty shit all round. As always, I look forward to more sickness from these guys, off the back of this and the Haggus split (the Pharmacist split is on the horizon!).
This was a random listen based off the name alone, and what a record it is. Morose, weeping riffs and moody keyboards – both ingredients you’d expect more in atmospheric black metal – are here employed wildly throughout this otherwise brutal and unforgiving concoction. The vocals are insane, the drums dense and drenched in reverb. One for you if you like it harsh and heavy but also melodic.
Super brutal, sick, guttural, you name the word, it’s probably applicable. If I can be so bold I will say that it all gets a bit much after a while, but I think more than anything that can be attributed to the incredibly dry and over-compressed production. Everything sounds really artificial and after several songs it really brings about some serious listening fatigue. If you are not a wimp like I apparently am, and you can get past that, then this is a serious slab of brutality.
Never has “live in your living room” seemed so very fucking real. After adjusting to the initial dissapointment that the audio is overdubbed and not raw VHS death metal, one can settle in and enjoy this classic three-piece Undeath performance from the good old days, when only the hypest of death metal heads were bumping gums about this band. Now, rightly so, they are much, much more popular. Get in at the ground level, and check out this glorious live performance. Caveman riffs is almost an offensive term to the talent on display, but this is a head nodder indeed.
Is it really time for another Black Midi album? Fuck, I’m old. The years, they fly! Anyways, the band have come a long way in a short space of time, shedding the rawness of Schlagenheim for a more refined, almost jazz approach to songwriting. Parallels to Disco Volante era Bungle are perhaps too easy to make, and also do this album somewhat of a disservice. Whilst it is no doubt complimentary to be compared to such an iconic record, it also no doubt helps pigeonhole the sound on display here. The long and short of it, is that you’ll just have to listen to this to get your head around it. Its quite a journey. Also, isn’t Cavalcade such a lovely word? I had it in the site’s title/description for about 5 years, until it was changed recently for LIW’s 10 year anniversary.
Due to the success of Doom, id quickly followed with the now legendary Doom II: Hell On Earth. Personally, I prefer the original, and I find some of the levels, especially in the middle, to have really bad designs, but you cannot deny that this not only expanded, but perfected the Doom world. How can I love a game where I think the levels are shit, I hear you ask? Well, for starters, and anyone who has played this game will know this, I have two words for you: super shotgun. This is the daddy of video game shotguns, and is nothing short of a pure and utter pleasure to shoot. Its so goddamn satisfying, blasting gaping holes into virtual demons with this thing, that I can wholly overlook the crap level design (well, not crap as much, but definitely rushed!). The second reason of course would be the monsters that were introduced in Doom II, such as the Revenant and the Archvile, which made the game so, so much harder (you had others too, but these were the utter bastards, those and the chaingun commandos, yikes!). Lets not also forget that Doom II is the base on which countless incredible custom Doom .WADs have been created. The levels may lack inspiration in the base game, but all the great, quality ingredients were here. The Doom community is continuing to mine these even today, so that should say it all, really. Soundtrack wise, there’s nothing really to write home about. In fact, I’m pretty sure Bobby Prince plagiarised a bunch of metal tracks for this one, almost as if he was running out of steam. There are some iconic sounds in this, but there’s also a bunch of boring ones too.
Absolutely legendary but in reality, utter garbage noisecore from Japan’s infinitely-influential The Gerogerigegege. Tokyo Anal Dynamite is seemingly considered a stand-out release from this project (if there can be such a thing), but honestly, I’ve heard better. I suppose, realistically, in this kind of thing, the major difference between albums is the production used to record the carnage, rather than the “music” itself. There’s a fair chance I’m thinking way too much into things. This is absolute aural carnage.
Even S.M.E.S.’s very first demo is not quite as putrid or disgusting as some of cybergrind’s turbid offerings, but there is something heavily endearing about this entirely synthetic band. Here on this first release however, we do get to witness the project in its rawest, most unfiltered form. Long live the abstract weird filth of S.M.E.S.
Classic, early demo from the Czech Republic death metal legends. All the hallmarks of a solid demo are here, and it’s actually quite exciting to explore this band’s primitive beginnings, after hearing later records and seeing them live twice. Good stuff!
Still not having checked out the latest Streets album/mixtape, I’ll have to make do with this chunker of a single. Only Skinner can make a song about the lockdown so fucking chipper, with the usual all-encompassing production and the clever little rhymes we all love so much. The second track’s a good ‘in too.
Earache put out this record so I decided to give it a go, unfortunately for me it’s pretty uninspiring and not very interesting. I’ve never really been the biggest fan of the alt or grunge movements of the nineties, and Fudge Tunnel (at least on Creep Diets) falls quite heavily into that category. I’m glad I gave it a go, but it’s not for me.
