G&P Review: Nothing More to Eat

Nothing More to Eat
Nothing More to Eat
Bandcamp
Having not fully gorged themselves on the grind with Eat'n, Finnish gourmands Nothing More to Eat heap high their cafeteria tray with another heaping helping on their thrashtastic self-titled full length. For good measure, opener "Comfort Zone" melts an extra layer of Velveta goofery over the top for a gooey extra layer of the weird, kicking things off with crashing mariachi horns. Because why the fuck not?
While Nothing More to Eat still give a respectable showing in grindcore's eternal footrace, the soul of this album is bonded (by blood?) to  thrash. That was always lurking in the band's speedy picking style, but this shot Nothing More to Eat give their thrash impulse free rein to romp around and take a few headers off the stack of Marshalls. Loosening up gives songs about zombies, death in space and infernal seamen a swing that traditional grind just doesn't have. While the thrash is prominent, Nothing More to Eat aren't just raining blood. They've still got grind in their back pocket and they're not afraid to drop the Scandinavian-style crust on "Skate N' Die" or even whip out a skronk jazz sax solo on "There's No Glory in Space."
While every pimply teen who ever purchased a denim vest and some puffy white high tops at the local vintage store seems to have started a thrash band the past few years, Nothing More to Eat succeed in that realm because I don't think they set out to make a thrash record. Nothing about the album feels artificial or premeditated even if it won't be displacing Beneath the Remains on the best of thrash list just yet. It's just something that seems to flow out of their playing without a second thought. That's what makes it work.

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

G&P Review: Rotten Sound

Rotten Sound
Species at War
Relapse
As good as Rotten Sound’s long players are, after the Napalm EP I find myself looking forward to their short form efforts even more. The ferocious Finns seem to embrace the challenge of constrained running times, turning in some of their best and tightest material.  Like the 11 minute Napalm, Species at War gives use a six song snack pack, but this time Rotten Sound have shaved a whole three minutes off the run time. They sound even more hopped up on blastahol, and that gives Species at War a primal, troglodytic edge occasionally missing from their cleaner sounding full lengths.
Though they've shaved the songs down to the bone, Rotten Sound leaves just enough gristle to make each one distinct like the predatory groove of "The Game," the slouching "Salvation" or the multipart grind of "War." The blend of adrenaline and grit throws back to Rotten Sound's earliest, grimiest efforts. Their recent albums have been staggering waves of crusty grind, but they have also erred on the side of clean production. Species at War finds Rotten Sound riding that sweet spot between clarity and a needed atavism that gives them that perfect grind punch, jumping up through your speakers to hit you in the vertebrae with a sack of the Finnish equivalent of nickels.
I know this is probably intended to be a stopgap teaser for pending full length, but I'm really liking the way Species of War stands on its own. Unless, of course, the next record is t
his raw and raging. If so, count me in. Until then, I'm going to flip this one over and hit play one more time.

G&P Review: Blastanus

Blastanus
Collapse
Self Released
Blastanus sounds like it should be the title of some super-skeezy Eastern Bloc porn flick investigators would find n the VCR of Buffalo Bill's body part-strewn sex dungeon. Instead, this Finnish quintet (featuring a saxophonist) churn through death/grind that leans heavily on the balance of aggression and obsessive technicality established by the early Willowtip roster on this 2011 album. Comparisons to Decapitated would not  be far off either because Blastanus shove the guitar histrionics to the forefront for better or for worse.
Over 11 songs in just under 45 minutes, Blastanus's vocals veer between Afgrund rasping and Karl Sanders straining to drop a deuce after a Taco Bell binge, which puts the band squarely in the realm of metal's norms. The drums are afflicted by that modern typewriter rattle, but they serviceably move the songs forward. So make no mistake, this album belongs to guitarist Antii Oksanen. Where everyone else is turning in a by the books performance, Oksanen's florid freakout at least endeavors to give the band some personality outside of the zillions of other bands who have mastered odd scales. One note will never serve when he can squeeze in 50 and he takes full advantage of the range the full neck of his guitar offers. The solo of "Liberation/Salvation," one of the few really stand out moments on Collapse, is ganked straight from the Slayer playbook but given a skronkological rectal exam.
Blastanus spend about 90 percent of Collapse toiling to turn in a generic but inoffensive death/grind record, but then out of nowhere they tack some smooth jazz on to the end of the album. If you have a full time saxophonist in the band, it seems odd to keep him lurking around for one track just in case you were wondering what it would sound like if Kenny G ever went on tour with Sadis Euphoria. Nobody has ever wondered that.

