The Final Countdown is the title of this album, of course also the single, and its also the title of the band’s ‘best of’ album too. For a group that apparently doesn’t like to milk their biggest hit, that’s a bad look. I understand there’s probably a ton of label meddling in these decisions, but still. I’ve always loved the title track, since I was a wee lad studying music in school. So I figured it was high time to check out the full album and give these guys some real time and effort. Unfortunately, it’s just not very good. I’m sure this album has its fans, and I must admit the warm analogue production is an absolute pleasure to hear, but the songs are generally very uninspired and the ballads are best forgotten about. It’s not for me.
Oh boy. So. I’d never actually listened to this all the way through before. Sure, we all know those tracks that people hate so much, and I saw the band live during this tour cycle and witnessed a lot of the death metal songs here sounding pretty impressive, I won’t lie. How do I even tackle this? This record is considered one of the most universally reviled metal albums of all time. Playing it through now, I don’t find the industrial/techno elements to be super cringey (and is this is coming from someone who hates what industrial became). I do however, find them to be immensely boring. This album is a stylistic mess. There’s too many ideas floating about, and they aren’t good ones at that. Someone should have gone…. look, Dave, you need to shelve these fucking dance tracks. As for the actual death metal tracks though, I have no complaints. It’s not classic Morbid but it’s not terrible either. So does Illud deserve its abysmal reputation? I don’t think it does. But it’s still incredibly weak for a Morbid Angel album.
Nile’s debut album (not counting the demo, even though that feels long enough to be an album) is a blocky and solid affair that introduces the world to the band’s unique take on combining ancient Egypt with death metal. This is far from the polish of Annihilation Of The Wicked or In Their Darkened Shrines, but its great to see where the band’s musical journey truly started to begin and flourish. At a first listen, the sheer number of instrumental interlude tracks is worthy of note. These would continue on later releases, but in a dialled back fashion, appearing once or twice, rather than almost every song. This is a pre-Wade and pre-Kolias recording but does not suffer for it. In fact, the drummer on this record, Pete Hammoura, is incredibly talented, brewing up a shitstorm of light-speed blasts and fills of his own. The production is enormous and chonky, and its easy to be overwhelmed a bit by Catacombs. As far as death metal goes though, this is pretty solid.
I have to say off the bat that I find Democracy underwhelming. I’ve listened to it twice now, and it just doesn’t jump out at me. It’s not bad, but it’s just very uneventful. The mix is very wishy washy and everything gets lost and buried. Kinda like the shoegaze hoover effect, but not in desired way. Democracy, unfortunately, sees Killing Joke on auto-pilot. This is a crying shame after the return to form thay was Repressed Emotions and even Pandemonium. However, closer “Another Bloody Election” has a fair bit of go in it which leaves things on a favourable note, despite the experience that precedes it.
Hater is now 11 years old. Damn, son. Anyways, this little fucker is probably my favourite TFD stuff, outside of the sessions that appeared on the Slimewave splits (I absolutely love the drum sound on those sessions). Here Rich Hoak and chums perfect their spastic, jazzy grind down to the very last blast or chug. The songs are just brilliant. From “Weaponization Of The Mega-Self”, “Everything You Need But Nothing You Want”, “It’s Only Attitude” or “Meat Without Feet” (will vegetarians eat it?), the prime uniting factor here is that this is catchy as all hell. Rarely is grindcore such a sing-a-long fest. There’s some interesting tunes here too. “Sunrise Is A Lie” is a track which also appeared on XXX Maniak’s controversial Harvesting The Cunt Nectar album, which Hoak also appeared on doing guest vocals. So does that make this a XXX Maniak cover? Or does Hoak consider “Sunrise Is A Lie” to be a TFD song that he loaned to 3XM? Who knows. Also, is “Tony Hung Himself” (“What the fuck, man!” as the lyric goes) about Agathocles bass player?
