G&P Review: Nashgul/Malpractice Insurance

Nashgul/Malpractice Insurance
Split
To Live a Lie
Gore grind has pretty much been denuded of any lingering shock value by 25 years of bands happy to ape Carcass and swipe polysyllabic synonyms for death, decay and destruction from whatever medical dictionary their local library happens to stock. So just when I'm about to write off the whole movement, along comes Los Angeles duo Malpractice Insurance who cleverly twist around that paradigm by playing sly with the language of surgical mistakes, insurance forms and indemnity for doctors  by cranking out five tunes that focus less on the breakdown of the human form (though they have done plenty of that too) and more about the legalities that some from surgical slip ups.
That they pair that lyrical legerdemain with some smoking grind that draws from the same musical well as splitmates Nashgul only makes this 7-inch that much more awesome. In particular, guitarist and vocalist Ivo's delivery is worthy of being singled out for praise; his raspy Jeff Walker screech is wonderfully expressive and shapes the songs' contours where too many grind vocalists are content to play follow the leader and chase the music.
Considered alongside their recent split with P.L.F., Nashgul continue to impress me with their choice selection of musical associates. Meanwhile, the Spaniards' three songs deliver everything you've come to expect: zombified romps through Carcass and Repulsion that revel in gorehound cinema and B-movie action flicks. Faced with the limitation of half a 7-inch, Nashgul make the intriguing choice to go long with their three songs (long in this case being defined as approximately two minutes each). While only three songs feels a bit insubstantial, it's also always good to leave your audience wanting more and I've got to say the awesome chug-a-lug of "Estigma" and the way the middle passage of "Estimociver" nods back to Bolt Thrower's "World Easter" certainly had me digging out my other Nashgul albums. Mission accomplished.

[Full disclosure: Nashgul sent me a download.]

Seasons in the Abyss

So I guess it's time to acknowledge that the universe is still here and my next mortgage payment and credit card bill are due. Thanks a fucking lot, Mayans. Way to let everyone down. So since we're still here (at least until Harold Camping carries a one in his calculations and gives doomsday another whirl), it's time to flip over another calendar and circle the important dates. Fortunately for you, I've annotated every every punk and grind moment of horological significance in 2013 for your convenience.

There's a Hole in May Heart That Can Only Be Filled By... Me



Valentine's Day is coming. Operation: Cliff Clavin let you off the hook.

The Last Call of Cthulhu



In a more just universe, March 15th would be an interdimensional holiday of squamous, tentacled celebration. Rudimentary Peni represent.

Juneteenth



Just a summertime jam from the Minutemen.

Summer Vacation!



And now a quick word from your travel agent, the Sex Pistols. Pass the cocoa butter and mankini.

Season of the Witch



I just had a lame pirate costume as a kid. The Dead Kennedys make me feel bad for even trying.

Dawn of the Dead (The Original, Not the Remake)



Mmmm. Sugar skulls. Nashgul remind us that Americans don't own all the holidays.

Jive Turkey



Agoraphobic Nosebleed
carveflip the bird.

Guess Who's Creeping Up Your Chimney



Twas the night before Grindmas, courtesy of Agoraphobic Nosebleed. Enough with Christmas, guys, I'm waiting for your epic Yom Kippur themed album.

Presents!



If you're lucky, coal is the only thing The Locust will leave in your stocking.

Grind in Rewind 2012: It Takes Two to Tango

The split seems to be a lost art in the digital era. Downloading two different halves of an album from two different Bandcamp pages just doesn't quite have the same pizzazz as flipping a piece of wax on your turntable, ya know. Or I could just be an old coot (*pulls plaid pants up to armpits*). But despite modern technology's best effort to turn me into a parody of Abe Simpson, 2012 was blessed with a bumper crop of awesome bands that managed to work well and play with each other. Here are 10 bands over five splits who figured out how to do it right this year.

5. Amputee/Nimbus Terrifix
Split
Piggiron Sound
The Nimbus Terrifix side still doesn't really wind me up, but new Amputee material is a gift from grindcore Olympus. Ugly and without a hint of pretense, Amputee are everything you really want in a grind band. Sometimes you just want to be walloped upside the cranium without subtlety or art. Here are two bands that don't get too wrapped up in the whys and wherefores of their music and just decide to smack you silly instead.
 