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

Blast(beat) from the Past: Bufo

Bufo
Moderni Ja Maailman Tuho
Addiction to War
2008
Form follows function, modern architects will tell you. That means a building's shape should be linked to its purpose. Finnish crustcore hooligans Bufo invert that axiom with their 2008 album Moderni Ja Maailman Tuho (Modernity and the End of the World) because its unique double-7-inch format dictates much of your listening experience. Dividing nine songs over four sides means you'll be flipping wax about every five minutes. That leaves you very little time to do anything else other than concentrate on their Rotten Sound meets Anti Cimex shenanigans and stare at the beautiful, Jesu-style cover art. This is one of those instances where I think any other format would take away from the presentation.
And these princes among grind and crust toads deserve your undivided attention because the trilling punk riff of album opener "Suden Hetki" is a clarion call to arms. By the time the band does that brief pause gag right before erupting into a blastbeat rager you're already thrashing around the room. It's that touch of crust to Bufo's brew that gives the songs time to breathe and flow and circle back about themselves (that awesome riff from "Suden Hekti" makes more than one appearance). It really gives the impression these guys have put some serious thought into their tuneage, and Moderni Ja Maailman Tuho is packed with those little touch moments like the bass isolation on "Silpouteneita Raajoja," the filigree flair of "!Reclama!," or the fact that the mics catch the sound of the drummer setting down his drum sticks at the end of close out anthem "Tama Vie Helvettiin." That close out song, a case of longest song of the album goes last (mitigated somewhat by getting its own side of a record) is a great exclamation point on the package as it lassos an implacably moving mid-paced riff, suddenly explodes into fretboard gymnastics and then chases the exuberance with a chill out coda that eases your way out of the album.
Not everything goes so smoothly (the two songs on side C are completely forgettable), but Bufo do enough right to warrant a listen. The cocksure swagger and cock rock solos are a helpful reminder that Anti Cimex's gutter glam posing wasn't too far removed from the same Sunset Strip style they so disdained.

G&P Review: Rotten Sound

Rotten Sound
Cursed
Relapse
Without devolving to Bolt Thrower or Motorhead levels of self parody, Finland’s Rotten Sound have essentially been releasing the same album every couple of years for the last decade. Oh sure, the band tweaks an aspect here, tinkers with the production quality or experiments with a new songwriting element , but it hasn’t varied too far from its post-Nasum Scandi-grind roots. Murderworks set the vicious template and followup Exit gussied it up with a prettier production. Then came Cycles, which boasted a huge, overwhelming guitar tone but didn’t stray far from familiar climes. 2011 brings us Cursed, which, per the usual, features more than a dozen songs with mostly single word titles of your typical grindy nasty. The hook there is Rotten Sound has slowed things down a tad. Think of Cursed as the Marvin Gaye of grind, the kind of album you throw on to (relatively speaking) chill things out. How you’ll react to Cursed will largely depend on how attached you are to Rotten Sound’s legendary rep for inhuman speed. Otherwise, the riffs are still as catchy as Chlamydia in the Playboy Grotto hot tub.
Like in his other band, Deathbound, drummer Sami Latva is parsimonious with the blastbeats, preferring to use them as adornment rather than a song’s foundation. So “Self” simmers along like Drugs of Faith’s grind ‘n’ roll, complete with borderline coherent shouts among the growling. Likewise, “Decline” gets pulled and stretched like a crust punk taffy until it snaps in a spray of gnarly guitar feedback. “Hollow” even spirals down a psychedelic rabbit hole courtesy of some freakout riffing.
When Cursed does kick out the blastbeaten jams, motherfucker, it’s a cathartic explosion of freeform atomic fission that snaps the low-BPM proceedings into an intelligent focus. The slow-mo one-two punch of “Terrified” and “Scared” develop new importance and urgency as they explode into the album-closing pyrotechnics of “Doomed.”
Production-wise, it also turns out the scuffed up, rough and tumble Napalm EP has proven to be a brief detour through Rotten Sound’s raging roots because Cursed is, courtesy of Relapse’s markka, another pristine album that sacrifices rough edges in favor of finely honed musical torture. It’s the difference between a scalpel slice through your cortex and a Louisville Slugger to the cranium.
So while Cursed may be much slower, far groovier than what you may expect (tolerate?) from Rotten Sound, there’s clearly an intelligence driving the shift that makes it a fascinating document in the band’s storied CV.

