G&P Review: The Black Coffins

It would perhaps be more accurate to state that we Necropolitans know more of the ways of the living than the inhabitants of their cities do. We know more of their funeral customs, at any rate.  And those we have forgotten are stored in the library of Letharge. Mortality can be a signal for festivity and drunkenness; for mourning and sobriety; for feasting; for fasting; for remembrance or forgetting.

Neil Gaiman
Sandman Vol. 8 Worlds' End

The Black Coffins
Dead Sky Sepulchre
Black Hole
Though it's spent 30 years growling about the cessation of life, death metal has rather narrowly confined itself to the mechanistic processes of death both in and out of the grave. Very few bands have mustered the wherewithal to muster more insight into what the end of life actually means. Brazilian death metal quartet The Black Coffins get a bit more philosophical with a handful of songs that consider not what death means for the corpse, but how those left behind process its ramifications and the rituals that ease the passing for survivors. They also bang out a bunch of tunes about hate and destruction and bombs and all that other stereotypical death metal folderol, but they're at their best when they think a little deeper.
So it's kind of a bummer that Dead Sky Sepulchure sounds so flat and lifeless, especially considering it was mixed and mastered by William Blackmon of Gadget who has always done a stellar job of pulling the best sound and performances out of his own band. The Black Coffins' death metal won't bowl over with originality anyone who has heard the first two The Haunted records, but that still doesn't excuse a tepid performance. Even throwing in stolen Motorhead riffs in "Below the Roots" doesn't spark that primal urge get up and rage.
I can cheer on a totally generic album that's delivered with verve and bashed out with panache, but there's just something embalmed about Dead Sky Sepulchre. It's a shame to hear an album that strives for something original lyrically be dragged down by a forgettable recording.

[Full disclosure: Black Hole sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: D.E.R./Aberrant

D.E.R./Aberrant
Split
Karasu Killer/Criminal Attack/Everyday Hate/Give Praise
D.E.R. have been having quite a little moment for themselves recently because their 2008 album Quando a Esperanca Desaba has been given not one but two ass kicking reissues. But lest you think that's all these Brazilian blastbeat-mongers have to purvey, they're back again with another 10 songs, sharing wax with Colorado's Aberrant (who got into the reissue action themselves with a 2010 discography record). What they're dropping on your turntable is a Thunderdome of straight grind nastiness.
Four years removed from their last record and D.E.R. haven't bothered to learn any new tricks, and that's probably a good thing. Once again, they grind like From Enslavement to Obliteration is the only record ever made. They're content to keep kicking out jam after jam of unremitting blastbeats and nasty table saw injury guitars without getting too fancy. If Quando a Esperanca Desaba lit up your cortex, these new songs will jolt you another fix. Otherwise, don't expect to be blown away by originality. You'll come out of their half of this psychedelically-flecked periwinkle 12-inch with your socks safely unrocked, but you still have to admire D.E.R.'s ferocious energy.
Meanwhile Aberrant, which features an ex-member of Catheter, is a touch thrashier in spots, but clearly these are two bands that have been prepping from the same playbook. Aberrant's riffs have a tad more complexity and innovation to them than D.E.R., but they whip by at such a clip that it demands close listening to really excavate every interesting nugget that's buried behind the blast beats. And speaking of blasting, the drums are fine when they're going full tilt, but the drummer lacks that sense of timing when it comes to fills and tempo changes. The result is the explosive climax of their songs could have been even more pyrotechnic. (But good news, everyone! Aberrant is in the hunt for a new drummer.)
The split is a cool face off between two bands that share a similar genetic root but have taken alternate paths. It's a great example of divergent evolution in music.

G&P Review: Noisebazooka (With Bonus D.E.R. Goodness)

Noisebazooka
Humped World
Everyday Hate
Humped World sucks.
I'm sorry. There's just no nice way to say that. I can't really tiptoe around it. It's an excruciatingly bad album. I listened to it for weeks trying to find some redeeming quality to mitigate the crap aftertaste, but the tragic truth is Noisebazooka have created an album that is awful in just about every way a record can suck.
Humped World is less a bazooka of noise than it is grindcore vuvuzela: insistent, unrelenting and increasingly strident the longer it drags out. The Austrian twopiece's first mistake is shoving the generic and monotonous drum machine so far to the front of the mix. It smothers everything else going on with the album in a dense droning of unchanging mechanical beats. When you think about the insane effort and detail somebody like Scott Hull puts into his robotic drumming, it's almost insulting to hear something this amateurish. I don't know if drum machines come with a grindcore pre-set, but that's what Humped World sounds like. It's the most boring mechanical blastbeats churned out with at high velocity and with minimal variety.
The monotony of the drumming and the boring (if largely unintelligible) riffs and dull screaming only get more irritating as the 43 minute runtime just creeps on by. This album is just Way. Too. Fucking. Long. Maybe if they'd kept themselves to a five minute EP, Noisebazooka might have been tolerable but completely forgettable. But at 32 songs, each boring moment and musical mishap gets magnified as they are repeated and dragged out and proven to be intentional. Amateurishness can sometimes lend a wonderful, juvenile spontaneity to music, but more often than not amateurishness is just disappointing and embarrassing for everyone involved.
By the time Humped World farts itself out with 10 minutes of burbling noise nonsense (and you already know how I feel about that) in the shape of "Winterlandscapes," I've lost my capacity for outrage and disappointment.