Vektor are onto some mad shit. If you’ve never heard ’em, imagine mixing Voïvod with latter Death and you are on the right track. Everything is super intense and technical, the vocal screeching and rabid. Finally, the maddening sci-fi edge just rounds the whole thing off nicely. Like a thrashy version of Cryptic Shift.
I was turned on Hirax after seeing them life at OEF and being blown away by their chaotic grinding thrash. Noise Chaos War is a fine example of this, being something of a compilation, and churning out absolute noise chaos for its entire duration. If the music wasn’t aggressive enough, the vocals take it over the edge, making these guys stand out from a ton of other thrash bands.
This is one of the bands that I ended up downloading off of KazaA or Limewire back in the day. I was presumably looking for Anal Cunt stuff if typing “anal” into a music search (or perhaps I didn’t clear the search box from before after looking for something else entirely haha). I had one song, and I think it had a Jim Carey sample on it. I’d read as 12 or 13 year old, a Slipknot biography, where it said some of the members of Slipknot had played in Anal Blast. After hearing Anal Blast for the first time, I couldn’t believe that this was true. Anyways, listening to Vaginal Vempire now (isn’t that Anal Of Blast logo timeless? Ha!), I realise just how fucking brutal Anal Blast are. Like, ridiculous fucking name aside, this shit absolutely kills it. The drumming is insane and the riffs are razor sharp. The vocals too, from the late Don Decker, are absolutely crackers. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this is way, way better than I ever remembered it to be. I’m glad I went back and checked it out, even though the case promises you “cunt raping death metal grindcore”, which is sketchy as all hell.
Think disgusting, boggy riffs, think snare drums tighter than human skin stretched out as lampshades. Think farmyard vocals, which are a bit unusual in this boggy area of death metal, but are kinda Sanguisugabogg’s thang, as it were. Expanding on the sickness laid down on the Pornographic Seizures EP, the ‘Bogg treat us to a dose of sickness in full length format. Its a bit samey, I won’t lie, and it doesn’t really break any rules as it were, but for “caveman” death metal, you can’t go far wrong.
I won a copy of this cassette from Chopping Heads zine, so super ultra mega thanks are in order, definitely go and check out that zine, its a really good window into the sick underground world of noisy music and horror movies. My first impression of BTP – imagine goregrind but with a HM2 pedal. Entombed-gore? Haha! It’s a pretty savage blast, whatever you make of that particular distortion sound, with endless blasts and shifted vokills from the bowels of hell (or the torture chamber, in this case). Good shit!
When you wanna hark back and lose yourself in “that” 90s British doom metal sound, there are only a handful of albums that really hit the spot. Turn Loose The Swans is one of them, a drab, harrowing affair of doom-laden misery. Heavy riffs, downtrodden drumming, miserable vocals, morose synthesizers or pianos, and THAT dense, dry production with the middle sucked out of it. Chunky, low end guitars and percussion with sharp treble accents. It’s a strange approach, but one that worked so well here, and on Anathema’s Serenades, even on Cradle Of Filth’s Principle Of Evil Made Flesh. They don’t make ’em like this no more, that’s for sure!
I’ve reviewed some sick shit on this site over the last ten years and I can’t help it but when I look at the art for Butchered At Birth I just cringe out. There’s something about death metal paintings that are so overdone anyway (don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of good ones) that when it stoops to mangling up kids and babies to be offensive I’m immediately zoning out. It’s like, on that note, what kind of edgelords does a band name like Infant Annihilator appeal to? Anyways, music-wise, Butchered At Birth is prime Barnes-era Cannibal madness; that dank, super low and heavy attack hits you right in the face and still packs a hell of a punch all these years later. I’ve slowly started working my way through the CC albums as of late because I’ve only ever come at them piecemeal in the past. This was definitely a step in a more refined direction after Eaten Back To Life.
Early Haemorrhage is up there with some of the best old school goregrind. Part Carcass puppetry, part Euro sleaze, Grume is a blasting attack that isn’t afraid to slow to a groove every now and then. The cover art leaves a little to be desired, but in the big picture this doesn’t matter as the record is so solid.
Exploitative Practices was the record that exposed me (oo er) to the dark and disgusting world of Fluids. The striking nature of the clearly legible logo, mixed with the Carcass-esque record sleeve sold me on a listen, and the Mortician worship pushed to 11 sealed the deal, and I was at that moment at one with the hype. This is some seriously brutal shit. If drum machines are your bag, or if you like your media to be just that extra bit disturbing (expect NSFL sampling), then look no further than this record.
The dropping of the new FF record reminded me that I hadn’t reviewed this one yet. You gotta love Fear Factory, a band that is more metal than metal itself, that wears melodic vocals and electronic elements like a snazzy overcoat and yet somehow keep the purists happy. Genexus is no different, if only a little djenty compared to the classic stuff.