Thecorpseinthecrawlspace is one of the more “musical” things that Bobby Maggard and chums were involved in. In fact, I can’t remember if this was actually a solo project or if it had other members (some of the main-line bands on Stoma Stew had some other people involved, I’m sure). Anyways, blasting goregrind is the order of the day, only here we are happily engulfed in riffs and some excellent drum programming, rather than the endless flurry of maxed-out, 9000bpm gorenoise. Let There Be Corpse is actually really fucking good. Its super heavy, the production is clear (in a real good tape demo kinda way) and the tunes are some A-grade gore.
This was a project that I put together in late 2013. I’d decided that I wanted to do some gorenoise, but with the genre feeling rather saturated, I initially figured I’d fire up some “pornoise” shtick but eventually settled on using a bong for long, watery vocal effects. In fact, this was a ton easier than using actual pitch-shifted vocals. The bong is run through the same kind of effects that you would use on an actual voice. Tetrahydrocannibal was supposed to be a one and done, but this EP ended up being downloaded thousands of times from Jay Randall’s Grindcore Karaoke website. In light of this, I went forward with the plan of creating a full-length album, as well as releasing some splits. The splits never came out, but the full-length was released digitally by Legs Akimbo (an honour!) and physically by myself under Pointless Records. Neil from Legs told me that the .torrent of the THC full length (which you can read about here) was downloaded over 10,000 times. That doesn’t mean 10,000 copies were made exactly, in bittorrent language, but I was impressed nonetheless. Tetrahydrocannibal hit the wall when my other project Gorrendous Whoreplasmia more or less devolved into the same gorenoise nonsense, and the only difference between the two was that THC had bong noises where GxW had my actual voice. I was also heavily running out of steam in regards to the song content for THC. The world is a sick and disgusting place, and inspiration for GxW lasted a little longer, although now both projects are long dead and I sever all ties to them, disown them, in fact. GxW in particular. Anyway, that’s enough history lesson. Ciao for now.
I’m no jazz expert, as I’m sure I’ve declared numerous times already. With that in mind, I sometimes struggle to review jazz records, even in this micro-format of a short paragraph or two. This is great, old-fashioned and busy jazz; just what the doctor ordered if something of the more classic variety is what you were after. If you want spacey 25-minute fusion epics, you’re looking in the wrong place.
I’ve heard the name Jah Wobble many, many times, but have never had the pleasure of partaking in any of his music. Thank the dub heavens then, for this collab with the legendary Bill Laswell. A Dub Transmission takes you on an hour of ticking, chill-out beats underpinned by intense, fat sub-bass. It won’t blow a hole in your speaker cone, but you can definitely feel its presence, which is fantastic. A bit later on, some jazz elements come into the fray, and washes of echoing saxophone cut through the dubs. An aural pleasure.
I’m going to have to address Douglas P’s politics at some point. Probably in the form of a YouTube video so nothing is lost through hard text. That is an unfortunate reality I am faced with have now covered several Death In June records here. I love Death In June. There is no other band that sounds quite like them, despite them being a highly imitated pillar of the neo folk movement. In the early days I dismissed their “fash” vibe as shock value, a band playing with the power of symbols (their whiphand logo being far more powerful than the tired, overused SS skull), which later devolved into edgelord bullshit. Once I saw DIJ merch that had the totenkopf superimposed onto the rainbow pride flag, I thought I’d seen all I needed to know about where the band actually stood. And then you get to records like this. Truly it is a beautiful album. A stunning composition. Another baiting title, but otherwise a wonderful album and listening experience. Until, you get to the title track itself, and you hear the chorus: “rose clouds of holocaust, rose clouds of lies”. And instantly I’m back at square one going, err, hang on a second here. I don’t know where I’m going with this. But I feel a longer piece coming, where I will attempt to address this shit properly.
This is a long overdue listen for me. Dogg Pound, is perhaps, quite famously, a duo comprising of Kurupt and Daz Dillinger, who you may know from Dr. Dre’s albums or Snoop Dogg’s legendary Doggystyle album. These are the two guys that fill out a good chunk of guest spots on some high profile releases in the hip hop world during the 90s and it was high time (lol) that I checked out their debut album. Of course, this is produced by Dr. Dre. Suge Knight is down as exec producer, but its clear to me that Dre mixed this thing, you can tell that trademark sound a mile off. What Dogg Food brings then is a solid hour of old school gangsta rap. Its a bit typical of the sound, yes – but these guys arguably are part of the original movement and are able to get away with that. Good shit. The prophets teach: “Smoke a joint to this!”. So it shall be written, so it shall be done.