D.E.R.
Quando A Esperanca Desaba
Everyday Hate
Just so we don't end on an entirely negative note, Everyday Hate have also reissued D.E.R.'s Quando A Esperanca Desaba on CD for those of you missed out on Nerve Altar's very sweet vinyl version from a couple years ago. My opinion of this one hasn't changed in the slightest.
This Brazilian band is not breaking any new ground in the realm of speedy, traditional grind that obviously nods back to From Enslavement to Obliteration. However, taken on its own terms, Quando A Esperanca Desaba is a hell of a lot of fun.
Skip Noisebazooka and check this one out instead.

[Full disclosure: Everyday Hate sent me review copies.]

The Namesake Series: "Mass Hypnosis"

You are NOT getting sleepy. For all the talk about "Mass Hypnosis," there's just no way you can nod off when Nasum and Sepultura, both in their prime, start screaming at you for attention. Thrashin' and grindin' and hypnotisin' your ass with the power of the almighty hooky riff. Two different bands, two different eras, two differing genres, one common objective: your undivided attention. Mass hypnosis!

Blast(beat) from the Past: Subcut

Subcut
Contra Fatos Nao Ha Argumentos
Terrorotten
2008
Brazil is a country I’ve wanted to do a regional roundup on for a couple of years now, and bands like Subcut are a large part of why. Unfortunately, I’ve just never been able to assemble the pieces I felt necessary to pay thorough tribute to the country’s prowess, but the country boasts an impressive grindcore culture from the legendary Rot through today’s practitioners. So I've been piecemealing the country's finer points.
Subcut’s debut full length Contra Fatos Nao Ha Argumentos is a grimy, sweaty snapshot of urban angst and barely concealed outrage. This is the Amores Perros of grindcore: from the urban pastiche graffiti-style art through the ghetto desperation of the individual songs, it’s got a street-level outlook on a corrupt, crumbling culture. Even if you don’t speak Portugese, songs about “Fascistas” and between song samples lambasting the “policia” eloquently convey their frustration.
Musically, Contra Fatos Nao Ha Argumentos is a more concise, Brazilian equivalent of Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses. Many of the songs have a real “Denial of Existence” vibe, in particular. The Sao Paulo trio, who all take a turn at the mic, have crafted a tight, fun album that knows its strengths and plays to them, channeling that awesome early ’90s vibe before grindcore became overproduced and stale.
If you haven't gotten down with Brazil's wax, now is a great time to start. And this is a great place to start.

G&P Review: Deus Castiga

Deus Castiga
I’m Alive Fucking Dead
DC Records
If you’re not ashamed to admit having seen it, you may remember Kel Mitchell’s character in the execrable Mystery Men who was gifted with the power of invisibility – provided nobody is looking at him. That is, unfortunately, how I feel about Brazil’s Deus Castiga. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with their thrashulated grind, but each time I’ve sat down to write up their EP I’m Alive Fucking Dead, I’ve drawn a total blank. If they’re not in front of me, Deus Castiga’s 13 songs – other than “Scars,” which winds itself into a nice tight tizzy – just don’t leave that much of an impression.
Deus Castiga rock out like a thrashier Selfhate but there’s some missing X factor to their music that I’m craving but just not getting. The guitars shrill like power drills winding up and the band favors spidery, trebly movements. The upper register screeches border on blistered black metal. I think it’s the drumming that might be my biggest stumbling block. Technically, it’s a busy brew of snare drum fills and blast beats, but the clicking double bass drums grate the nerves.
Deus Castiga are a band with plenty of musical skill to burn and with I’m Alive Fucking Dead they leave it all on the ice, as they say in hockey circles. So I don’t want this to song more negative than it needs to be, but I’m just gonna be looking for the band to make more of a songwriting leap in the future. If you're going to castigate the deus, I want to feel the lashes.

[Full disclosure: The band sent me a download.]