4. Nashgul/P.L.F.
Split
Bones Brigade
I imagine the Nashgul and P.L.F. split was probably recorded in the musical equivalent of a broke down drive in theater that specializes in seedy midnight movies that are high on boobs and blood and not so finicky about acting or plot. Or the kind haunted by Scooby-Doo villains. One or the other. This 7-inch is a loving tribute to a time when movies wallowed in depravity and violence. And they would have gotten away with it if it hadn't... Actually they got away with it pretty damn well. The next time some Hollywood bigwig wants to make an "ironic" throwback to the heyday of exploitation films, maybe these two bands can soundtrack it.  

3. Priapus/Old Painless
Split
Self Released
I wish I were in the land of cotton cuz grindcore there is not forgotten and runnin' rebs Priapus and Old Painless lobbed a cannonade with this self-released 7-inch. How some label didn't immediately snap this up remains the biggest head scratcher of the year. However, the bands have been spreading their nasty vibes all across the internet and it's yours for the taking at their respective Bandcamp pages. Old Painless' acquired taste vocals and Priapus' gutbusting death just might force you to secede from the world of record labels as a result.

2. Robocop/Detroit
Dead Language, Foreign Bodies
Grindcore Karaoke/Give Praise
Heading in the opposite direction from Priapus/Old Painless, Robocop and Detroit's neo-powerviolence pairing made the leap from Grindcore Karaoke's digital distribution network to a gorgeous 12-inch on Give Praise that you really, really want to add to your collection. It doesn't hurt that the bands both turned in defining performances. Robocop transitioned to a new, cleaner sound that swapped violence for intellect, placing a new spin on familiar songs and expanding the band's arsenal from broadswords to laser-sighted sniper rifles. By contrast, Detroit went atavistic, turning in a furrow-browed slate (and  J. Lo cover) that set up their subsequent solo releases later in the year.
 

1. Dephosphorus/Wake
Split
7 Degrees
Sometimes the most brilliant gambits are the most obvious. Case in point, the excellent and ascendant 7 Degrees Records grabbed its two foremost bands -- Wake and Dephospohorus --  and told them to each record enough music to fill one side of a 7-inch. The result was an absolutely scintillating pairing that proved to be a pivot from Wake's Leeches (which graced last year's list) to Deposphorus' dominating Night Sky Transform. Dephosphorus had backed off the artistry of Axiom for something more primal and vicious, which put them firmly in Wake's realm, giving the pairing a wonderful balance from side to side. This is absolutely everything you want in a split experience: two bands at the top of their game that clearly enjoyed the idea of working together.

G&P Review:Nashgul/P.L.F.

Nashgul/P.L.F.
Split
Bones Brigade
Nashgul have always had a cinematic quality to their ghoulish grind, whether it's their penchant for sampling horror and action flicks or the flickering celluloid flash of their grisly slasher tunes. El Dia Despues al Fin de la Humanidad was probably the best zombie flick that has yet to crash a cinema near you. But I had never had the same epiphany about Texas' P.L.F. until they paired up with Spain's grind morticians for these seven wonderful inches of madness. Now I'm a willing to drop a few bucks on Kickstarter to roll cameras on their self-professed Texas Grindcore Massacre.
Nashgul know that a good horror flick is much as a matter of anticipation as it is the kills. So they take their sweet time easing you into the proper mood with Blind Dead-paced instrumental opener "The Trip" before they start slitting musical throats. Once they do unleash the beats, they're off at a (heretical to be sure) running zombie canter for the next three jams that pick up right where the last album left off. That should be pretty much all you need to know.
Flipside, P.L.F.'s horror show is certainly more modern in approach, diving camera-first into the ruptured joints and organs of the hapless listeners with two new songs and a seamlessly integrated Phobia cover. They're driven by a guitar tone that skrees like power tools winding up. That tone perfectly serves P.L.F.'s Megadeth on fast forward riffing-- and I mean good Megadave back when he was addicted to heroin instead of Jesus and rightwing crankery. It's good enough to make me overlook the (guest written) lyrics to "Arena of the Gladiator," which are bombastic and bro-tastic enough to make Manowar faint from shame. But dammit this is grindcore Thunderdome and some things just have to be overlooked.
But really, none of the preceding 300 words even should have been necessary. You know god damn well you need this in your life. The cover even features Jesus being crucified in the name of grindcore. How can you pass that up?