Intestinal Disgorge’s first album is as fuckin’ batshit crazy as you’d expect to be. By this point, the band have a long and surprisingly varied career (who saw that coming?), so its nice to go back and check out the very sordid beginnings. In fact, Intestinal Disgorge got seedier and more brutal as they progressed into the 2000s (Depravity is probably one of the sickest and most unrelenting things ever recorded, at 60 tracks long). Where Drowning In Rectal Sludge differs from the albums that followed it is in the production. Things are much noisier. The vocals more or less drown everything else out, the guitars are barely legible bogs of sludgy mayhem, and the drums are spastic MIDI freak-outs of the highest degree. If sick, goregrind-cross-noisecore with insane screeched vocals sounds like something you’d enjoy, give this a whirl. Otherwise I’d maybe give it a wide berth.
Hrmmmm. This is a rare misstep for Burial. Let me preface this by saying that the music here isn’t bad, nor is its production inferior. Everything is above board. I’m just…. confused by the vibes. The name Rival Dealer of course conjures the usual Burial magic of urban grit filtered through fractured and almost ambient dance/dub sound pieces. All of them are unique yet united as a whole. On Rival Dealer however, which contains some fairly lengthy tracks, Burial instead takes the vibes more cosmic. Such subjects are usually not dealings of those who focus on the harsh focus of British modern life, especially those who manage to display those grounded subjects it so beautifully through audible art forms. So the change of tack here is surprising to say the least. Also, this isn’t to say that the “gazing at the stars” kind of vocal sampling in place here does not match Burial’s style of wandering, synth-heavy patchwork that he calls music. But, I for one cannot make head or tail of this. It’s disjointed and confused, and not in the usually dense, introspective way you would expect. It is all over the place. Right at the end, the sampling U-turns into a quote from a transgender person and their acceptance of themselves, before addressing the existence of other worlds. Whatever Burial is trying to tell us here, I cannot for the life of me figure it out.
Juicer are a sonic force to be reckoned with. Calling All Cars shows their all-encompassing sound in its infancy, from sweet, lullaby-esque vocal pieces to stomping grunge and or sludge bangers. The duo would get heavier, more experimental and more extreme as time went on, but their debut is a sunny slice of all the things that makes this project so brilliant.
Very angery. Straight up heavy as shit, balls out powerviolence. I love the aesthetic, I love the production, and I love the rabid vocals and unstoppable instrumentation. As with most compositions in this style, it doesn’t last forever, but it doesn’t need to. Highly recommended.
Burial is a dissapointing transition between The Guilty Have No Pride and the absolute classic that is Nada!. What we do get in the way of genuine new material is fantastic, I personally enjoy “Sons Of Europe” and “Death In The West”, even the seemingly hated “Black Radio” sound collage. Unfortunately side B is crammed with nothing more than a shitty live recording, so to call Burial a second album by this band is really a stretch.
A live split EP which actually sounds pretty clear. The AGx stuff crawls a bit, rather than being from their selection of mincing microblasts. Quality is usually any issue that I have with splits from these Belgian legends, repeated songs aside. And that’s all OK here. The Nyctophobic side isn’t bad either. Is this an essential underground gem? Perhaps not, but it’s not bad either.
Atrocities has to be one of, if not the best, First Days recordings. Their slushy drum machine gore is perfected here, with interesting themes and perfect shifted vocals. The vocals in of themselves are something that need to be heard to be believed. Fast, brutal, savage. That’s all I need to say here, I think.
