TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION
More gargling gore excellence from the forever putrid caves that Mr. M calls a “studio”. Gangrene Discharge is top drawer blasting lo-fi gurgling for the discerning goregrind degenerate. Spewtum is much the same but a bit looser around the edges, like a splattering of blood filled diarrhoea after passing a solid log the size of a Pringles can. Yeah.
Seriously good shit! For those into the world of messy, disgusting goregrind, then this is the creme de la creme of sick, twisted, splattered metal. Germen and Tu Carne are like spiritual successors (the latter of the former), so having them both on one CD makes a ton of sense. The new find for me here is AxTxS who are just downright fucking sinister. Musically they are also not too dissimilar to Germen, but the vocals, goddamn; echoing shrieks of agonizing pain! Vocals sound like someone being amputated with a chainsaw (no anaesthetic!) at the bottom of an elevator shaft. Suuuuuper sick shit all round, 100% linesinwaxxx approved – need to hunt down a physical copy of this shit pronto!
Not many bands bounce back after a personal tragedy and such a gap between records, but Blasted Pancreas are here to show everyone that they are stronger than ever. Gone is the overarching theme of worshipping Lymphatic Phlegm (though no doubt they are still a massive influence), instead we get a much more chunky and robust style of goregrind. The vocals fit more a brutal death / “tupa tupa” style of goregrind, but the percussion and guitars are fast as fuck.
Serviceable offerings from Lymphatic Phlegm, who come to us here with chunky, clear production (unless I’m out of the loop on the ongoings of the ‘Phlegm then that’s news to me brah brah). Tracks are solid goregrind but I’ll be honest, they’ve done far, far better elsewhere in their long and crazy discography. Morgue Breath kill it here. Muddy, heavy death metal for the whole family to enjoy. Has that gory edge to proceedings which makes it even more delicious. Suuuuper fucking solid and detailed production too, you can hear every single detail suspended in its own part of the sound stage.
Sick, manic, pitch shifter vocals lead this hybrid mince / grind attack. Featuring a more varied production and level of instrumentation than you’d usually get from gory mincecore, this EP by Toughguy is well worth your time.
Good initial AGx session, padded out significantly with unnecessary live tracks but the intial studio session (very rough quality) is great. Just what I come to Agathocles for. CxTxDx on the other hand are maybe not so great, low quality “mincecore” that is basically just noisecore. Very frantic / hectic / chaotic, but blurs together into one big session save for some punctuation marks in the form of samples (which I think are taken from the Slave To The Grind movie?).
Haemorrhage are – as per usual – on top form here. Grisly, gnarly, slightly sloppy (but it’s OK) goregrind from the masters. Riffs for days, sickness for a few days more, from the opening chainsaw sample to the finale note played. Dead on the other hand are a bit chonkier. Their “sexy” goregrind / death metal hybrid hits like a slab of roast beef to the back of the head (eyyy!), more in the vein of CBT / Gut without actually sounding like those bands. Cool shit.
Taking the early days Cat Decap platters of splatter in a tighter, more precise and streamlined a direction. To Serve Man is like one of those injections that makes you throw up all over yourself, shit yourself, and then pass out. But only after hearing this whole album first. Some of the directions can be nauseating, with neck snapping changes in ideas / riffs but the delivery is so totes brutes that I’m all for it, to be honest.
What’s better than death metal? Why, sloppy goregrind mixed with death metal, obviously. Taking pages from the books of not only Carcass, but also Xysma, Impetigo and even Autopsy, this early daze incarnation of the now legendary Exhumed is a treat in primitive metal brutality done right. The demo grinds along like a rusty machine, but one that will hit you with lethal amounts of force if you are not careful.
This is what I’m talking about! Like being knocked off your feet after being hit by a bloody torso that’s been thrown through the air during a fucking hurricane. Absolute goregrind carnage! Septage pull no punches on this “full length” release. Blasting drums, bone crunching strings, subterranean vocals. Class.
Ah, isn’t it such a beautiful thing? Blasting goregrind to the point where the drums are tuned so high they are floating in outer space. The guitars are so fast that they have turned to a liquid, and possibily a little to gas also. The vocals are the dying (or birthing?) sounds of a creature (or creatures) flopping about in a vat of hideous bright blue liquid in a secret subterranean laboratory. Truly, this is glorious.
Oh what hath we done to deserve the best part of 80 minutes of gargling goregrind? We are not worthy! We are not worthy! Lesser bands could no doubt have turned this same session into four separate “albums” or a lifetime’s supply of split material. Here however, Human Pancake treats us to a veritable buffet of 80s sci fi horror villain vokill-fronted, trashcan snare drum banging, guitars tuned so low they basically sound like bodily fluids sliding from corrupting gaseous corpses shredding mayhem. Yeah. Top shit.
I used to think this was the shit, but honestly it’s pretty messy and disorganised. And it’s like, OK, you’re talking about raw underground grind / powerviolence here – what do you expect? Whilst there are plenty of barrages of blasting carnage to inflame the senses (lmao) its the “downtime” in between where SOV loses me; there is an irritating harshness to the cymbals which almost drowns out everything else, as well as a general sloppiness to anything thats not a blastbeat that gets a bit draining after a while. I’m sure this band sounded fucking insane live, but this 6 minute EP is more than enough whilst listening at home.
My brothers in gore! If Reek Of Putrefaction wasn’t enough for you, or, inversely, it was too much for you (lmao), I implore all of you to work backwards to Carcass’ early demo offering, the aptly-titled Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment. Now, somehow magically sounding better than the band’s actual debut album, Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment is a foundation brick in the wobbly, fleshy building that we can call goregrind. Therefore, to silly idiots like me, it is a vital release. Thankfully, it is not an shaky, prototype kinda “vital” gem, yknow, the kind of ones that are historically important but you don’t listen to all that much because, well, they aren’t all that good. No – Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment is absolute aural carnage in its finest form and a total poser filter for those who claim to love “goregrind” (I’m looking at all you tupa-tupa OEF party goregrind listening fuckwads).
