G&P Review: Kaiju Daisenso

Kaiju Daisenso
Kaiju Daisenso
Tokyo Fist
The writers of the upcoming Godzilla and Pacific Rim sequels should sit down and take notes after a few spins of New York megafauna Kaiju Daisenso’s rubble shaking record: get straight to the fucking monsters. Nobody drops a 10-spot at the local cinema to listen to a bunch of whiny humans blather on. We’re there for the hot monster-on-monster action, so don’t fuck around and get right to the carnage.
It’s a lesson Kaiju Daisenso, featuring former members of Unearthly Trance, Serpentine Path and Helen of Troy, have indelibly seared into their souls with atomic breath. Their self-titled EP is a Rodan divebomb of no-bullshit, Ghidorah groaning grind. At 10 tracks (including a couple brief scene-setter pieces), Kaiju Daisenso lasts about as long as the King of the Monster’s screen time in the latest Hollywood reboot. But unlike the film, Kaiju Daisenso don’t pad it out with a bunch of bullshit nobody wants to see, so you’ll definitely be coming back for more.



Their EP may be short, but Kaiju Daisenso wring every monster moment out of every second with a master’s class in economical composition that honors just about every incarnation of Godzilla and friends from the horrific to the goofy (Just not Godzuki goofy. We all have our limits.). Just as they settle into a sweet grind groove, Kaiju Daisenso close out the EP’s first side with the UFO warble of “Hedorah Attack.” Flipping the record finds one of the many Mothra songs repurposed as a side two intro in “Infant Island Blues” before being nuked away by the major chord chaos of a rampant Godzilla on “Atomic Breath.”
I may have mentioned my love of kaiju eiga a time or two before, and Kaiju Daisenso hit that perfectly sweet spot between the campy rubber suited matinees of my childhood and the visceral darkness of the original Gojira. The only thing holding the EP back from perfection may be a bit of mud clinging to the guitars that blurs the riffing, but it’s the pickiest of nits because Kaiju Daisenso will lay your inner Tokyo to waste.

Full disclosure: I received a review copy.]

G&P Review: Keitzer

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.
Matthew 24:6

Keitzer
The Last Defence
FDA Rekotz
A Midwestern town is in flames after cops dolled up in surplus military gear stormed out in force to put down protests after an unarmed black kid was shot by the police. America is easing its way into yet another war in the Middle East with an incremental build up that should make anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of Vietnam queasy. Israel and Gaza’s millennia-old internecine squabble is on again. Russia seems to be determined to reunite the old Soviet Union with Ukraine being first on the agenda.
It’s a fraught and violent time. Keitzer’s latest, The Last Defence, is a fraught and violent record that reflects its era. It may just be fortuitous (if that’s really the word) timing, but the downer news cycle synchs up perfectly with the Germans’ latest missive of relentless, bellicose negativity. The Last Defence is a single-minded beast that moves with the implacability of armored battalions cresting a battlefield. Every song rumbles along with the same Bolt Thrower chug by way of Nasum blast, and while the album may lack for variety, each of the 14 songs is like an incoming artillery round. From the sinuous, Nile-ish opener “Bellum Indicere” straight through the final shock of “…Before Annihilation,” Keitzer mine the sorry state of the world for inflammatory material. Just reading the song titles is likely to provoke PTSD in anyone who has spent time in a war zone: “Exist to Destroy,” “Forever War,” “Next Offensive” and “Glorious Dead” are dispatches from realms where bomb craters are more common than elementary schools with a soundtrack to match.
Musically, Keitzer do not deviate from the death-grind nexus that they’ve honed on past albums. If you’ve heard and enjoyed them in the past, then will offer up another 40 minute cluster bombing of the sound that’s served them so well. 