The Real Thing blew Faith No More up. Angel Dust, which followed, seemed to weird a lot of mainstream media and fans out, if what I read on the Internet is true. I can kinda see this, as Angel Dust can get quite obtuse in moments. Songs like “Jizzlobber” and “RV” are of course going to hit a bit on the nose, but fans of Patton et al will of course no doubt instead revel in this kind of humour. Angel Dust has some stunning moments however, from opening track “Land Of Sunshine” with the soaring synths underlaying the pummelling, grungey groove, to the legendary “Midlife Crisis”, which, honestly, I didn’t realise how weird this song is, having heard it a million times playing GTA San Andreas.
On first impressions, VHS Logos’ legendary Mantra record fits right in alongside the other early greats of the vaporwave genre. However, give it chance to develop and you are treated to a smattering of beats and vibes in the hip hop and funk styles too. Everything is wrapped in that warm, fuzzy 90s analogue sound that we all love vaporwave so much for, and I’m sure there’s plenty of re-worked samples and songs going on here rather than flat out original material, but of course that matters not for this kind of thing. A lovely record.
It’s really cool to look back at the beginnings of this band, who are now one of the biggest names in modern death metal. This cavernous debut is probably the most “different” sounding to all their other stuff, where they found their true style and their feet. That isn’t to say this demo is shaky, far from it in fact, its just the style of death metal on display is a little different, and the whole production and vibe hits differently. It still slays though.
Cannibal Corpse’s second record with Corpsegrinder on vocals certainly hits home a bit harder for me than Vile did. Not to shit on Vile at all, but I just prefer this one. The album art features a woman who has perhaps the longest torso in the entire world, and whilst its not one of the best pieces Vince Locke has ever done, it fits the sound here perfectly. Opening track “I Will Kill You” is iconic, and sets the pace for the brutality that follows. “From Skin To Liquid” is one of my faves here, reminding me in ways of Morbid Angel’s “Where The Slime Live”, bringing untold groove to proceedings, and serving as something of an intermission of sorts. “Every Bone Broken” is another stand-out for me.
This has been my jam recently. To say that I have overlooked Morbid Angel would be a lie, but I’ve definitely been a dismisser of their “later” discography, starting with Domination. More fool me, however, as this has probably become my favourite Morbid Angel record (for the time being, at least). Domination marks Erik Rutan’s addition to the band (the producer legend, also of Hate Eternal and currently the recent incarnation of Cannibal Corpse). Domination is also, dare I say, “groovier” than earlier works, definitely more so than it is thrashy. This works well however; you don’t have to look further than “Where The Slime Live” for proof of this. It’s not all chugs and double-bass however, there’s plenty of speed to keep everyone awake. An under-rated gem. At least, that’s how I see it.
John Tardy has to have one of the most distinctive death metal vocal sounds. He reminds me of the gnolls from the Forgotten Realms computer RPG Baldur’s Gate. Your man here literally sounds like a feral beast let loose to scream over these sludgy, lurching death metal tunes. Do I love this as much as Autopsy? Probably not, but it’s still a legendary lesson (lesion?) in doing slow death metal just right. I love the warm analogue sound, which has a lovely crispness to it, I love the art, and I love the mental vocals. It’s hard not to. Everything about this should appeal to a metalhead in some way shape or form! Haha!
Abruptum’s initial legacy ended in the mid 2000s, but after a few years hiatus, the member known as “Evil” returned without founding member “IT” (Information Tech? – these fuckin’ names, man) and released new material under the Abruptum name, even though, realistically, this should have been called something else entirely. However. This is fucking great. Potestates Apocalypsis (you know its grim and evil if the name is in fuckin’ Latin) is actually really, really good. Dark, dense, terrifying, atmospheric, blackened noise. Samples of warfare penetrate through the mud, but for the most part, this thick bog of echoic lava drowns you and consumes your soul. Comprising of four huge tracks, totally around 45 mins or so, this is a stunning work of atmospheric darkness. I highly recommend!
This is the second and final album from The Blood Divine, the band featuring several members of Principle-era COF, as well as Darren White from Anathema. Mystica is a refreshing journey, actually. The first album is a solid and fine lesson in 90s British doom (arguably the best doom?), but Mystica goes off in several unpredictable directions. There are a lot of rock and blues parts, and the keyboard playing is absolutely excellent in this regard, with some really suave organ sounds on the go. It’s odd for a gothic doom metal band to go this way, but honestly it really works and this lost gem is a fabulous listen.