The Sarcastic Terror material here is a bit clearer than their debut demo / EP, but I can’t say that they have evolved much musically in the 3 years between the 2 releases. I’m not knocking it though, their decrepit grinding death led with demonic pitchshifter vokills is well worth checking out. In-Quest are a new discovery for me, with this split, and they are a bit busier and more energetic than Sarcastic Terror. The music has a slightly more technical edge to it, the drummer is much busier, and the production in general is a bit lighter.
I’ve gotta give props to Choppin Headz zine for pointing me in the direction of Sarcastic Terror (I can’t remember which issue, sorry!). This is some true underground sickness right here; some proper off the beaten path shit. Sarcastic Terror toe the line between grind and death, with the muddy, chugging riffs of the latter meeting the sensibilities and pitchshifter vocals of the former. Take Fascination With Mutilation era Agathocles and throw them in a blender (sorry lads) with I dunno, Winter or something like that. Oh, and a random mid-90s dungeon synth artist too. The resulted mush, once committed to shaky, dusty ferric tape, should sound a little bit like this.
Sado Grind Metal is an unofficial compilation bringing both the self titled EP and Moloch EP into one session. They are quite awkwardly jammed together, but it’s a good way to experience all the “ancillary” Naked Whipper releases with ease. You could do this album and Painstreaks in one single session and inhale the band’s entire discography in one sitting.
Probably the washiest Naked Whipper session but earns bonus points for lack of watery flanger bullshit. Straight up grimy cassette session ass “sado grind metal” to appeal to your most base and primal musical lusts. Look no further, come in and enjoy the carnality!
Sadistik fukken war metal that’s gonna whip your fanny off, if you give it half a chance. Production? Who cares! These tracks hit you in the face like a lead weight over and over and over again when a suited and booted dominatrix kicks you in the balls at the same time. Yeah.
Ugh! Wishy washy lo-fi fuggen war metal is the order of the day! Can I get a side of extra flange with that please, drive? Tidy! Because nothin’ more Satanic and fukken evil than sounding like you’re under water, boss, ya dig? Cosmic aqua terror incoming! Hold onto ya fuckin’ dickpipes lads!
This is one of those records which I have put off writing about for years and years. I think I could go as far as to say that this is a cult classic of the whole grindcore genre; once you’ve explored the recommended gems, and start to go off the beaten path, Nyctophobic’s first full length should be somewhere on your list of albums to check out. It’s easy to miss, and therefore it is a true underground gem, but it is well worth your time. The production reminds me of early 90s Brutal Truth or Agathocles, also in musical terms too these acts can be compared, more so the latter in regards to the use of blasting grind and pitchshifted vocals, and more to the former in regards to slowing down for a sick death metal riff or employing manic shrieks over the top of the aural carnage. Samples are used frequently but only to punctuate the main musical bulk and also to act as intros to some tracks. The decision to close on a sample of a news report signing off and then several minutes of static is an interesting one but after the litany of atrocities that Nyctophobic have displayed for us in the last 40 minutes it does feel like a fitting end. To recap: extremely good and well worth tracking down.
Can I get a reeeeee, a skreee and possibly a breeeee? EarDelete play glacial paced “grindcore” with silly vocals and party atmosphere, and in this case an overarching theme of the devil somehow being involved, for reasons beyond my comprehension. Production is good, but the best thing about this is the guitar; thick and chunky with a dark tone. Tidy.
Both bands absolutely kill it on this split. Talk about high energy! Both sessions have fresh takes on the grind template and the production is clear and punchy enough to let both of these projects really shine. Short, sharp and fucking chaotic.
Behold.Total.Rejection. completes my descend into the murky world of Revenge full-lengths. Sometimes I can struggled to think of what to say for certain releases, and Revenge are a band that I’ve noticed this happening for multiple times. I guess once you know what Revenge are about, and you start coming back for more and more, you know exactly what you want and you know exactly what to expect. In that regard, BTR is another variation on a narrow template, however it is a template that the band execute with extreme savagery. This is very little that rivals the greatness of Revenge (Conqueror comes close), even in the world of war metal.
Batcave is up there with Belief… and the first demo as some of the best stuff Fukpig ever did. The production on this short EP is fucking MASSIVE, the guitar enveloping you like a giant wall of deadly force. The drums are also fantastic, especially the blastbeats on “One Of A Thousand Ways To Steal Your Liberty”.
This World Is Weakening is the “fixed” version of 3. You’ll find less wooly production, more balanced instrumentation and more audible vocals (which is nice, obviously). In comparison to the modern remaster of 3, This World Is Weakening seems like a bit of a pointless endeavour but trust me this album was a breath of fresh air into these songs back in 2014. Both versions still warrant investigation today, as Fukpig had truly developed their own unique sound by the time this album came around.
Like Misery Index on crack cocaine. Fukpig really hit the ground running and Depths Of Humanity is a masterpiece in my eyes. It is, truly, one of the most under rated and slept on grindcore / crust demos of any era. The band would go on to become something slightly different, but this first view into what they were about is incredibly good and well worth your time.
Bombs Of War takes the same (or very similar) set of songs from the band’s original demo The Depths Of Humanity and reimagines them somewhat. The differences are marginal, but the production is significantly different. I’m not sure if there was a big lineup change or what; I’m not sure what would warrant the rerecording of all of these songs into a second demo which is arguably not as good as first. If you do ever come across this though it is still well worth a listen, this early incarnation of Fukpig was fucking awesome.