[Full disclosure: I received a download for review.]
The Last Defence

G&P Review: Vertigo Index

Vertigo Index
Posthuman v1.1
Bandcamp
They’re named Vertigo Index. Do I really need to explain where these information snipers are coming from? On the off chance it’s not obvious, this carcass lottery from the remains of Bastards and Scum Guilt come apart together come together alone to worship at the altar of Jouhou. But in a refreshing twist, their damage style hews close to the Discordance Axis template without slavishly recapitulating the past.



Rather than going for another reincarnation, Vertigo Index shine brightest when they dial back the mimetic elements and take the Discordance Axis influence in new directions. Their best riffs indeed bathe in Rob Marton’s love of odd tones and musical tension, but through attrition Vertigo Index deliberately slow them down, putting one of this century’s fastest bands on a ruin trajectory with ominous sludge slog. EP standout “No Fate But What We Make” slows down a Marton-style riff to allow you to savor the odd interplay of the notes and the way they warp and bend through repetition and sustain. It’s a great, smart use of an influence without straight up mimicry. That’s not to say they can’t blast when needed. “Mother Boxx” tries to shove a Witte-grade blast beat through a 57 second aperture of pinholes, squeezing a career of acceleration into a super dense minute and it works splendidly.
In the increasingly crowded realm of Discordance Axis tribute acts, Vertigo Index are probably better than The Parallax View, about on par with Syntax but not quite as good as Asterisk*. Still, it’s a solid 3 out of 5 on the Kim Novak scale for a promising first effort.

G&P Review: Jesus Cröst

Jesus Cröst
1986
Bones Brigade
The worst aspect of the quadrennial World Cup feets-ball tournament is suffering through that one coworker who has suddenly declared him- or herself grand poobah of all soccer, loudly pontificating on the arcane advancement rules gleaned from Wikipedia. I’ll never understand how the United States was able to lose its way into each round. (And quite honestly I don’t care because, duh, it’s soccer and I’m an American [USA! USA! USA! USA!]). But for those of you with fond memories of Paul the Octopus and a quarter hour to kill, Rotterdam soccer hooligans Jesus Cröst penned an ode to the 1986 World Cup on their third album.
Musically, the dynamic Dutch duo has not advanced the powerviolent arts significantly with 1986. In fact, there’s a monochromatic quality to writing on the 22 songs that blurs them into a somewhat long and confusing whole (Hey, just like a soccer match! Perhaps it’s a meta commentary on the experience of watching the game?).
Taking a cue from Macabre, each song is dedicated to a different footballer of yore, shining 50 second spotlights on players that give the album a strong narrative quality even if the music is frustratingly lacking in diversity. It’s a great idea, but one similar song careens into another. It’s like watching a game from way up in the nosebleeds where you can’t see jersey numbers, so the action all becomes a formless smudge of people milling about way down on the field. Jesus Cröst’s past two albums were hacked from the same blast, pause, scream, blast foundation but they felt more invigorated and propulsive than 1986. So it kind of sucks that this is their farewell effort knowing that they have so much more to give.
America’s periodic, herpes-like flare up of soccer fever has passed, but if you’re a football fan with a passion for powerviolence then Jesus Cröst have the (oddly specific) cultural crossover you’ve been waiting for. 1986 is not a bad album, but you’ve heard this done better, even by this band. 

[Full disclosure: I received a download for review.]