Grindcore Bracketology: Semifinals/Regional Championships

All the winnowing to date leads to this. This round you’re going to crown kings of the region who will advance to compete for hemispheric dominance and, ultimately, the global title. You guys have been in top game form to date, but I think a few of these are going to test your argumentary mettle. Who is going to advance one step closer to grindcore's Mount Midoriyama?
Take a gander at the brackets here, and now it’s game on. You’ve got until Saturday.

North America
Pig Destroyer (1) v. GridLink (2)
Art reigns supreme in North America. Now it’s a question of whether you prefer Pig Destroyer’s nightmarish explorations of psychological decay over GridLink’s neon jazzed tribute to the New World’s enduring fascination with the Far East. Many of you have grumbled about GridLink's dearth of material. How will they fare against Pig Destroyer's quartet of albums and a few splits?

Asia and Australia
Wormrot (1) v. 324 (2)
For the Pacific Rim, it’s a battle of the old guard vs. the new jacks. 324 have been pretty consistently awesome over a dozen years (though I will acknowledge Rebelgrind was not to everyone’s taste). In the other corner is Wormrot who are still riding the buzz of a single unbelievably awesome record that channels the pure essence of grind.

Scandinavia
Rotten Sound (1) v. Sayyadina (2)
Apparently Sweden and Finland have been nurturing a healthy rivalry for about 1,000 years that is often settled at the hockey rink. I now propose we lay it to rest permanently on the vaunted grindcore pitch. Rotten Sound versus Sayyadina: whose country will be taking the bragging rights home?

Continental Europe and the United Kingdom
Napalm Death (1) v. Nashgul (5)
Napalm Death continue to surprise me. Given the antipathy to the current incarnation in some corners, I secretly expected them to nosedive in the first round when matched with Agathocles, but like the actual band, they just keep grinding it out. If Napalm Death are surprising me, in retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was by the passionate following Nashgul have engendered on the strength of their steadfastly classic approach to grind. Nashgul embody the same drive that Napalm Death shepherded into being but have since abandoned. Do you honor a legacy band still willing to take a chance or the young bucks who lay it on the line for heritage?

Grindcore Bracketology: Quarterfinals 2 Winners

Despite one turd in the pool, I’m absolutely enjoying sitting on the sidelines watching you guys (respectfully) argue this one out. Quarterfinals 2 has been another brutal round and there are some heart wrenching eliminations coming. But it had to happen sooner or later. Here’s who you said should advance to fight it out for regional mastery. As always, updated brackets can be reviewed here. Well get back to voting again on Monday.

North America
Was that a hint of an anti-GridLink backlash I was picking up in the comments? Though some of you remain unimpressed by Chang and Matsurbara’s collabo, the Jersey-Japanese amalgamation powered passed Texas heroes Kill the Client by 13-9 in a thoroughly grueling matchup. No matter who won that one, I kinda feel like we all lost.

Asia and Australia
Luckily, Gamefaced will not be hunting each of you down to devour your souls because 324 cruised past Singapore acolytes Mangnicide by either 16-1 or a perfect 17-0. (Sorry, Amalgamated, I wasn’t sure where you’re going with that. If you’d care to clarify that in the comments, we may just have our very first shutout.)
[Addendum: Amalgamated said it was a vote for Magnicide. So the official final count will stand as 16-1 even though he/she/it/they will bow the majority. Either way, look out for Gamefaced, my friend.]

Scandinavia
I fear the Afgrund v. Sayyadina rivalry will never be satisfactorily resolved. Though Sayyadina eventually won out by 11-6, this was the closest call of the lot and the quality arguments offered for both suggest a convincing case could have been made to overturn the will of the people. Too bad I’m on Team Sayyadina.