I love the art on this. The pencilled and photocopied (or even maybe pen and ink) scrawlings are done in such a way that remind me of early goregrind records by bands such as Regurgitate and the likes. Innards Decay however, are from Japan, and played a guttural, brutal approach to death metal. Much of what can be heard here can be found interpreted into the core of what the current wave of sick death metallers are doing in the 2020s. I’m unsure if Innards Decay was a solo project? The sleeve attributes all credit to “Gamy”, but I’m unsure if that is writing credit or absolutely everything.
Urrrgh! Been on a bit of a Gwar kick lately, and this is yet another quality offering from the bands 00s output. Its not as good as Beyond Hell (what an album) but its still got some absolute corkers on it. One of the highlights for me is the final track, which is a fitting tribute to the life of Cory Smoot. What makes it extra heartbreaking is that Dave Brockie would also pass on not long after. Sad, sad shit.
This has gotta be some of the murkiest shit ever, in the best way possible of course. Undergang play slow, sludgy death metal, somewhere between Mortician and Autopsy, but coursing in its veins is the new blood and disgusting sewery goodness of the current crop of new death metal bands. Of course, Undergang actually predate a lot of these new sewer dwellers, but the energy and vibe is the same. Think wet, loose and analogue production. Think chunky riffs and impossibly low guitars. Think – or see – intensely graphic dot work inked covers of zine’s past. It’s all here, and its disgustingly brilliant.
Nothing Lasts…. has always been my least favourite Shpongle release. I’m not entirely sure where the decision was made to split the record into smaller tracks, but I don’t think it paid off. Sure, Nothing Lasts… flows like one giant session more than anything, but the small little fades between track switch overs only damages the timeless flow and feeling of most Shpongle tracks. That isn’t to say that this record is bad by any stretch. In fact, in 2020, this little fella got himself remastered, and it sounds as massive and as vital as any other Shpongle record, give or take the fading issue noted above. Maybe I wouldn’t start here if new to the project but there’s no other reason not to listen to this if you enjoy psytrance music.
The OG Forgotten Freshness release combined the first two volumes, even though I guess its one release across two discs. I remember my Forgotten Freshness 4 having a second disk, but I think it was a bonus of some kind and not a legit FF inclusion. All in all, what you get out of these depends on your investment in ICP is. If you want out takes and alternative versions and “rare” tracks then get on board at the first station with this first release. Otherwise don’t.
For the record, if the band names are not ridiculous enough for you, this 8 way digital split is called 8 Ways For Lesbians To Indulge In Coprophagic Ass Eating. Where does a split end and a compilation begin? Either way, some small and potentially permanently damaged part of me can’t turn down a listen to a MySpace-grade bedroom goregrind / cybergrind compilation or split. It reminds me I guess of better times. Anyway, musically, there’s a few surprisingly good things here. Spooky Steve, a strange name for a cybergrind project, in particular is pretty fucking great. The insane synthesis of the instruments is great. Towards the end there are some noise pieces, which are great, but not groundbreaking.
Unfortunately I had played the Plutonia WAD before I realised there was a glorious 90 minute fan-made OST for it. I thought at the time, “damn, why doesn’t this fucking WAD have its own OST like TNT did?”, and obviously I can’t have been the only Doomer to have thought this, otherwise this beautiful creation wouldn’t exist. There’s a mixed bag here, of styles more than quality, due to the number of composers on board, but the music is handled in the traditional MIDI styles of Doom / Bobby Prince, but with extra flavours. A lot of the stuff actually sounds like something out of Mortal Kombat 3, and the more metal-based tracks are modernised and much more complex than the compositions brought to the table for the original game(s) in the early 90s. A gargantuan effort from all involved, and one that has my utmost respect.
Was given a download link to this stormer of an album when I got some cassettes from Dissicated Productions. Taphos has a mankin’ logo, but the tunes are a bit more polished than the image. Well-rounded, death-inspired metal is the order of the day. There’s a small amount of pomp, but this is curtailed by a sprawling undercurrent of darkness to the writing and to the music itself. If you like your death metal a bit more brooding, and a bit more sinister, you wouldn’t go far wrong in checking out Come Ethereal Somberness.
I found out about this Bristolian duo through the Instagram account @scvmrat. Turns out she had posed for this record cover and its voyeur / BDSM kinda vibe gave me industrial or power electronics vibes. I was even more curious when I found out the band played “dream pop”, and so added EW to my listen list. Dream pop is a pretty good way to describe this. The term generally makes me think of stuff like The Chromatics. But if The Chromatics are a pleasant dream, then Robbie & Mona’s debut record isn’t quite a nightmare, but one of those dreams that takes you on an inexplicable journey, one that twists and turns at every given moment. Good shit! A shame I missed the cassette drop, but that art would look pretty damn good on a 12″ sleeve anyways…
I’ve never really been the biggest fan of Sabotage as a unified whole, but there are some good tracks on here. Things would get a bit muddier with the last two Ozzy-fronted Sabbath records, and you could argue that Sabotage is the last “good” Sabbath album, but I don’t think that is strictly true. The band is almost unrecognisable even at this point.
