Sprechen sie Deutsch: Audio Kollaps

Audio Kollaps
Music From an Extreme, Sick World
Crimes Against Humanity
2004
Outside of Full Metal Jacket, I can’t think of another Vietnam movie that commands popular attention with the same force as Francis Ford Coppolla’s jungle epic Apocalypse Now. After nicking the film’s art and font for their album cover, Audio Kollaps kick off Music From an Extreme, Sick World with a classic dialogue sample that is no less effective a mood setter for being dubbed in German.
A grind band in gutter punk clothing, Audio Kollaps play an Amebix-inflected style of grind that slots comfortably next to the last couple of Napalm Death albums, mixing up cocaine heartbeat blast beating with moodier crust punk crush. Mid-tempo burner “Schwadronen des Todes” (“Squadrons of Death”) is as foreboding and implacable as a Romero zombie horde while “Aussenwelt” (“Outside World”) boasts a thudding floor tom that could have been swiped from Napalm Death’s Utopia Banished standout “Dementia Access.” Audio Kollaps most impressively pull together all of their disparate elements on album winner “Kopflos” (“Headless”) a shrapnel cyclone of ice crystal howls, tundra blasts and a pure white out guitar solo.
I love the sound of Audio Kollaps during my morning commute. You know that grindcore sound? It sounds like … victory.