G&P Review: Dispepsiaa/Violent Gorge

Dispepsiaa/Violent Gorge
Split
Bullshit Propaganda
I can’t remember where or when I read it, but several years ago I read a review that said two things can just ruin an album: the vocals or the snare because they’re ubiquitous throughout. That insight has stuck with me ever since. I won’t say Winnepeg’s Violent Gorge ruin their half of the split with their vocals, but they’re wrapped in enough layers of reverb to stay toasty through the harshest Manitoba winter. And because they’re shoved so far to fore, it detracts from what is otherwise a tidy little grindcore racket. Sounding like the first Black Sabbath record played by a horde of necro crust punks, Violent Gorge, musically, is a fairly satisfying experience. The clear ringleader is “Repulsive Apparatus,” which best exemplifies their frosted punk take on grind, but the croaking, echoing vocals just overwhelm the remaining songs. What the band lacks in recording chops, however, they make up for with a whole thesaurus full of song titles like “Labrynthine Plica Polonica” and “Mephitic Bromhidrosis.”
Flipside, Brazils’ Dispepsiaa just bring the noise. With roots tracing back to the semi-legendary Rot, the band expertly hits that sweet stride between lofi energy and perfect clarity. The guitars, in particularly, are raw and aggressive while also being amazingly clear. You can practically hear each string vibrate in isolation. Aside from a quick introductory flash of jazz to one of their six songs, Dispepsiaa best exemplify the Brazillian approach to grindcore: don’t look for innovation; just try to keep your teeth in your face as they work you over with a sphincter clenching ferocity.
Sadly, Dispepsiaa have called it a day, but their half of the split more than serves as a quality epitaph. Violent Gorge are more atmospheric than their grinding kindred, but they don’t yet know how to make that work to their advantage.

[Full disclosure: BS Propaganda sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: D.E.R.

D.E.R.
Quando A Esperanca Desaba
Nerve Altar
If grindcore ever codified its equivalent of lofi black metal, Brazil’s D.E.R. would be running with wolves, standing backlit in foggy forests and generally trying to pretend the last 20 years of musical evolution just didn’t happen. Quando A Esperanca Desaba (roughly, When Hope Collapses) sounds like it was vomited forth from the bowels of Venom’s rehearsal space in Mantis’ mom’s basement somewhere back in 1977. Instead it’s being reissued on vinyl from 2008.
And for all I can tell D.E.R. (not to be confused with the derp) slapped the same song on this LP 16 times in a row, and I couldn’t give a shit if they did. D.E.R. are not a band overly concerned with niceties like dynamics, slow parts, vocals that are intelligibly human or making songs sound unique. They’re too busy grinding the shit outta your lower intestine to care. Every song starts in medias res and doesn’t end so much as just stop. A deep breath and it’s on to the next neck-cracker. The guitars are gristly knots of overdriven unintelligibility, the vocals indecipherable and the drums pound away, fighting not to be swept away by the noise.
Described like that, Quando A Esperanca Desaba sounds like a discordant mess (and to a certain extent it is), but there’s a spontaneity and intensity at work that shoves the music higher than it has any right to go. There are plenty of established grind bands that lack half the urgency these Brazilians are packing. Though it’s far from original or even acquainted with conventional definitions of well produced, D.E.R., in the immortal words of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, have guts, and sometimes that’s enough.
[Full disclosure: Nerve Altar sent me a review copy.]

World Downfall: Brazil

Every band that’s ever blasted a beat owes a royalty check to Napalm Death, and though they only recorded one true grind album, much has been made of all the Carcass clones swinging from that band’s dick. But pinpointing the influence of Terrorizer – the third head of Earache’s early grindcore Cerberus – is a little more subtle. It’s that peculiar admixture of punk exuberance and metallic precision that separates California’s finest from the hopped up hardcore and slaughterhouse floor scrapings of their transatlantic cousins. But the funny thing is just about every country seems to boast its own Terrorizer clone, so periodically I’ll pull one out of my magical closet o’grind to spotlight the myriad ways World Downfall continues to hold sway.