The Blood stuff here is great. Its raw, its nasty, and it really shows the styles that the band flirted with, bridging elements of death and grind with even black or war metal stylings. Love it. Unfortunately for me, I’ve heard the Impetigo side a thousand times because I got the Giallo / Antefatto complication CD through a trade when I was a teenager and these songs are already on there. Plus, the version of “Boneyard” on Horror Of The Zombie is 1000 times better than this. Still, grimy as fuck, get in!
I’ve approached The Epic multiple times since release and have struggled to find the words to do it justice. Therefore, I’ve decided after another recent listen through at the beginning of the year, to throw all pretense of “doing it justice” to the wolves and just commit this monster of an album to the site. Is it too overblown for me to state that The Epic is the Bitches Brew of our generation? Possibly. Bitches Brew is a record that defined an era of new heights in jazz experimentation (or at least represents it). The Epic has many callbacks to that kind of meandering madness; obtuse time signatures, lengthy songs and outstanding soloing from various members of the group. The Epic also however has roots in many genres outside of jazz – or at least, from outside of fusion and the avant garde. There’s a lot here that reminds me of big band music, soul and funk, and even show tunes. Regardless of what I say, The Epic is one of the most ambitious albums to be released in the last decade and its something I cannot recommend enough to any music fans.
I snoozed on this when it came out, and I snoozed once more when the 3XM side was re-released on 12″ vinyl. In fact, why did the vinyl re-release only include the 3XM stuff? Seems a bit shitty. Anyway, I digress. This is a pretty solid effort from 3XM, which farts hyperspeed drum machine grindcore over you in their “original” full length style – i.e. the production is decent, the vocals are weird and the DIY samples are hilarious. Lymphatic Phlegm are, of course, legendary by this point. On this very blog, over the last ten years I’ve gone from writing them off as a crappy goregrind that sounds like bedroom black metal, to simping for their spooky, gore-drenched tunes and aesthetic. Whichever camp you fall into, you know what you are getting with Lymphatic and the side they bring here is as solid as anything they’ve ever done. For when you like your gore spooky, give this a goosey.
How is this 9 years old? The time, she flies! I used to trade a lot with the Fuck The Industry label from Japan, who at the time were putting out some of the highest quality home made releases I’d seen. It goes to show how much difference can be made by investing in a decent printer (lol) – all of FTI’s stuff looked the part, both on CDr and cassette. Video Nasty (not to be confused with UK death metal band Video Nasties) is as far as I can tell a solo noise project (2022 edit: its a two piece according to Discogs). Things here are a bit hectic and all over the place and the CDr doesn’t last very long but it was cool to dig this out to fill in a review I should have written nearly a decade ago. Better late that never, eh?
I’m not sure why Voices’ output fell off the radar in the mid 2010s, after the quickfire one-two of albums in 2013 and 2014, but I’d have to assume that it had a lot to do with Akercocke becoming a functioning entity again. In a running theme with a lot of the posts that I have made here recently, I completely missed this record around the time of its release, finally catching up with it in 2020 and only now listening again to commit my thoughts here. Frightened continues the Voices journey. Sounding nothing like London or Forest (I’m sorry, I’m not typing all that out), yet drawing strong roots from both of them, Frightened sees Voices hone their fragile sound further once again. Dare I say that the metallic elements are dialled back further, if you discount Dave Gray’s sublime blastbeat attacks. I hear post-rock, such as elements used by bands like Anathema, I hear post-punk, such as riffs or motifs used by bands like Killing Joke. I hear even more instrumentation in the form of pianos and strings. I hear progress! Frightened is a great development in the band’s journey and sound. I look forward to hearing the next record, which I believe hasn’t long been released. How’s that for timing?