I was 22 when this came out. I was a vinyl-buying devotee of Devizes Records, and the very minute it was possible to do so, I ordered the 3 album on 12”. Spewings… was OK, but Belief… was fucking savage, and having seen the band live a few times I was now as pumped as I could be for the next Fukpig installment. 3 came and it was just… there. I can’t really remember thinking it was awful but I do remember a bit of a backlash to it sounding like arse. The band were also not happy with 3, and rereleased it in a corrected form as The World Is Weakening soon after. The trouble is, listening back now, I don’t even know what the fucking problem was. I’m not sure if the version online has been remastered or what, but 3 sounds huge. Listening to it is like asking AI to paint a picture of what it would look like to drown in a vat of HM2 distortion. I don’t know what the point of this little story was, but rest assured 3 is well worth your time. The digital version of 3 comes with a bunch of demos tacked on. I’ve already heard Depths Of Humanity and Bombs Of War, but sandwiched in between these two sessions are a few that I’ve never heard before. They sound far more modern than the latter, with the buzzsaw HM2 style guitar leading the way. The drums on this session are fucking fantastic; so fast, so tight. Excellent blasts. The whole session kinda sounds like Benediction but on steroids.
A gargantuan fecking slab of brick-walled goregrind. Loudness war? Forget that shit, you won’t ever be able to hear another record ever again if you play this little bastard loud enough. Obscene production technique aside, Katana Orgy is the Jig-Ai sound fully matured from the debut era, and kind of the blueprint that they would use going forward for the rest of their work. For that reason, and because this album is just generally amazing (the last track excluded), I’d say Katana Orgy is the best Jig-Ai album.
Slightly muddy sound, but an excellent set that covers the first four (read: the only decent) Berzerker albums. I saw them live on this tour and it was fantastic, so to have this disc come out not long after was a nice little treat and reminder about how good they were live. For this line-up Luke had long-time Berzerker collaberator Sam Bean on bass, recent (for the time) Akercocke recruit Matt Wilcock on guitar and Blast Vader himself, David Gray, on drums. Good times.
Leave it to Archagathus to make completely inhospitable landscapes of downtuned grinding mush into catchy songs that are easily digested and heavily enjoyed. Truly, they are masters of the mincecore craft. Bangsat are a more straightforward grindcore affair, not that this is to their detriment; ample carnage awaits you on side B of this short disc.
Random find of the day goes to this fantastic little split EP. Both bands are new finds for me. Ulcer are on the more brutal, “grindcore” end of the powerviolence spectrum, with a bludgeoning production intent on smacking you into the ground. Failure Face on the other hand have a bit more of malleable nature to them. The songs are tightly sprung and bounce around with that undeniable hardcore punk energy. The vocalist is on a whole Jello Biafra meets John Brannon thing, which is fine by me.
My first boogie with Failure, and hyperspeed, manic powerviolence is the order of the day. Clear, organic production allow the riffs to breathe over the barrage of vocals and blasting drums. Ona Snop are another beast altogether, absolute savage fucking unstoppable barrages of sound paired with riffs that could make a corpse get up and mosh.
A fucking incredible split from two giants of the goregrind world. Golem Of Gore bursts out of your speakers in a frenzy of crazy riffs, absurd pitchshifter vocals and a restaurant kitchen’s worth of pots and saucepans (the drums lol). It’s a hell of a smack to the face, with tracks averaging about a minute long. Pharmacist on the other hand, take a bit more time to make their incisions and fill your mind with their disgusting gore in a more precisie and methodical way. You can slowly feel the sickness flowing through your veins like the freezing and inevitable grasp of a lethal injection. Seriously, Pharmacist just absolutely fucking rules in every possible way. Some of the most disgusting – and well made / well written! – goregrind you’d ever hope to hear.
On Donec Mors Nos Separaverit, Hymen Holocaust further hone and perfect their snail-pace goregrind. The vibe in general just feels a bit more mature than the previous records and the crawling pace gives me a Mortician meets Satan’s Revenge On Mankind vibe, which is just absolutely beautiful in every single possible way. The production is organic and clear, and the buzzing guitars stand apart from the sewer monster vocals. The only (small) downside is that I keep expecting it to burst into unstoppable barrages of blastbeats, because, y’know, it is goregrind afterall. But that aside, this shit rules.
You’d think this thing would show it’s age with the Bush references but it doesn’t really matter. We have two fucking killer grindcore bands head to head on one split. I’ve had this fucking 7″ for years, I keep losing it (lol) amongst the pile, but every time I break it out every few years, damn I enjoy it so much. Phobia are stalwarts of the scene, blasting away here with laser sharp precision and absurd guitar blurs making up the riffs. Great shit. $krupel are a little bit rougher around the edges, but its still a whirlwind cacophony of total sonic grinding chaos. Everything is a little bit harsher. If listening to Phobia is like being guillotined by the sharpest most efficient blade, then $krupel is like being beheaded by a rusty chainsaw. That’s all I got haha Trashcan snare gang assemble!
The Wormrot stuff sounds very similar to their Dead EP, with a lot of the same tracks (is it even the same session?), but there’s the added bonus of the Diseptic stuff here. I don’t really know shit about Diseptic, they seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth, but they play raw, aggressive, noisy grind led with a deep, growling vocal attack.
The Dead EP, another very early release from grindcore stalwarts Wormot, has marginally better “production” than the group’s initial 2007 promo demo release, but is still a harsh and inconsistent listen. For a band that would become so tight and “on the money” with their delivery, Dead has some interesting riffs / detours which seem to distract from the overall greatness. Nevertheless, the talent is clearly here, even from right at the beginning.