Expose Your Hate
Hatecult
Black Hole Productions
2005
Expose Your Hate never want to leave you asking, What was that band’s name again? Just in case you have a short attention span they shout their moniker repeatedly throughout the first song, helpfully titled “Expose Your Hate.” That’s just good marketing.
Repping Brazil in the Terrorizer analog sweepstakes, Exposure Your Hate capture the same blend of metal heft and precision and punk as fuck attitude that made World Downfall such an instant classic. Sure the cast of villains seems not to have changed in the past 20 years with the usual suspects such as religion (“Bible Bullshit”), the nightly news (“The Media Virus”) and war (“Faces of War”) getting one more verbal flaying.
Hatecult’s music is just as delightful an atavistic mix of knuckle-dragging Terrorizer worship with gargle/screech Carcass vocal handoffs. Grammatically confounding album standout “Despise for Animal Life” tattoos your long term memory with a pinch harmonic stylus while “Appreciate the Dying Planet” is a bass-led, sunbaked blister of arid grind and sirocco-swept doom trudge death that boasts better double bass than a pre-Morbid Angel Pete Sandoval could muster. To mix up the tempos, closer “Inherent Human Cruelty” lashes charnel vocals to grave moss pacing. Led by a Full Metal Jacket sample, “Lies” pierces your skull with the efficiency of a 5.56 mm round.
There’s a whole lot of hate going on during Exposure Your Hate’s Hatecult. Won’t you join the cult?

G&P review: Agorhy

Agorhy
Ruptura
Humanos Mortos
You can’t be Brazilian and play metal marinated in a sweet tribal sauce and not expect the occasional Sepultura comparison.
Hell, singer Aramos even sounds a lot like Max Cavalera back when dude was still pissed off at more than just Andreas and Paulo. Which is fucking awesome since Sepultura was always my favorite thrash band right up until they broke up after Roots and never once considered hiring a crappy replacement singer and puking out horrifically lame nu-metal albums until they farted away into irrelevance (*fingers in ears* I know of this Derrick Green of whom you speak. I can’t hear you Lalalalalalalala).
So yeah, Agorhy are Brazilian and kick off their debut full length with some tribal samples and generally channel Sepultura circa Chaos A.D. and Roots but their thrash is blended into a headhunting foundation of Cattle Decapitation grade death metal. Add in the occasional sweeping arpeggio to remind you of how faceless and lame that last Dying Fetus album was.
Ruptura brings eight new songs plus another 11 tracks from their two previous demos for over an hour of circlepitting grind, death and thrash goodness.

Drummer R. Pina hacks out a hunk of the spotlight for himself with tightly controlled double bass rolls, snappy blast beats and tribal-inflected fills that give the chunky death metal tunes some personality beyond all the countless other chunky death metal bands.
I left my Portuguese phrasebook in my other pants, but Metal Archives tells me Agorhy have a fondness for penning ditties about human sacrifice and this whole sanguinary mess would have awesomely scored that scene in Mel Gibson’s surprisingly enjoyable bloodbath Apocalypto where the Mayan captors gleefully lop the noggins off of a few dozen unfortunate captives. (And yes I’m well aware that the Mayans were nowhere close to Brazil, but we’re suffering from a dearth of indigenous themed South American flicks to pull from here.)
Though it’s awesome to have this band’s entire output to date cobbled together on one handy sliver of plastic, the sheer hour-plus girth of the concoction and the demos’ rougher production can make Ruptura a bit much to absorb in a single sitting. But taken in smaller bites, Agorhy cannibalize meaty slabs of extreme metal and roast them over a camp fire while regaling each other with tales of primal gods who can only be sated with offerings of blood.

G&P review: Infect

Infect
Complete Discography 1998-2003
625 Thrash
If you thought the only banging things to come out of Brazil were Sepultura, Ratos de Parao and Gisele Bundchen’s ass, then a listen to Infect discography is in order.
Compiling everything this all estrogen quintet set to tape during their five year lifespan, Complete Discography will not send your eardrums into spasms for its originality, but Infect snarled tune after tune of extremely well played hardcore. Napalm Death and Infest (only one letter off!) get inspirational shout outs in drummer Estela Homem’s liner notes and both of those influences are pronounced. But Infect, vocally especially, can also sit comfortably along side Antischism and Naked Aggression and just a touch of Melt-Banana.
I left my Portuguese phrasebook in my other pants, but I can make a fairly educated guess as to the topic of songs such as “Homofobia,” “Sociedade Masculina” and “Classe Dominante.” (Helpful translations are offered for curious Anglophones.) It also doesn’t hurt to note that these ladies’ anger, coming from a country noted for periodic political strife and extreme class stratification tends to make the rants of spoiled middle class American punks seem a tad bratty by comparison.
One fairly interesting detail to note is that instead of lining all the songs up chronologically, as with other discographies, Infect group multiple versions of the same song together, allowing to watch “Assessino,” “Se Aceite” or “Sendo Fogo” progress from demos to more robust and well rounded productions. The watery tune “Nova” helpfully comes labeled with “smashed,” “crashed” and “thrashed” versions.
Infect didn’t stray farm from hardcore’s well worn grooves: guitars scramble, drums pound out near-blast beat tempos and screams range from throaty diatribes to full on slasher film victim screeches. But Infect prove that teen aggression, political frustration and loud music are universal statements no matter the language.