I’ve always wanted to like Ascension but I’ve always found the mix to be impenetrable. Outside of opening track “Fools” I’ve found the whole thing blurs together into one forgettable haze. I can’t be the only one who had thoughts similar to this, as a completely new mix has been released by the man himself, JK Broadrick. It’s called a remaster but they clearly went back to the drawing board on this one. I know as well there was some label problems too at the time with the original release of Ascension, so it was a strange time really, for Jesu. Thankfully, Justin’s second go at Ascension is much, much clearer. Things sound remarkably different, and you can at least make your way through the entire album knowing the individual tracks that you’ve heard. There is some definition at last! Honestly, I’m not a mess with the original kinda guy, but this treatment was long overdue, and will hopefully give new life to this underdog of a Jesu album.
I love me some Miles Davis and the 60s into 70s (seemingly) free-form experimentation phase was my absolute favourite era. Sorcerer however, seems a bit listless and lacking purpose. Sure, there are passages like this on some of the more out-there Davis records, but Sorcerer suffers from this ailment for most of its runtime. Couple that with the horrendous closing track which just kills the vibe, and you’ve got a contender for least favourite 60s Davis record right here. I’ve read online that listening to the mono version and even skipping the final track, can both greatly improve this record. But shit, if this thing isn’t popping out at me in stereo, I’m hardly inspired to go and do either of those things.
I have no idea where I got this CD from, but the contact address is from South America. I can’t ever remember recieving any parcels from South America, so truly, fuck knows how I go this. The beauty of trading, eh. So, after fuck knows how many years in my possession, I finally span this CDr. Unfortunately, at 2:48, the thing obliterated itself inside my car stereo. How my car’s CD player is still working is anyone’s guess, but the foil has come off the CD surface lol. RIP.
Miss Melanoma is probably the best stand-alone Libido Airbag release. It was the first time, I think, where they stepped away from murky sounds and production and went for a full studio-quality production. Honestly, this is fucking huge, and the electronics are so fucking nasty. The vocals… well, I guess those are up to the individual to decide on! Haha
I’ve had this split knocking about on the to-do list for a while. Initially, for some reason, I thought Blood Incantation were on it, possibly because of the spacey artwork, but I digress. Side A: Cryptic Shift kick things off with probably the most polished song of the four on display here. Progressive, impossibly technical death metal is the order of the day and the sound is crisp to convey such goings on. Replicant are a little more, dare I say, math-y in their approach to a similar sound, with a slightly more unclear production which is also dryer. Side B is my favourite, I won’t lie. Inoculation provide us with a glorious blast of noise, but my favourite on this thing has gotta be Astral Tomb. My god, this shit blew me away! Definitely the “worst” production of the four bands, but this matters not. Its dark, drab, moody and absolute carnage to boot. I immediately want to check out more from Astral Tomb, so thats gotta be a good thing!
Did anyone say Carcass worship? Mmhmmm that’s some tasty gore! Boasting a far cleaner and well produced sound than most medical grinders, Medical Etymology have more in common with The County Medical Examiners than they do with say, Pharmacist or Pathologist. On The Vitruvian Dissection, a warm, clean and sanitised sound is present as the practitioners allow us into their theatre for half hour or so.
Shpongle’s sophomore record is a lot more texturally rich than its beat-focussed debut, and would define how the group would go on to evolve in their subsequent recordings. The artwork is a bit crap on a scale of 0 to Shpongled-as-fuck, but in a way it kinda suits the chilled out psytrance on display here. In fact, calling Shpongle “psytrance” almost feels like forcing them into a narrow box into which they don’t really fit. Songs like “Dorset Perception”, “Around The World In A Tea Daze” and my absolute favourite, “The Star Shpongled Banner” are incredible journeys in their own right.
I’ve done a good run through the early Killing Joke records recently, and Fire Dances cements everything that I didn’t like about them into one tangible listening experience. Fire Dances was the first album with bassist Paul Raven, who is, from what I can tell, just as proficient as the legendary Youth, but the band pull a Metallica and mix the poor fucker incredibly low in the mix. It isn’t until later in the album on tracks like “Lust Almighty” (what a name lol) that he has chance to shine. All in all, the production is drab and flat and monotonous, even in the remaster, which is a surprise as the band took production back into their own hands again after Revelations. The only consistent element here is once again Geordie’s insane riffs, which should absolutely not sound great but they are fantastic.