Wormrot’s very first demo from 2007. The quality is dog shit, as to be expected, and the tracks seem to be culled from various recording / rehearsal sessions but even here we can appreciate the talent on display. A lot of these tunes would go on to be rerecorded for the Dead EP in 2008 so this release is for the true grind historians and completionist freax only (unless you prefer terrible production then by all means crack on and enjoy!).
One of the downsides of being in the UK is the slight difficulty of getting a hold of these flexi releases from Decibel magazine. On the other hand, do I really want a shelf full of these fucking things that are nearly as thin as paper? Anyway… Here we have three tracks which sound like they are from the Dirge sessions, so we’re talking peak “grind” Wormrot (not that I have a problem at all with the band’s growing influences and directions). This thing is less than 2 minutes long, but it’s still well worth your time. A furious tornado of grinding rage (lol), that still has time to break some incredible riffs over your head in the mosh parts. What a god-tier grindcore band.
Urine Festival bring that bubbling vats of boiling piss vibe to the party that girls really like. If you wanna holler at a shawty and you want to show her that you’re freaky, play her this 7”. Guaranteed success! CIT bring that same piss vats vibe to extra-tone / splittercore drum speeds mixed with oddly coherent riffs. Legit though, when I first heard this 7” back in I wanna say 2010 (I bought it from I think Bones Brigade’s stall at Hellfest of all places) I just could not fucking understand what the actual fuck was going on. I was like “these fucking bands just sound like running water like what the fuck?” – good times!
Infester, not to be confused with the older band of the same name, is one of the several hundred thousand Bobby Maggard goregrind projects. A split with NxVx was no doubt inevitable, considering how prolific both bands are. Infester is surprisingly coherent and switched on, with very busy and involved drum programming and excellent riff writing. Top it off with some goregrind vokill sickness and you’re onto a winner. NxVx session is a bit more dank, possessing a tape demo feel. The single bass guitar dominates the sound scape, but the uncompromising lows that are the vocals also power through. It’s like listening to some sort of secret caveman sex ritual or some such overblown statement. I’m all for it.
Absolute goregrind perfection. Some of the best LDOH material ever. Relentless drums. Subterranean guitar and bass. Vocals like a volcano erupting through a sewage treatment plant. Almost unbeatable. Stoma are one of the most underrated goregrind bands ever. I say goregrind, even though they style themselves more as “pornogrind”, this is in aesthetic only and the music is 100% fucking savage blasting, buzzsaw strings and pitchshifter vokill annihilation. Seriously, both of these bands go so fucking hard on this thing. Legendary, essential split, IMO.
Holy shit this fucking split absolutely kills. I’ve not been all that hot on the most recent reformation of Last Days but this is an actual decent live recording, even if the snare is too low, it fucking seriously kicks ass. The session is from the Putrefaction In Progress era so we have absurd drumming and SMES-Erwin vocals which were so absolutely disgusting. SROM are great here too, with a snare sound that is one of the nastiest I’ve ever heard carrying two downtuned hymns to the horned one. Really sick. Wish I’d come across this EP sooner, one of the better splits in recent times from both bands for sure.
Intestinal Disgorge side sounds huge, I think this was Sociopath era so the band had really hit their stride at this point, churning out endless disgusting screaming goregrind. 4 minutes or so of really cool shit. I wish I could say the same for Lincoln Love Log, which is far messier / harsher in the production as well as delivery. Sounds live to me, or just shitty rehearsal room recording. Nonsensical noisecore seems to be the order of the day. Disappointing compared to how good the ID side is.
Like Gut’s Odour Of Torture on bath salts, if I could be so bold. Whore Splattered Walls is 50 minutes solid of frankly quite sordid and terrifying, grinding mush, perpetuated by the group’s trademark “bitch squeals” and interrupted only by brief samples that further devolve the tone. Sick shit.
I got this off the back of Too Short To Handle #3, which I got through a trade many moons ago (and is also a 12″ rather than a 7″ like this). Real talk here – what happened to TSTH vol. 2? Was it ever released? Does it skip straight from 1 (this) to 3 as some sort of joke? How bizarre. Anyways, this little piece of white wax varies from the brutal to the downright ear-piercing, in terms of the musical submissions from bands. There’s plenty of acts that I remember from the “MySpace days” on here, including P.O.S., Cum Sock, Slapendehonden, Gorgonized Dorks and Wheelchair x4. There’s a ton of other bands that I’m not too familiar with, and telling them all apart can be quite a challenge. I’m glad I bought this, but I can’t see me listening to it again any time soon. Lol.
Chunky, blasting grindcore from one of the modern fatherland’s for the genre, that being of course, Czechia. Production is fatty like butter being mixed into mashed potatoes, and the music sounds like you are gargling rich gravy with meaty chunks floating about inside it. LOL. All of the track names are dumpling-related and are pretty hilarious once translated. If you don’t take your grind too seriously this is well worth a listen.
Madness, sheer madness I tells ya! Another band from the “Czech school” of goregrind and brutal death, with spastic drumming and lightening fast riffs. I usually use the term “farmyard vocals” as a cover all for the kind of stuff that Mincing Fury have going for them, but truly the vocal efforts here are more like “freakshow vocals” than any equestrian or bovine equivalent. Lovely production too, which makes this thing kick like a mule, regardless of how needlessly messy it gets at points.