Continental Europe and the United Kingdom
Upsets have been vanishingly rare so far, but Dutch crushers Blood I Bleed will be hitting the showers early after getting thoroughly pummeled by Nashgul 12-4. The Spanish band was probably the hardest ranking decision I had to make initially, and they’re quickly proving themselves to be a dark horse to watch with a second upset to their credit.

Grindcore Bracketology: Quarterfinals 2

Here’s the second half of the quarterfinals. You’ll have until Tuesday to make your case in the comments.

North America
GridLink (2) v. Kill the Client (3)
A battle of aesthetics. GridLink are sleek, emotional and oddly positive for the normally grumpy world of grind. They’re like magically finding one of Japan’s legendary vending machines outside of your local 7-Eleven. Kill the Client just want you to die. Preferably exploded into little pieces. Subtle is one thing they’re not with their violent brew of blast beats and punk riffs.

Asia and Australia
324 (2) v. Magnicide (3)
Like Obi Wan and Darth Vader, this is a meeting of master and student. Has the circle been completed? Are Magnicide now the masters while 324 has laid idle due to lineup instability? Who wears the Asia crust grind crown at the moment?

Scandinavia
Sayyadina (2) v. Afgrund (3)
There’s no need to rehash old territory. We’ve had this argument before. I think Sayyadina represent the best of post-Nasum Swedish grind. Many of you offered up Afgrund instead. Now it’s time to make your case in the comments. May the better band win.

Continental Europe and the United Kingdom
Blood I Bleed (2) v. Nashgul (5)
Two of Europe’s most promising bands offer a fairly stark contrast. Holland’s Blood I Bleed embody the finest aspects of modern grind songwriting. Everything’s spiky and frenetic, strangled by deliberately placed static. Spain’s Nashgul, on the other hand, think grind peaked with Horrified and are content to keep it traditional. So do you prefer Coke Classic or New Coke. Wait, bad analogy.

Grindcore Bracketology: The 2-7 Winners/The 4-5 Matchups

I know I’ve done my job properly when I see you sobbing in the comments. The matches are getting more even and the choices are only getting harder from here on out. No upsets yet, so here’s your 2-7 champions. I didn’t pick em so don’t blame me.

North America
Despite some spirited defense of Noisear, GridLink’s 12 minutes of grind perfection (don’t forget the track from Our Last Day, folks) ruled the day by a vote of 11-3.

Asia and Australia
Absence (absinthe?) makes the heart grow fonder and despite not gracing our turn tables with new noise in four years, crust busters 324 narrowly out blasted left field loonies Swarrrm 9-6.

Scandinavia
What Splitter will be mourning will not be unknown because everyone should have seen Sayyadina’s victory coming. They outlasted their countrymen by a vote of 13-3 with the most robust defense of the round.

Continental Europe and the United Kingdom
Bleed for me, bitches. Holland’s Blood I Bleed talked shit and spit blood all over Cyness by 8-3. While I agree with Shantera that Massgrav won the split with the Dutch band, anyone who’s basked in the glory of Gods Out of Monsters knows what I’ve been raving about.

As always, the full updated brackets can be perused here. Meanwhile, your toughest task yet is before you with the 4-5 faceoffs. You've got until Tuesday. Now if you'll excuse me, the Blues-Sharks game is on.

North America
Brutal Truth (4) vs. Total Fucking Destruction (5)
Brutal Truth shook off the munchies long enough to drop a trio of the most essential grind albums of the ’90s. But that’s ancient history. After a decade hiatus, it’s time to ask the New Yorkers what they’ve done for you lately. Reupped and rearmed with ex-Lethargy/Sulaco guitarist Erik Burke in tow, Brutal Truth gave us a handful of songs on the first This Comp Kills Fascists and Evolution Through Revolution, a 21st Century blend of Need to Control ferocity and Sounds of the Animal Kingdom experimentalism. However, does the new batch stand up to the glory days or are they just milking the nostalgia circuit?
Rich Hoak certainly didn’t sit idle after Brutal Truth went the way of the dodo. Left with a load of free time, a love of jazz and a yoga driven rejuvenation, Total Fucking Destruction has been pushing grind into ever weirder corners with each release. Blast jazz, acoustic grind and stand up poetry screeds all get hotboxed by his coterie of likeminded cohorts. The only rule: nothing is off limits.

