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.

Sprechen sie Deutsch: Who’s My Saviour

Who’s My Saviour
Glasgow Smile
Power It Up
2007
Drugged out deadbeats who spend more time scouring overpriced vintage clothing stores for bell bottoms from their parents’ distant past than practicing their fucking songs can suck it because a trio of German grinders were responsible for the best journeys to the center of my mind way back in 2007.
Grab a copy of Glasgow Smile, Who’s My Saviour’s debut album, and immediately fast forward to close out track “Save Your Breath,” a sweat-dripping-off-your-nose-tip claustrophobic pocket of wavering sound that mixes churning stomach acid guitar work with blastbeat drumming and eerie dialog samples lifted from Stanley Kubrick freakout 2001. Three minutes later, shovel your mandible off the oily pavement and give the whole disc a spin.
Who’s My Saviour just might be the greatest grind band you’ve never heard of. Seriously. This young band brashly renovates the house that Napalm Death and Brutal Truth built, adding new wings and modern fixtures without sacrificing the original structure all with a dexterity and poise that is staggering. Damn near every song finds the band foraging through grind’s frontiers to import new musical elements.
Like the roiling anthill of a riff that sounds like a colony on the warpath guitarist Stephan conjures on “Countdown.” Or the way “When Magic Turns into Black Plague” reinterprets titanic, tidal Mastodon movements through Terrorizer acceleration. Even the Pelican chord sheen of “Shizo” surfs a wave of blastbeats Kill the Client would proudly claim.
We all know that friend who’s into metal but bitches that grindcore is incomprehensible noise lacking structure or novelty. Who’s My Saviour’s expansive palate and bold musical vision could be the gateway drug that starts a lifelong blastbeat addiction. Slip him or her a copy of Who’s My Saviour and put a Glasgow Smile on his or her face. Even if you already love grind as much as I do, you owe it to yourself to check this out. This damn well should be the sound of the future.

G&P review: The Arson Project (How Swede it is Again, Part 5)

The Arson Project
Blood and Locusts
Power It Up
The liner notes to Blood and Locusts namechecks a pretty comprehensive swath of the current Swedish grind scene with Splitter, From the Ashes and Afgrund all getting shout outs. And while each one is an exemplar of the NWOSGC (sorry, hadda do it) sound, like meandering Frodo, newcomers The Arson Project just may be in possession of the one grind ring to rule them all with a compelling restatement all of that is good and wonderful about grind in 14 minutes.
I think the thing I love the most about Swedish grind is the crispness – that tension between brutal songwriting and performance and the clarity of the production that allows every searing note and beat and yowl to rip a dimensional wall through your speakers and lacerate your brain. The Arson Project manage to rail grind the very fine line between those two poles with poise and aplomb, turning in an ear bleeding assault that’s a wonder to behold for their debut EP. The production by Gadget’s William Blackmon is monstrous, but Oscar Lindbergh’s drums do tend to get lost behind Daniel Rosenqvist and Sebastian Kling’s respective guitar and bass typhoon. However, the blunt force wall of sound is like jousting with bulldozers.
While The Arson Project hit all the right Svensk notes, Rosenqvist and singer Niklas Larson seem to share an unconscious kinship with copylefters Graf Orlock. “The Black List,” especially, nicks some of the riffing style and vocal pacing from the Californians when the howled bridge kicks in at about the 50 second mark.
The Arson Project’s hit it and quit it 60 second blasts hark back to every death scuffed band to cut song lengths and up BPMs since Terrorizer, but ADHD attack neatly serves as the set up to the band’s song writing punchline. “God of War’s” inferno blasts sprout a nifty twining, serpentine guitar riff and “Mentalit Avrattad,” one of the EP’s longest songs, goes from 60 to 0 in the space of a bar, making way for a bass-led Godzilla stomp break that gets to lumber across Blood and Locusts for a full minute before oozing into Jesu-style guitar chimes.
In a 14 minute scorched earth assault The Arson Project burn down the house their grind forefathers built, clearing the land for a new wave of young, brash innovators to reseed the landscape.

G&P review: P.L.F.

P.L.F.
Crushing Fury of Bastardization
Power It Up
Pretty Little Flower.
Yep, I checked. That’s actually what P.L.F. stands for. But dispel any fears of some lame ass hippy shit or obnoxiously unfunny joke grind because these Texans have spent the last decade honing their concussive, abrasive, abusive grind chops to a rusty scalpel edge.
So moniker issues aside, somebody tell me how I’ve previously overlooked this intriguing addition to the growing Gulf Coast Grindcore family, which already boasts scene elite Kill the Client and the late, great Insect Warfare. In fact, the hook here is the presence of former Insect Warfare drummer Frank Faerman, who blasted the beats during the Endless Execution Thru Violent Restitution incarnation of that band.
And while P.L.F.’s second full length, released way back in September and collecting a handful of splits and live tracks for bonus goodness, slots neatly next to the I.W. catalogue, guitarist Dave (no last name necessary) is not a Beau Beasley clone. Instead his grind is shaken and not stirred with a delicious undercurrent of double picking sharkbite that would leave Gary Holt grinning like a Cheshire cat. That speedy sense of groove undergirds the duo/occasional trio’s gurgle-growling and blastbeatdowns, elevating tunes like “Ironic Curse of Possession” (a prayerful wish the rapture comes soon – and violently) from the strata of just another grind work out.
Where their fellow GCXGC types tend to be dour mopes pontificating about the world’s ills and harshing your buzz, P.L.F. mix the same diatribes with some much needed levity uncommon to the hurricane ravaged region. “Point of Impact” even makes room for a pre-Seinfeld/racist rant sample of Michael Richards from the Weird Al vanity vehicle U.H.F.
Throw in a handful of live tracks, a couple of covers (Denak, Doom) and a riff admittedly lifted from Unseen Terror all played with crusty abandon and a refreshing lack of production pretention and you may just fill that Insect Warfare shaped hole in your heart.