Gut’s first – and by far their best – full length record, where the band mastered their microblasts of fractured filth. The groove level is off the charts here, something which countless copycat bands have attempts to seize and have failed. Expect long, intrusive samples of various strains of perversity from the vaults, up against silly vocal explosions and some of my favourite production ever for a gore/porn grind album. The drums are crystal clear, standing out like bones of a bleached skeleton through the fleshy mush of Gut’s downtuned riffing. Trust me, it’s great shit. Stand out tracks: “The Taboo Room”, “Cripple Bitch” and “Revel In Cunt Slime”
Internally Mutilated play mama’s gooooood ol’ analogue gorenoise, drowned in a sea of tape hiss and bad samples from some Faces Of Death-sounding clips. The samples are like ligaments between muscle and bone (is that right? I’m not a medical expert lol) and make the bazillion songs on offer here flow together in one giant session, which is just lovely. Anal Birth being the same but more of the blown out speaker style variety, where all I can hear is one smeared blur of aural Holocaust. It sounds like drums and high speed wind, if wind was made of viscera and lethally sharp bits of bone. Biocyst, another project of gorenoise legend Marc Palmen, has a warmer sound here but a more relentless attack, especially regarding percussion, with the drum machine just fucking hammering you over the head. Cool vocals that sound like they might not have FX on them but I’m sure they do. Really cool session. Vomitoma play a particularly gooey, disgusting form of gorenoise. Sounds like chunks of shit flying around in a life-size blender or some such ridiculous comparison. Either way, the project’s session for this split is a great way to round out the near hour of aural carnage that I have just submitted myself to. Class.
Methadone Abortion Clinic are one of the more underrated goregrind projects out there, I think. I’m not sure if they are even still active, but this split is further evidence as to why I consider them so excellent. They seem to blend the slower groovy gore “bulldozer” stuff with more traditional forms of goregrind, and not to mention the sick, bubbling pitchshifter vokills. Biological Monstrosity are not too dissimilar, actually. For the sake of this split, the two bands are a variation on the same theme and they are paired well. Blasting away the cobwebs with a similarly well-rounded production to that of their split mates, Bioligical Monstrosity are a bit looser, the music breathes a little more, whereas MAC just hits you in the chest. Great shit all round, to be fair.
A live session from shitfun is backed with a tinnitus-inducing selection of tracks from Industrial Holocaust. Somehow, the live part of this actually sounds chunkier and better produced (figure that out), but Industrial Holocaust bring the Assuck / early Nasum / early Brutal Truth vibes (can you tell by their name? Haha) which are an interesting foil to Shitfun’s more turgid affair.
Trachoma is a lesson in brutal gore done very, very well indeed but PNH, despite the thinner production, legitimately sounds like bloody shit flying from your broken ass at 197mph. Truly, utterly disgusting. If the cover picture hasn’t already indicated, this split is for perverted goregrind fiends only. A lovely little gem for those already down the rabbit hole!
Really cool groovy grind with a sick sound; clanking, horrible bass and heavy percussion. Only let down is the somewhat uninspiring vocal approach, but this guy is good at lows so I can’t throw any shade. Bands like this are a dime a dozen but this record was a lot of fun. I’d really like to see these guys play live. I can imagine a beach ball / various other inflatables kinda party at the OEF main stage.
Schnauzer is a trip, as always. Not sure what I can add here that I’ve not already said before, but solid, chugging Ohio “scrap metal” underpins the various outpourings of madness that Jim puts us through. Sloth is a bit more disjoined, with samples and dare I say “acoustic” passages meandering between blurs of manic noisecore and more uhh “traditionally” paced songs of varying styles and genres. All in all, a fun split that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
As with, well, pretty much any The Day Everything Became Nothing release, expect a solid as fuck but somewhat no-frills approach to the “dry heave” school of chest-crushing goregrind. I guess some folk refer to it as “bulldozer” gore, and CBT and Guinea Pig are great examples of contemporaries that share this sound. TDEBN however, eschew the overtly sexual themes usually associated with such brutal forms of music, and instead apply a fairly cryptic, simplistic aesthetic which mirrors the blunt force of the music itself. Tidy darts.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: there is nothing out there quite like Intestinal Disgorge. Absurd levels of misogyny lead the way on this 50-minute nightmare journey through blasting carnage. Ditties such as “Stupid Fucking Whore Bitch”, “I’m Going to Kidnap You Bitch” and “Worthless Piece of Shit Bitch” are some of the more palatable song titles here which should act as a sounding rod (oo er) to help ascertain whether or not this is for you. If you are an upright, functioning member of society I would perhaps urge you to stay far away from the “music” of Intestinal Disgorge. For everyone else, I would suggest actually the best starting place is opening track “I’m Wearing Your Panties” which is just so silly yet brutal as fuck all at the same time. There is only so much I can say here. Even for a band as crackers as Intestinal Disgorge, Sociopath stands out in an already unstable and deranged discography. Guess I’ll spin this and celebrate with “A Champagne Flute Full of Piss”. Tidy.
Ants in your pants brutal death metal with a tendancy towards the absurd end of goregrind / porngrind. I’m talking farmyard vocals, pitchshifters, snare drums that sound like dust bins, y’know, the works. Throw in some hilarious samples (as well as some disturbing ones) and 21 total traxxx of blasting madness for you to enjoy. I got this CD through a trade or something many years ago, can’t remember how I got it, just that it was mailed to me (lol). Really fun shit that doesn’t outstay it’s welcome at only 19 minutes of brutality.
The Anal Penetration stuff here is dirty as fuck. Blurry, bordering on noisecore levels of gore and or porn for the sick, depraved, musical deviants out there. A stunning noize of disgusting obscenity. Anal Whore, who I am usually a big fan of, sounds a bit off here. There’s like, some weird bass sound (I think) which makes everything sound like a clanking mess, and not in a good way. The Anal Penetration side is so fuckin’ good though it totally makes this thing worth checking out. FFO disgusting porno/gore grind only.
Low quality and low effort noisecore and / or grindcore is more or less what’s on offer from both bands here. There is absolutely nothing musically redeeming about any of this – and I suppose in some ways that’s the whole point. Production wise, expect the bassy, low rumbles of tired out cassettes.