Asia and Australia
Agents of Abhorrence (4) vs. The Kill (5)
Any band that comes with Zmaj’s imprimatur is one to take seriously; the Blogfather knows his shit. Agents of Abhorrence earned the Cephalochromoscope seal of approval for their brew of Discordance Axis acceleration and strains of power violence with Iron Lung and Neanderthal getting namechecked. Taken together, their influences brew up an exemplary example of modern grind’s potential.
Featuring members of Super Happy Fun Slide and Fuck…I’m Dead, you wouldn’t expect The Kill to suddenly start spouting tea time niceties. Instead they set the intentionally stupid to the deliberately thrashy. It’s the point/counterpoint of lethal precision musically and the frat boy humor sentiments of “Tracksuit Pants are Thrash,” the abortion-riffic “Dead Babies” and unambiguous sentiments of “Fuck Emo” that set them apart. Agents of Abhorrence list the Kill as an influence. Who does it better?

Scandinavia
Gadget (4) vs. Crowpath (5)
Go, go Gadget grindcore. Gadget ringleader William Blackmon’s sci-fi steeped grind has only gotten more focused over two full lengths even as he’s broadened his vistas with expertly deployed downbeat interludes. Sleek, composed and poised, Gadget distill Ridley Scott’s interpretation of a Phillip K. Dick dystopia into its audio essence, alternately embracing its potential and pitfalls in ways that are consistently thought provoking and electrifying.
Crowpath’s dystopias strike closer to our temporal home – their last album was a Swedish serial killer concept that crawled out of a miasma of grindcore and power violent sludge. Maruta may have taken the sound in grungier directions, but Crowpath’s music is marked by a sociopathic sense of control that's eerie. They’re the frightening musical secrets lurking behind Jeffrey Dahmer’s everyday guy normalcy.

Continental Europe and the United Kingdom
Looking for an Answer (4) vs. Nashgul (5)
The pain from Spain will sear into your brain. It’s just a question of who does it better.
Denak descendants Looking for an Answer brew up a savage beating that harks back to grindcore greats all in the name of animal rights and crushing noise. Their raucous rage consists of to the point songs strung together into an interlocking chain of blast driven noise. The master craftsmen have increasingly refined their sound paradoxically by shedding the modern sheen, connecting with something more primal and atavistic with time.
Nashgul have blinkered themselves to the last 20 years of grind evolution. Instead they blew the dust off their copy of Horrified and took that as their template, banging out tunes derived low budget movies and zombie lore. Their musical inspirations are drawn from the same era as the films they pillage for inspiration – Mad Max, Toxic Avenger and the finer slices of the Fulci cannon all get musical nods. For all the talk of rotting corpses, unsightly horrors and other monstrosities, Nashgul keep everything appropriately light hearted and limber.

Faces of Death

The fact that Abuse kicked more ass than an army of Six Million Dollar Men cloned from Bruce Lee took Wormrot 75 percent of the way to establishing their debut album as an instantaneous modern classic of the grindcore persuasion. That other quarter slice of genius comes courtesy of the retina-mugging cover. And as grind history has proved time and time again, a rotting skull is never a bad artistic choice. Behold six choice selections from the pedigree.

Napalm Death
Scum
Grim and grisly set the tone for one of the earliest grind touchstones. Here used to jab home a political point, a skull-faced Reaper looms over his good buddies, a handful of corporate plutocrats sent straight from central casting. This Jeff Walker benchmark is so iconic it’s been endlessly aped, including a recent loving homage from Rotten Sound.


Repulsion
Horrified
The grim granddaddy of all moldering mugs, Repulsion’s cartoonishly festering skull art perfectly encapsulated the band’s grade-Z horror film fetish and aesthetic. Though I’m sure the Michigan monster squad intended for it to be … umm … horrifying, by today’s standards its dated cheesiness is part of its endearing and enduring charm.