G&P Review: Dråp

Dråp
En Naturling Dod
Embrace My Funeral
First off, there’s not much here that you probably didn’t pull out of Anti Cimex’s raped ass 30 years ago. That said, like a high calorie, low nutrition fast food fix, there’s something about Dråp (Manslaughter) that just hits the spot. En Naturling Dod is the Swedish crust punk version of drunkenly plowing through Taco Bell’s drive through window for a quesarito at 2 a.m.
Unlike a lot of their crusty contemporaries, Dråp aren’t appropriating death metal tropes to bulk up and refurbish their punk rawk. They closest these heavily bearded Viking punks come to extra-genre exploration is a nod to thrashtastic chug-a-lug and the occasional squealy guitar solo. So everything barrels along at a more or less consistent head banging nod that makes En Naturling Dod a pretty good driving record. From the black and white artwork straight through the familiarity of the music of itself, Dråp will live and die by how well they can get one more good go-round out of a style that doesn’t lend itself to musical innovation.
With that in mind, the 10 songs on En Naturling Dod are uniformly tight and uniformly ... uniform. (In a rare nod to variety, “Horstmorker” slows down and probably drags out more than is needed.) Dråp have a solid foundation to work with and injecting some solid hooks and a more commanding vocal style could have them nipping at Victims’ heels. What Dråp may lack (or simply not give a fuck about) in originality, they make up for with energy and brevity, pounding through 10 songs in under 25 minutes, playing like the world might end before they finish. It makes En Naturling Dod a head rush of a record and one that can flipped back over for repeated spins. And if you’re asking for more than that from your crust punk records, you’re probably doing it wrong.

[Full disclosure: I received a review copy.]

G&P Review: Limbs Bin

Limbs Bin
Summertime Blues
Grindcore Karaoke
Limbs Bin make only one mistake on Summertime Blues, but it’s a bit akin to booking your kids for a relaxing August getaway at Camp Crystal Lake. I have a congenital hole in my soul that can only be filled by insane drum machine grind, but the gaps between songs on Summertime Blues are just fucking massive. Just as I’m getting into a song like the excellent “Le Samourai” (somebody has impeccable taste in French gangster films), I slam into the brick wall of silence. I'm waiting four or five seconds for the next hammer to fall. Summertime Blues is only 11 minutes but the lag makes it feel twice as long sometimes.
But I do my best to overlook that because Limbs Bin make very choice drum machine-driven grind madness. It’s somewhere between the earliest Gigantic Brain material and Agoraphobic Nosebleed at their most cybernetically aggressive. The individual songs are fantastic and the drum machine is one of the best sounding I’ve ever heard. The drums just slam into your chest with a palpable force. At its best Limbs Bin just about leaves you gasping for breath from concussive force.
But grind is an apex predator that has to constantly keep moving in search of prey. Lag is its only known rival. If Limbs Bin could go back and retroactively excise the between song gaps on Summertime Blues, they would have a near flawless record on their hands. While my short attention span usually can’t handle a few seconds between songs, the individual tunes Limbs Bin have wired together from broken machinery and volcanic bile are strong enough on an individual basis that I still keep coming back for more.

G&P Review: Daggra

Daggra
Daggra
Grindcore Karaoke
There’s a sweet spot, a musical Lagrange point precariously poised between the twin gravitational tugs of Cellgraft’s slingshot sweep past the sun and Priapus’ bulldozing gas giant mass (yes, that means it kinda sorta sounds like Circle of Dead Children). That’s where Daggra chose to set up shop, in the relatively stability between speed and mass.
Now Daggra won't be knocking any of the aforementioned trio of grinding greats from their laureled perches just yet, but this is a band that shows some promise once they grow into their sound. Daggra keep the fundamentals of their attack simple. Their songs are a full bore charge into your face that seeks to overwhelm with brute force rather than muck about with messy strategy. To that end, they keep the riffs concise and catchy. Songs follow that comfortable formula of short, punky build up into grind explosion, all executed in 100 seconds or left. Six originals and an Insect Warfare cover are enough to convey what Daggra are all about. But that simplicity and familiarity also mean Daggra won’t be blowing you away with originality. This is squarely in the comfort food category of grind, familiar and filling but none too challenging to the palette.
If there’s one other knock on Daggra’s attack it would be the percussion. I can’t tell if it’s an issue of performance or production, but the drums seem divorced from the other instruments at times. It’s like the drums are chasing the song when they should be diesel-spewing engine that powers the whole spiel. A more robust performance there may have been just enough to jump Daggra up from faithful followers of grind’s finer traditions to a band able to inject new blood into a well worn formula.