I’ve never really been able to get into Watain. It’s not that I don’t like a bit sneaky melody living beneath the frosted, barren landscapes of my black metal. Nor is it that I find any of their music to be boring or badly made. Lawless Darkness is a intense slab of blackened metal tomfoolery, which admittedly doesn’t quite live up to the savage evilness promised by the title and the cover art, but is an entertaining album nonetheless.
It seems almost pointless to write a blog post about a download-only single. But hey, I’ve listened to this thing a ridiculous amount of times so its probably a good idea to go ahead and commit it here to the archive of forever. This is unreasonably catchy. For someone who enjoys both vaporwave and TES III: Morrowind, this is a match made in heaven. Hey, April 1st seems a good a day as any to post about this.
I have a spotty relationship with Wheelchair x4. Granted, its mostly my fault, having organised a failed compilation featuring 69 bands around the time everyone was leaving MySpace en-masse and it took a year or so to get everyone’s money back. Anyway, that’s water under the bridge. I got this in 2013 along with the Elastic Death split and I really enjoyed it, despite the animosity the guys seem to have against me. Maybe its not quite so good as the split mentioned above or the ‘Contraception’ EP (pretty sure that was up for download on the Grindcore Karaoke website), but its still a decent listen and Wheelchair x4 continue to be a solid contributor to the UK grindcore underworld. Also, some idiot on Discogs is trying to sell a copy of this for £30. Good luck, mate.
Dense, brutal death metal is the order of the day. In the old school style of course, as I’m sure you can tell by the artwork. The resurgence of this kinda shit is still flowing freely from an unblocked sewer, and for now, I’m OK with that (no doubt saturation point will be reached at some point in the near future). Insurrection Or Submission isn’t a particularly long affair, nor, dare I say, is it particularly original or groundbreaking in any way. It is however, a very well made piece of death metal, with fathomless vokills and some of the nicest riffing I’ve heard recently. The artwork is the icing on the cake here.
Vile is the first Cannibal Corpse record without Chris Barnes on vocals. Fortunately, the history of metal has been kind to us, and metalheads will surely know that this means that Vile is the first record with the now-legendary George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher. This tidbit aside, it is unfortunately difficult not to compare this to what came before, especially considering Barnes left the band on such a fucking high, with the final record being The Bleeding. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Vile, but it just sadly suffers the fate of not being as good as what came before it. But, considering how astronomically legendary those early Cannibal Corpse records are, I find it hard to hold this fact against Vile. It’s a well produced, solid slab of death metal.
Abigail has always danced at the corners of my musical peripheral vision (lol); the odd festival appearance here, the odd logo shirt there. But never had i submitted myself to their sleazy thrashing blackened metal until now. Think Nunslaughter, but throw in some more d-beat and make all the songs about “sluts” instead of goats, and you’re on the right track. Imagine if Midnight were a band full of horny teenage boys, and you’d maybe get the same outcome. But hey, let’s not get lost in the shtick here. The music is pretty solid and fun, despite the innate sloppiness of this kind of genre (or that’s what they want you to think- as a drummer of nearly 20 years I still can’t do a d-beat LOL). Let’s not write an essay-length analysis here. The cover art should tell you why. Either check out the manic sounds or don’t. Cheers!
Ah! Classic old school Agathocles EP right here. Guitars down-tuned to non-existence, shifted vokills and drums that are all over the place – what more could you possibly want? I love this primordial soup stuff, way back before mincecore was defined by stomps, d-beats and those riffs. Not that I hate any of that stuff, no no, but I do have a soft spot for the more grinding death metal sound to Agathocles had at the beginning.
This is fucking great. I heard about this as it was mentioned in passing by Stuart Anstis; during a very long interview he mentioned that Robin (the original COF bass player) had a project called December Moon. I don’t think Stu had anything to do with this, but he led me down this path at the least. Honestly, this is awesome. It’s showing its age, in some regards, but that’s OK. The production is great, the songs are fantastic, in both metal terms and in the more twinkly, dare I say dungeon synth terms. This is black metal but with that miserable, doomy edge that similarly defined Cradle’s Principle Of Evil Made Flesh. This December Moon record may be more or less lost to time, but it is well worth unearthing it.