Rawhead bring that FAT production and huge downtuned riff energy to the world of gargling gore. A surprisingly natural drum sound (read: pingageddon mode disabled) rounds out this barrage of swampy gore madness. I’d be doing Raw Addict (what a name!) a disservice if I compared them to early Dead Infection but damn that’s the vibe I get right out of the door with these guys. Crisp, tight blasts cut through a muddy sea of subterranean riffs and inhuman vokills. FFO: drowning in raw sewage. Blue Holocaust bring that big budget b-movie sound (ha) to the pits of goregrind, with downtuned into oblivion guitars that are still strangely audible and vocals that come at you from all angles like a multitude of undead creatures tearing at your weak, fleshy corpse. I firmly believe that Active Stenosis is one of the sickest goregrind bands to come about in modern day. Expect uncompromising heaviness and saturation of the aural listening field by the guitar, where the stabs of blastbeats penetrate through the noise like bullets tearing through skin. The band bring the a-game when it comes to pitchshifter vocal variety too. Great, great shit.
AGx stuff here I think is live (I think lmao), but pretty fuckin’ solid, and thrown in are a few of the band’s classic tracks to keep things interesting (unique to this session of course). Cannibe session is on par with their other material if you’ve heard it. If not, expect razor sharp guitars and monotonous but also incredibly satisfying drum programming. Insane watery gore vokills are then slathered all over the top of the musick with zero consideration for rhyme or reason. Lovely!
Imagine that some maniax poured all of the members of Carcass and Agathocles into that giant blender from that halloween episode of The Simpsons where the teachers are eating all of the children at the local school. The contents are then slurried down to what is basically a thick pulp. The pulp is magnetised, pumped out into wafer thin stripes and air-dried for maximum retention of gooey goodness. The thin strips are then wound around coils and placed inside plastic housing for safe-keeping. Insane cannibalistic madmen – if they can resist breaking open the plastic casing and savouring the taste of the contents – can put the plastic cartridge into what is known colloqually as a “tape player” to be submitted to the aural explosion being read directly from the macabre contents. This is what Xysma’s Swarm Of The Maggots sounds like.
Quite possibly one of the most awful things I have ever heard, but I already knew that going in. Guess I’m a sucker for degenerate pornogrind and every now and then something like this is a nice palette cleanser. Horny Tentacles has gotta be up there though with the worst of ’em. Horrendously bad! Ha!
Damn, this shit is all over the place! A blistering mix of blasting grindcore carnage and barrages of industrial noise, all chopped and changed up into glitchy, headache-inducing soundscapes. I guess think of breakcore techniques but applied to a slightly different musical landscape. (Recommended by kay192x, thank you!)
What is this tuned to? Drop Z? Heavy as fuuuuuck tunes here from this elusive goregrind project. Is Intrepid Corpse no more? I’m not sure! Maybe we should find out. But when it was around and active, this project dropped some amazing records. This release reminds me of earlier Dead Infection, some Blood, perhaps Black Clouds Determinate era of Agathocles (but that might be the artwork talking).
Ahhhh fucking hell blast blast blast blast! Cystgurgle gotta be one of the standard bearers for “gorenoise” right now, surely? This shit is absolutely fucking unstoppable. What a disgusting, impenetrable gory mess.
Open the fukken toilet bowl, two gore legends are gonna crawl out, walk downstairs and play a set in your living dripping with piss and covered in shit. CBT got that porno groove that everyone knows and loves (your gran is a big fan) and LDOH’s music here is the aural equivalent of being turned into a meat crayon underneath an 18 wheeler truck. Fucking top dog split, this.
The Kill play some fuckin’ meaty grindcore. All your desired grindcore traits are here, i.e. ferocious blasts, rabid vokills and harsh production, but daaaaamnnn The Kill also brings the riffs. Case in point being the end of “Digestion”, which breaks out a passage that fucking dares you to not throw down (if I had to do one of those cringe “try not to headbang challenge” videos to this song I’d headbutt my camera into a thousand pieces, throw my desk out my window and start swinging from the ceiling light).
Long overdue rerelease of earlier Urinefestival shits. Expect gurgling toilet water vocals with farting, spluttering burps over the top of it, against the background of the “usual” grinding bass noise and spasticated flurries of drumming. 12 minutes of per audible degeneracy.
20 minutes of intense powerviolence carnage that is sure to blow your dick off. Expect the usual blasting juxtaposition of fast and slow, from tense passages to all-out blastfests, led with rabid, barked vocals. Production-wise this holds up really well too, with a drum sound so clear that most bands in this kinda genre can only dream on it. Great shit.
Libido Airbag has a dank fucking sound at the best of times, but the few minutes on offer here seem extra sleazy for some reason. Maybe it is the artwork and archaic format (the CD is super fucking easy to lose as its so thin – glad to see there’s a digipak version now available). CBT of course do what CBT does best, with their bludgeoning, dry-heaving gore clashing horribly (in the best possible way) with the toilet bowl sloshing that is the vocals. “Tapir Tits” (like… what?) is one of my favourite songs from the band too.
Now this is what I’m fucking talking about, lads! Ahhhh my life! This is how you do grindcore properly. Rooted firmily in the genus of Impetigo, Blue Holocaust takes the project’s already killer sound (2004’s Twitch of the Death Nerve is also great) and updates it 15 years later with another stupidly good album. If you like exploitation films, big riffs and toilet bowl vokills, then look no further. This shit is up there with the goregrind greats.