G&P Review: Nothing More to Eat

Nothing More to Eat
Eat’n
Self Released
I have previously mentioned I love zombies, right? So naturally I’m a sucker for Finns Nothing More to East’s tasty little Swede-inflected grind platter because it starts with “Surrounded by Zombies” and then takes a detour to visit the “Crackwhore Zombies.”
For a self-released effort, Eat’n's nine songs of Scandi-grind sounds impressively large and well rounded. The comparisons to Rotten Sound and Nasum will be inevitable, though Nothing More to Eat still have quite a ways to climb before aspiring to those rarefied heights. But the band’s demented sense of humor and infectious blasting make this a more than adequate addition to the growing pile of northern European grind. “Mo’ Money” teases both tempo and intensity, shifting through their various moods for emphasis, and “Hit That Shit With a Stick” skronks and scrapes admirably. “Hello” fills the obligatory two second song niche, and it’s about everything you can expect from a two second song. For all their blatant influences, Nothing More to Eat do toss out the occasional detour like the jigging ditty at the end of “Crab People,” an otherwise spittle-flecked grind lashing. The start and stop on a thin kroner emphasis of “Shit Faced,” which brings up the rear, is easily the most engaging and all around well written of the lot.

Nothing More to Eat – “Shit Faced”

Thing start slipping in the quality department, however, with “The Giant Octopus of the Gulf of Finland,” which also fulfills the inevitable slow song requirement with a plodding and dull opening section. Interest picks up with the BPMs halfway through the song.
So for a self-released EP from an up and comer, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, but nothing is so egregiously wrong that I couldn’t see Nothing More to Eat growing up and refining their songwriting. Just don’t lose the zombies. I’m a sucker for that shit.
[Full disclosure: The band sent me a review CD.]

G&P Review: Rotten Sound

Rotten Sound
Napalm
Relapse
I love the sound of Napalm Death in the morning. You know that ridiculously fast punk and hardcore sound? It sounds like … absolute fucking rage.
Which is why I must bow down before Rotten Sound in worshipful rapture. As tourist season descends on D.C. yet again my morning commute is being snarled by fat fucking Midwestern families in fanny packs and matching T-shirts who haven’t bothered to read a fucking Metro map and who amble around the subway system blocking doors, loudly irritating the workbound office drones and vociferously expressing their dismay when they find out the National Mall isn’t the kind with an Orange Julius and a Hot Topic. (Recently overheard retarded question on the Mall: Which building is the Smithsonian? Allow me to help you with that, fuckwit.)
Sorry, I just needed to vent.
So copious amounts of Rotten Sound’s loving tribute to Napalm Death have been a much needed morning train pressure valve ever since the cherry blossoms bloomed, signaling the start of the allergy season and the tourist onslaught.
While it has to be said Rotten Sound’s covers of “The Kill,” “Missing Link” and “Suffer the Children” (a nice sampler of all the band’s eras, including the Barney years so reviled by the tr00 grind set) add absolutely nothing new to the eleventy billion other cover versions floating out there, the songs get the thorough beating you would expect. Eschewing the cleaner sound of Exit and Cycles, Rotten Sound rough things up sonically with a throwback to their Murderworks sound. That bruising gives this EP’s three originals a menace and energy I’d honestly forgotten the Finns used to have. The three originals on the EP also siphon off that renewed sense of urgency with a punkier immediacy than we’ve seen from them in the past couple of years. Hell, the song titles – “Mindkill,” “Brainload” and “Dead Remains” – sound like outtakes from Miles Ratlidge’s high school notebook.

Rotten Sound – “Mindkill”

The bonus DVD capturing the band’s rain drenched 29 minute set at the 2007 Obscene Extreme fest is also a treat for those of us who never managed to catch the band live. Mika Aalto’s grisly SG has a rusted razor wire sound perfected by NOLA sludge monsters and the band live is tighter than a ravenous anaconda pouncing on a sandwich. The multiple cameras provide a nice dynamism that makes up for the fact that it’s pretty much half an hour of bald guys standing in place with the occasional headbang or guitar swing. Rotten Sound are also clearly veterans at manipulating the audience, ratcheting the tension until the explosive combo of “Targets” and “Sell Your Soul” closes the show.
Face the truth this is no farce.