G&P Review: Slavestate 641A

“It was you who inoculated me with selfishness, pride and cruelty, and you shall be their first victim. I now literally enjoy having a human being that thinks and feels and desires like myself in my power; I love to abuse a man who is stronger in intelligence and body than I, especially a man who loves me.
“Do you still love me?”
“Even to madness,” I exclaimed.
“So much the better,” she replied, “and so much the more will you enjoy what I am about to do with you now.”
“What is the matter with you?” I asked. “I don’t understand you, there is a gleam of real cruelty in your eyes today, and you are strangely beautiful—completely Venus in Furs.”
Without replying Wanda placed her arms around my neck and kissed me. I was again seized by my fanatical passion.
“Where is the whip?” I asked.

Ritter von Leopold Sacher-Masoch
Venus in Furs
1870
 

Slavestate 641A
Masochist
Grindcore Karaoke/Name Like His Master
There’s a very limited subset of humanity that wants to hear their shitty, repetitive, inconsequential lives recreated in a droning, stumbling, implacable audio form. Even noted musical bummers Mike Gira and Justin Broadrick had to take decade-long vacations into the realms of the ethereal and more upbeat (relatively speaking, here) before diving back into the broken pavement misery of daily survival.
That’s all an elaborate way of saying the Slavestate 641A is probably not for everyone, even in the target demographic of people primed to hoover up anything that boasts 66 percent of Robocop as its creative nexus. Masochist is unrelenting in its repetitive slow motion negativity. It just wears you down through sheer heft and indifference that take the most antagonistic output of artists like Swans and Godflesh as a starting point then beats them into submission.
The product of a 24 hour recording process that involved homebrew DIY recording tech, lashes from belts and near drowning while trying to scream underwater, Masochist lives up its name, grinding away at two songs carved from endless waves of slow motion repetition that soundtrack a lifetime of organs slowly failing and machinery sputtering to a half from routine wear. It’s an audio diary transported from the realms of Stephen King’s Dark Tower, the sound of a tired world that’s “moved on,” its technology and very reality wearing out and decaying in its wake.  The keening “Screwdriver” stumbles and throbs like a cyborg angina, a congestive heart failure of faltering components and broken down circuitry. The slithering “Reptile Enclosure” is more organic, the  suffocating throes of an animal too weary to even flail at the prospect of death. The song is attenuated droning near the point of stasis (think Khanate at their most dessicated), which probably makes it the more difficult of the two to truly appreciate as music. But it does get across its fundamental musical mission.
Slavestate 641A do not make feel good music to soundtrack your humdrum life. This is something a little more challenging that maybe deserves some additional thought but is admittedly targeted to a very narrow demographic set. If audio self flagellation is your thing, you can do worse than Masochist.

G&P Review: Blurring

Blurring
Jan. 26 2013 Demo
Bandcamp
The garbage plate is Rochester’s culinary gift to the world. It’s a gut-busting catchall of fried potatoes, baked beans, hotdogs, chili and whatever else is at hand. It’s also a pretty convenient metaphor for Rochester’s resident metal scene, an omnivorous blend of hardcore, grind, death metal and related musical roadkill that managed to be fast and burly while still cramming in enough bent technicality to keep things aslant without ever sliding into music nerd math dissertation territory. The ground zero of the city’s musical mayhem was the almighty Lethargy, a circus-souled calliope of grind blitz, death metal intensity and just plain oddball time signatures. That unique collection of cavemen with calculators later spun out Rochester’s roster of signature bands including Kalibas and Sulaco (also something called Mast-O-Don, whatever that is).
If that specific sound sets your limbic system aflame, please allow me to direct your attention to Blurring, which boasts the services of Rochester institutions Matt Colbert (Kalibas) and Erik Burke (Kalibas, Lethargy, Sulaco, Brutal Truth and plenty of others).  Blurring sound exactly as you imagine given that cast of characters, the perfect way station between Lethargy’s balls out insanity and Kalibas’ chunk/skronk dumpster diving, all overtopped by Burke’s instantly recognizable howler monkey yowl . [Burke is actually the drummer. I apologize for the mistake.] Blurring appropriate just about every offshoot on the metal tree in pursuit of pure heaviness. There are only three teasing tracks to be found on their demo, but it’s enough to get the salivary glands a-drooling like one of Pavlov’s hounds. Hopefully Blurring pile that garbage plate high with a second helping soon.