The one outlier in the Repulsion / Genocide canon. Throughout the band’s history you can track the development of the sound from start to end. On the Final Demo however, things take a turn, perhaps in line with changing of the gaurd musically, in regards to the zeitgeist. Musically, things take a turn towards what can be compared to shit like Impetigo; that loose thrash sound with the heaviness of death metal. Scott is growling here like he does on no other Repulsion release. Would have been interesting to see where the guys went from here, but alas this is where we leave off. (I’ve used the cover of Horrified for this one as I cannot find a scan of this demo anywhere – and the reissued compilation versions of Horrified is the only place you are likely to hear these demo tracks)
Doesn’t hold a candle to the Horrified sessions but its cool to hear some longer tracks from Repulsion. Both of these appear on the 1991 demo too, so this is hardly essential. My one complaint is that the bass drum is a little “soft”, fluffing through the mix like a giant pillow. Otherwise, this old school sound fucking rules.
Like having fallen into an alternative dimension and this is their version of Repulsion’s Horrified. This is so similar yet so different to the version that we all know and love. The production is different, and there’s a few different songs here that didn’t make it to Horrified era, such as the excellently titled “Crypt Of Terror” (if there’s not a zine named after that then there needs to be). But yeah this shit is variations on a theme of the more well known final form but if you are into grinding fucking thrash then you’d do no wrong in having a gander at this fucker.
Clearer and more precise than the earlier rehearsal demo, which a bit of a trainwreck despite its historical status. Here tracks are more fully formed, and we can see where the band are headed in regards to the formation of their sound. Well worth checking out.
Does it sound like complete and utter ass? Yes. Are the instruments a bass guitar, a cheese grater and a cardboard box? Sure as fuck sounds like it. Is it an important rehearsal demo in the history / development of extreme music? You can bet your life it is, so it is worth checking out for that alone. Hearing the proto-version of “Stench Of Burning Death” in the form of “Cracks Of Doom” is so cool.
What can I say that hasn’t already been said before? Horrified (or is that HorRIFFied am I right?) is a turning point in the direction of underground and / or extreme metal. It marks the point where thrash broke of distinctly into what would become grindcore. Dave Grave’s blastbeats are one of the earliest examples of such a style, at least being played so prevalently throughout all of the songs. And speaking of songs, their simplicity is their strong-point; just fucking riffs riffs and more fucking riffs, meatgrinder bass and the aforementioned drums. Don’t waste your time reading what I have to say – just play this fucking thing. Easily one of the greatest musical records of all time, in my humble opinion.
You’ve just done a great big fucking chungus of a shit in the toilet bowl. The toilet itself looks like it’s about to fall apart, the porcelain is cracked and stained, and the water pooling at the bottom had a greenish-yellow tint even before your pulsating brownish horror took a dive into it. Your stomach gurgles a deep subhuman roar, and you realise in horror that it’s not your stomach rumbling after dropping such an unspeakable terror into the bowl below, but the turd itself! But this ain’t no fucking Gutalax fantasy kids, no no, this is sick fucking groove heavy stomping fucking mincegore I’m talking about, so instead of getting up and doing a little dance and throwing toilet paper everywhere like an idiot, this huge fucking chungus of a turd roars the most sickening gore-drenched howl you’ve ever heard, before climbing out of the fucking toilet bowl and tearing you in half, exploding the room into a haze of blood, innards and feces. This is what Haggus sounds like on this split. But you can dance to it if you want to. Toxocariasis are pretty fucking good too. It takes a moment to adjust to the thinner sound after the bowel eruption of Haggus, but the messier, chaotic gurgling gore is sure to satisfy even the fussiest of corpophilic gorehounds. TLDR: this split is good, yeah.
Fucking drums on this fucking thing are faster than a fucking cheetah driving a fucking porsche across the outback, the sheer speed of it melting the fucking asphalt and tyres along with it. Any wildlife that wanders out into the road just gets fucking mowed down and reduced to a bloody smear on the burning road; guts and organs cooking up on the underside of the car. The cheetah likes this smell. On the stereo he is playing Another Gory Mess by Fuck… I’m Dead. Yeah that’s all I’ve got. Dunno where I’m going with this. Solid as fuck.
Sad to say more of the same downtuned mush from Fluids, love ’em or hate ’em this split LP does nothing different. Pharmacist on the otherhand are dominating the grinding death metal (ie: Carcass Worship) world right now, and with good reason. The stuff here posesses a clarity that most bands in said style fail to capture, but Pharmacist push it to the next level.
Nasty, dirty, disgusting, festering. Fuckin gore vocals on this are absurdly watery. The drums, despite low quality production, are nice and clear. Fucking subterranean guitar tone too, but with the right amount of crunch. Beautiful.
Not gonna lie to you, this is pretty good. I went into it with low expectations and ended up really enjoying this comeback record. Granted, the start is a little shaky (track one just doens’t have the “fuck yeah, Torsofuck is fucking back, fuckwads” feeling that you’d expect after such a huge gap, but the record soon finds its feet and away we go. The drum machine is a bit hollow-sounding, and some of the longer samples will probably piss some people off at only half hour in runtime, but for the most part this is a solid brutal death / pornogrind record.
I really love what Darkthrone have come back around to doing. This is some sort of very organic mix of black and doom metal, which works with a confident ease you could only attain no doubt after several decades in the game. It’s odd, because there’s not all that many people playing in this style, but it sounds like such an obvious blend of metal subgenres. Tracks like “Impeccable Caverns Of Satan” and “Stalagmite Necklace” are some of Darkthrone’s best from any era.
Earlier Dead Infection is a turbid bowl of rancid mush – and I’m not talking about the lyrical content here. Surgical Disembowelment may be a tad onto the wrong side of “bad production”, where the audio infidelity instead starts to chew at the experience of listening, rather than contributing to it. The grinding of the guitar sounds like a tumble dryer filled with human remains sloshing around at half speed. Nevertheless, if you like dusty old goregrind that sounds like it was recorded in a bloodstained cellar then this will be for you.
Not as good as the split with DHIBAC but still a solid fucking goregrind album nonetheless. When I think of goregrind, I never see anyone talking about these guys, ever. It seems like they truly slipped through the cracks. Anyway, I guess they are atypical of the style. I guess this is closer to regular grindcore but with some pitchshifter vocals thrown in. Good shit either way.