Blast(beat) from the Past: Deathbound

Deathbound
We Deserve Much Worse
Dynamic Arts
2006
Like Potter Stewart and his pornography, I don’t think I’ve ever come up with a definition for grindcore that would survive any serious scrutiny. I just know it when I hear it.
It’s a given that the blastbeat is a central tenet of the sound, and I usually describe grind as “the bastard child of punk and metal” for those who aren’t currently scene cognoscenti. But that’s a hazy approximation at best, and any attempt at more specificity is bound to implode. At what point does fast punk and hardcore cross into grind? Some people lump Disrupt in with grind, but I consider them punk due to the paucity of blastbeats. Not that I could defend that assertion with anything approaching empirical measurements. Same goes for the metal influences. Where’s the demarcation between grind and a really short death metal song loaded with blastbeats?
My taxonomical dilemma (and yes, I’ve had this dilemma of categorization before) is brought about by Finns Deathbound who pound out savage metal-flecked punk riffs on third album We Deserve Much Worse (a fourth is currently in the works) but are far more strategic in deploying the blastbeat. Former Rotten Sound drummer Sami Latva can bring the noise but songs like “Deceiving Shortcuts” find him picking his spots, using blasts as gravy instead of the protein in Deathbound’s culinary holocaust. The sandman somnambulance of “Connected to the Confusion” slinks through gray mists just under blastbeat BPMs and close out ECT session “Ward 77” is a booted bass stomp that validates the less speed is more approach by giving the low end a chance to resonate and crush the song.
Dropping the BPMs requires some guts because you can either end up with Leng Tch’e’s intriguing decision to swap speed for atmosphere on Marasmus or the stale elevator fart disappointment of Coldworker’s Rotting Paradise. Both Justice Stewart and I agree that Deathbound is much closer to the former, if that helps.

So how about it, is there a workable definition of grindcore that manages to includes all of its offshoots? How would you define it?

G&P review: Aaritila

Aaritila
…Ennen Huomista, Tana Tuomiopaivana
Feral Ward
Pity the poor Finnish site moderator. Anglophones moderate obnoxious commenters through the art of disemvowelling, but that’s quite a task when your native tongue is largely consonant free.
The genius of disemvowelling is it allows a troll’s thoughts to still be parsed, albeit with effort. But say I were to disemvowel the title of Aaritila’s latest Finn-core assault, all you’d be left with is Nnn Hmst Tn Tmpvn by Rtl. Not really much to go by there.
Not that I’d want to disemvowel a d-beat outing this enjoyable. Featuring members of Totalitar and Riistetyt and with nary a band photo where somebody isn’t sporting a Discharge tee, that probably tells you all you need to know about Aaritila.
But in between all the d-beating off, Aaritila channel a swinging core of Stooges style rock and roll.
“Totalitaarinen Valvonta” may be an anthem to an uprising of the proletariat, but its solo could have been lifted from a dance friendly early Social Distortion LP while “Kuolleen Kukanmaa’s” low end will shake the foundations of oppressive capitalist oligarchies and and booties.
Aaritla no double hold sincere beliefs about the role of power structures in every day life, but clearly that doesn’t mean the music has to be dour. Not only will the revolution be televised, but it will have a beat and you’ll be able to dance to it. I give it an 85.

G&P review: Rotten Sound

Rotten Sound
Cycles
Spinefarm
Europeans have been bogarting this beast of a release for most of the year, and I wish somebody would have tipped me off sooner because this indiscriminate murder machine is damn well worth shelling out extra for the import. Finally Spinefarm has seen fit to make this available at a reasonable price to cash strapped North Americans ride out the economic downturn.
Good thing, too, because, simply put, this is Rotten Sound at an unrivaled career peak both sonically and in terms of songwriting.
Shedding the focused restraint that I have generally associated with European grind, particularly from Scandinavia, the Finns’ fifth full length album draws from the barely constrained malevolence of North Americans, say Pig Destroyer, to rip and gut anyone who drunkenly stumbles into their path. This is the wide-eyed, slobbering ferocity Rotten Sound has often hinted at but never quite mastered. It’s the sound of veterans who are completely in control of their music and playing with the kind of unity you only see in Stanley Cup champions.
Though a blistering half an hour hit and run spree, Rotten Sound effortless channel the American Psycho-style office shotgun rampage that bands like Leng T’che have hinted at artistically but never quite reproduced sonically.
Mika Aalto’s guitar work – even at blastbeat tempos – is burly enough to anchor the rumbliest NOLA sludge band, fitting given the swamp crawl that kicks off album opener “The Effects” and provides a brief bit of respite between verses of “Colonies.”
Rotten Sound even bring the guitar shred courtesy of guest six stringer Juhu Yii-Koski who highlights a trio of tunes with the nimble fret dancing of “Blind” being a clear standout.
After an effort his masterful, Rotten Sound may need to consider a name change because this is grindcore euphony.