Hemdale
Rad Jackson
Maggot-eyed shambling corpse too off putting for the Wal-Mart crowd? Ohio hooligans Hemdale solved this conundrum by making sure their three-quarters profile zombified mascot was snorgling a cute kitten on compilation album Rad Jackson. Now everyone say, “Awwwwwwwwwwwww.” The juxtaposition of zombie + saccharine sweetness perfectly telegraphs the band’s mixture of absurd and horrific in one eye popping package.On a side note, are zombies really qualified to care for a domestic animal? Probably named him Squishy, too.

Nashgul
El Dia Despues al Fin de la Humanidad
If Robert Kirkman, for some unforeseeable reason, should boot longtime collaborator Charlie Adlard from zombie comic The Walking Dead, Nashgul bassist Luis could easily step into the breach. The four-stringer is responsible for El Dia Despues al Fin de la Humanidad’s cover piece, which is at once intricately detailed, horrifically evocative and more than a touch fun. That static image provided more chills and laughs than about the last four George Romero films combined.


Squash Bowels
Grind Virus
By 2009 just putting any old shriveled coconut on your album cover was sooooooo passé. So Poland’s Squash Bowels (such an evocative name!) upped the artistic ante with a severed head vomiting up its own innards (from where, since it’s, ya know, severed?) while crying out why I’m going to say is some sort of cerebrospinal fluid. And don’t think I didn’t notice that delightful Frankenstein’s monster coiffure either. It’s the little touches that make Grind Virus stand out.


XBrainiax
Hail Fastcore
Lest you be fooled into thinking this is strictly a gore grind phenomenon, XBrainiax got into the death face race last year with their compilation Hail Fastcore. Twisting tradition 90 degrees, the band chose an exploded profile shot to make their fast punk point rather than the more staid head on shot. I’m sure plastination artist Gunthen von Hagens would approve.

In With the Old; Out With the New: Nashgul Go Rummaging Through Grindcore’s Graveyard

Like a zombie punching out a shark, Spanish grinders Nashgul know some things just never go out of style. Zombies have been the little black dress of grindcore ever since Repulsion first horrified a generation with gore-flecked tales of maggot-filled coffins, innocents being slaughtered and fear that lurks.
Knowing a good thing when they hear it, Nashgul have resolutely defied the last 20 years of cultural evolution, pillaging the festering cinematic leftovers of 1970s and ’80s for musical inspiration. These are guys who’ve written songs called “Mad Max” (which was renewed for a second season), “Snake Plisskin” and “El Vengador Toxico,” after all.
“I think 70/80s horror movies had a fucking great atmosphere of disturbing realism,” vocalist Santi said. “Special effects were fucking great before all this CGI shit and also being in our mid/late 20s these are the movies we grow up with. Old school grindcore and old school horror movies with some beer and weed. Anything better in life?” [Editor’s note: Only to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.]
So it should surprise only those of you who haven’t been paying attention that Nashgul’s proper debut album, El Dia Despues al Fin de la Humanidad (The Day After the End of Humanity for those who no habla), comes off like a classic Fulci fright fest right down the awesomely festering artwork, courtesy of bassist Luis.
“He did all our artwork except the one for the split with World Downfall which was made by Emma Rios, a friend from our city who is now working for Marvel Comics!” Santi said. “Luis is professional drawer, he has a daily job drawing and designing. He improved a fucking lot during the last years, and I’m proud to say that is one of the best drawers you can meet in the music scene. He did lot of work for other bands.”
Not only do Nashgul think cinema peaked nearly 30 years ago, don’t look to them to blaze new grindcore trails either. As far as the band is concerned, grind also reached a state of transcendent perfection two decades previously and they just see themselves as acolytes of their predecessors.
“We don’t pretend to be original or innovate in any form,” Santi said. “With our music we just want to pay tribute to the bands we are obsessed with since many years ago. Of course our main influences are the classic grindcore bands like Repulsion, Carcass, early Napalm Death, Terrorizer, Defecation etc., but we are very open minded people, we love punk as much as we love metal. So there’s a lot of influences in our heads when we are making new songs, so maybe that make our stuff more interesting, because we don’t follow any formula or trend. We just make what our guts and heart tell us to do.”
Given Nashgul’s obvious mastery of the zombie oeuvre, I turned to Santi to settle a schism that has ended marriages, destroyed families, sundered friendships and driven nations to the brink of war: Fast zombies versus slow?
“Slow zombies, of course,” Santi said, forestalling the need for me to eviscerate him and declare his falsity to the grindcore masses. “There’s nothing more disgusting than knowing that a lifeless piece of meat filled with maggots is coming after you, and no matter how fast you can run, no matter how intelligent you think you are, they have all the time in the world and they will end up surrounding you, approaching to you very slowly and eating you alive without any hurry. Return of the Living Dead fast zombies are the exception. That movie rules so much, it’s a fucking great classic parody!”