Nonsense of the highest order, which is why you are here, right? I haven’t heard Anal Massaker since their split with 2 Minuta Dreka so it’s really cool to come back to these guys. It’s just total noisecore fuckery, of course. Musical Arse Decomposition is new for me (lol) and here on the flip side is just more variations on the current theme, to be honest. All good with me though, carry on grinding! This 7” is nearly 10 mins a side too, how is that even possible? Don’t suppose sound quality is anyone’s priority here though.
VGF is an interesting project. Blurring the lines between black metal and noisecore, the side farts and rattles through some disgusting lo fi material. Speaking of lo fi, the Warhorness side isn’t exactly “mastered at half speed over at Abbey Road” quality, but it’s a damn sight clearer than VGF. Songs from Warhorness are in the dirty noisy grind style; short, sharp bursts with callbacks to 80s proto-black/death. Think Nunslaughter but even more perverted and you wouldn’t be too far off.
You can take one look at the staffing for this record and know immediately what kind of aural carnage you can expect. That being said, DHQ does have some sense of experimental maturity to it that I would not expect from something involving Seth Putnam. Anyway, if low, rumbling, post-apocalyptic sounds are your thing, then check out this improvised record.
Agorapocalypse sometimes seems to get it in the neck for not being quite like the stuff that came before it (that being, of course, absurdly fast bursts of micro-grind). All the pieces are still here though; the savage riffs, the ridiculous drum programming, and the multi-throated triple vocal attack. It’s just, the songs are longer than a usual average of about 24 seconds, and the influences span the metal world, rather than just the ABCs of grindcore: “Agoraphobos / One-dimensional hatross / Alesis Time Machine / Seventh bastard son of the seventh bastard son/ With deicidal tendencies” The final three tracks on this thing are near perfect aural destruction, but the whole album is well worth your time. At under half-hour its a fast-paced thrashy attack of insane lyrics and insane music. YOU WANNA TALK TO ME ABOUT PIG DESTROYER!? WELL I SMOKED CRACK WITH A FUCKING COP!
Man this fucking rips. Mortician-grade mush for guitars, 90s goregrind vocals, and trashcan drums that are played at blisteringly fast speeds. Putrid Stu is a man after mine own heart, and this four minutes of detuned slop is just absolutely fantastic.
Intestinal Disgorge, here bringing their usual, dense digital goregrind with intense blasting mayhem, farmyard vocals and putrid subject matter, are (literally) music to my ears. I need to get into more from these guys. I was super into them years ago but need to fill in the gaps in their discography, as I’ve yet to hear a bad thing from them. Smallpox Aroma I remember from the MySpace grindcore days (lol) but I don’t think I ever heard them until now. They match ID for sickness here, with a slightly messier sound but that’s OK. Expect disgusting aural carnage. Tidy darts!
Solid drum machine grindcore with a bizarre, almost occult feel to it. I remember Grind Block re-releasing this like it was yesterday. Anyways, the original Death To Pigs cassette is expanded on with various additional sessions, which definitely bolsters the release and makes it feel like more of a long player. If the song titles don’t throw you off, some of the off-kilter vibes surely will. Come for the blasting grind, stay for the sleazy horror show.
Dirge takes the aural carnage of Abuse and streamlines it into a more focussed, primal grindcore attack. Don’t get me wrong here, Abuse is fucking amazing, but is a little rough around the edges compared to its slightly younger brother, Dirge. Here the production is smoother (without losing any of the “edge” needed for grindcore to work), and the songs hit that extra harder. The band were arguably at their original peak during the release and subsequent cycles of touring for Dirge. I caught them live many times around – and before – Dirge, and whilst the band are stilling going and pushing the boundaries of whatever grindcore music can be, this album is a testament to their “classic” era – to the universal language that is brutal, uncomprising grindcore.
Bulldozer gore groove! And lots of it. Listening to shit like this is one of life’s simple pleasures. However, I will say, for gore/pornogrind and the reputation that this band itself has, the levels of degeneracy here are fairly low, as is any unfavourable sampling that you wouldn’t want coming out of your stereo at full pelt for the neighbours to hear. Similarly, production is not only fully audible but actually packs a hell of a punch. There’s riffs for days under that gargling sound. Someone once told me that CBT play “music to beat your Mrs. to, but the twist is she’s low key into it”. That description has always stuck with me.
What a clashing, clattering cacophony of cantankerous claustrophobic compositions, culled credously of criteria concocted by contemporary carnage constructors called Nasum (sorry about that, I got stuck in some sort of literary loop). The aptly-titled Funeral March is a blast and a half through blistering high-production grindcore (think the aforementioned Nasum and stuff like Rotten Sound, later Wormrot etc). Expect total aural carnage.
A Haemorrhage record is always going to be a good time, if you are a goregrind fan (or just a Carcass fan and don’t mind a bit of “worship”). These guys (and gal) have been plugging away for years and Anatomical Inferno is their third album. I have the Brazilian reissue in my hands. Now, being from the UK, I can’t remember for the life of me where or how I got a hold of this particular version, but there we go LOL The album is a solid chunk of goregrind mixed less with death metal I guess and more with elements of punk and hardcore. This gives the proceedings their own unique sway, whilst being also rather true to the blueprints set down to which Haemorrhage operate entirely. The production on this thing is a bit loud / overblown, which is made even more obvious when there’s a few demo versions of songs tacked onto the end of the Brazilian pressing. These demos are a little dryer, and the drums are more natural sounding, but for the most part, I think I prefer these to the album versions. Throw in a cover of “Police Bastard” by Doom (also exclusive to this version) and you’ve got a winner. Tidy darts.
