G&P review: Victims (How Swede it is Again, Part 7)

Victims
Killer
Deathwish
The slavering V8 wolf’s head on the cover pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Victims’ latest slab of crusty as fuck d-beat punk.
Though it’s been available on wax for about a year, American hardcore staple Deathwish dragged Killer into the digital era. And seriously, what the fuck took so long? Seriously.
Guitarist Jon Lindqvist (who works days in Sayyadina) performs battlefield surgery on his guitar, and bassist Johan Erksson’s bestial roar has never, EVER sounded so pissed. Built on Andy Henriksson’s (also of Sayyadina) steamhammer drum assault, Victims scorch 16 tracks of elite Scand-beat crust that traffics in exceptional songwriting.
The aptly named Killer hits with the subtlety of a rush hour semi pileup. “We’re Fucked” (take away message, the world sucks and we’re fucked) is about as nuanced as you’re gonna get from Lindqvist et al. (In case that innuendo slipped past you unnoticed, follow up “Destroy and Rebuild’s” gang chant chorus “The world is fucked up” may hammer that point home.)
The transition from the gang chorused goodness of “Try?” to the spiked belt melodies and Discharge worship of “Killing” is a natural wonder that should be preserved in amber and unearthed for study and made the subject of dissertations by a more enlightened era that doesn’t equate buying a Green Day shirt from your mall’s Hot Topic with the true essence of punk.

G&P review: Trap Them

Trap Them
Seizures in Barren Praise
Deathwish
Trap Them’s episodic songwriting is a little like leafing through the diary of some emotionally shattered zombie apocalypse survivor. Just sub in fear, anxiety, misanthropy and Oedipal outrage for a crushing mob of shambling, necrotic brain munchers.
Days 19 through 31 on Trap Them’s third release finds our survivor no better off than before, if not a little worse, as vocalist Ryan McKinney shouts into the void over the riotous amalgam of Tragedy, Entombed and Converge his co-conspirators bang out beneath him. Fair warning, I’m about to coin a really horrific genre name, but Trap Them, right now, are the leading lights of the recent 'Tombedcore movement, Frankensteining Wolverine Blues’ booty shaking death ‘n’ roll to crusty, furious d-beat.
Kurt Ballou channels prime Sunlight Studios circa 1991 in his production work, swiping the fabled studio’s trademarked pitch black guitar tone and turning it into a blunt object to batter the listener into emotional submission without ever sacrificing subtlety or clarity.
While Seizures in Barren Praise largely expands on the palette Trap Them nearly perfected on last year’s Séance Prime, the band does stretch their limbs, exploring new moods on “Mission Convincers,” which swipes Grief’s junkie stumble for a seven minute body blow session to the Torso.
While I hope McKinney’s day to day life isn’t the psychological Walking Dead episode it appears on record, I hope he never manages to outrun the stumbling horrors that propel some of the finest hardcore being made today.