G&P Review: Nashgul

Nashgul
El Dia Despues al Fin de la Humanidad
Power It Up
If Cujo has taught me nothing else, it’s that you should vaccinate your pets because this shit usually starts with rabies.
Sure enough, right off the top of zombie audio film El Dia Despues al Fin de la Humanidad (The Day after the End of Humanity), Spain’s Nashgul are bellowing about the “Hidrofobia.” Somebody put Ol’ Yeller down before it’s too late. I joke, of course. It’s already too late.
Shotgun-wedding Max Brooks horror with a Mike Mignola aesthetic to a more Carcass-ian attack than Humanicidio, the band’s prior collection of splits and 7-inches, Nashgul script and soundtrack a zombie horror film lacking only the visuals. Dipping into the always reliable well of Fulci and Romero, Nashgul drop what arguably was one of the best grind albums of 2009, had I gotten to it in time.
The vocals are suitably Jeff Walkeresque and the prominent bass sounds like a rotten femur strung with a twanging tendon and the Repulsion influences are notable, especially in “Cremated Remains.” But then there’s other, less expected influences burbling up like corpse gas in a Louisiana swamp. Bassist Luis rumbles like a reanimated Cliff Burton during the startling Metallical close out to Resident Evil-style charmer “La Plaga.”

Nashgul – “La Plaga”

Anyone who bought Humanicidio will recognize a few of the titles here: “El Vengedor” gets recycled while in true Hollywood style swinging, bent string ’70s-style instrumental “Mad Max” gets sequelized as “Mad Max II.” Zombies and grindcore go together like Tom Savini and latex gore and while Nashgul don’t reanimate any new corpses with El Dia Despues al Fin de la Humanidad they know where the choice bodies were buried.

Blast(beat) from the Past: Nashgul

Nashgul
Humanicidio
Crimes Against Humanity
2006
Questionable names ripped off from ur-nerd texts from J.R.R. Tolkien may be most pronounced among bad black metal bands and even worse power metal offerings, but Mumakil weren’t the only grinders to fail a saving throw verses really bad literature. While Nashgul may spring from source material of questionable merit, these Spaniards are no slouch in the all important department and along with a few likeminded countrymen may be signaling a cultural shift on Euro-grind’s western front.
Beginning in the ’90s the locus of European grindcore was firmly entrenched in northern E.U. countries with a few old Warsaw Pact nations nipping at their heals. But somewhere in the last few years bands like Looking for an Answer, Overnoise, Denak (whose “Estado de Bienestar” gets covered here) and Nashgul suggest the center of gravity for European grind may be decamping for sunnier climes.
Debatable points of cultural import aside, Humanicidio, Nashgul’s collection of splits and singles through 2006 brings the fucking grind. Opener “CNP’s” varying punk and metal moods serve as the band’s business card, neatly summarizing everything these Spaniards can unleash. Before giving way to lumbering double kick, “Mad Max’s” psychedelic swirl could have been swiped from just about any CSSO album.
Slathering on some (admittedly monotonous) guttural vocals, telenovela-quality samples and assorted electric weirdness towards the end of the album tends to drag down the collection, but Nashgul more than redeem their flagging performance with the ripping, 1337 speak, gang chorused snarl of “Fr4ctur4 d3 C0still4.”
For grind this good, I’m willing to overlook the occasional misplaced Lord of the Rings reference, but don’t get me started on how much I hate The Matrix.