G&P Review: Sacridose

Sacridose
Anxiety Tremors
Financial Ruin/Bandcamp
PROTIP: plunking a sweet Rudimentary Peni cover (“Only Human”) in the middle of your EP will put a big coprophagic smile on Andrew’s face, predisposing him to shower oodles of wordy praise upon your efforts. I get that no band wants their slaved-over recording judged solely on their deft handling of someone else’s music, hacking out covers like some garage denizen. I’m just saying it greases the critical skids around these parts.
Because Sacridose have so much more going for them than excellent interpretations of choice cuts of psycho British punk classics. For starters, you may recognize the name and riffs of guitarist Ryan Zell from a little band called Cellgraft. But Sacridose is not just a victory lap rerun of a band that fizzled too soon. While there’s a nod back to Zell’s old stomping grounds, Anxiety Tremors rumbles along like Repulsion crossed with His Hero is Gone and its XX chromosome presence at the mic creates some aesthetic and attitudinal overlap with Cloud Rat. There's not a single word in that sentence that shouldn't trigger the pleasure centers of your little grinding noggin.
In a whisker under nine minutes, Sacridose are not interested in belaboring the point. Each song snags a central riff or a vocal quirk, builds around that and politely steps aside once it’s made its point. In fact, the 93 second “Only Human” cover is the album’s longest track by a good 20 seconds but more often by nearly a minute. That fact makes repeat performances a must. Each fragment from the floor-punching “Faceless” through the energy drink shot of the introductory “Poison Design” are models of songwriting economy that can be unpacked to reveal a plethora of little tricks that each contribute to a model song. All that and a great Rudimentary Peni homage. What more can you ask?

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

G&P Review: Who's My Saviour

Who’s My Saviour
Wall of Sickness
7 Degrees
Discussing the difference between surprise and suspense, Alfred Hitchcock said suspense is telling the audience a bomb under the table will go off in five minutes and then watching ordinary people obliviously talk about baseball. He could just as easily put on the opening sequence from Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. It’s an unbroken tracking shot that follows a car with a bomb hidden in its trunk as it wends its way through narrow Mexican streets filled with tourists and revelers on its way to the American border. After building up the excruciating tension, that the bomb explodes off screen may be the most jarring part of the shot.
A bomb will go off at the end of Wall of Sickness.
In fact, the first three songs are united by a rhythmic metallic clanking that sounds almost like a detonator ticking away in a car trunk. Who’s My Saviour savor that tension while flirting with restraint. The German trio’s prior album, Glasgow Smile, was a hallucinogenic thrill ride of off kilter riffing and concussive artistry, pushing grindcore’s dynamics and sneaking in sly melodies without ever sacrificing the headlong rush that makes it work. If there’s an album that truly embodies the trope of the overlooked masterpiece, Glasgow Smile was it.
But latest EP Wall of Sickness toys with you by playing things relatively straight at first, casually building up the little layers that make their songs interdimensional portals of sonic wonder and mystery.  “Intro” is all queasy seasick riffing at Quaalude speeds over a sample of Massachusetts Rep. Michael Capuano ripping into a panel of bank presidents who came hat in hand to Congress looking for a bailout. From the outset, Wall of Sickness is a fraught record that oozes the malaise of our current economic implosion. The first few songs are fast-fingered grind rushes that still drip with technical acumen in service of surgical strikes at the heart of a faltering society. These are also some of Who’s My Saviour’s most tuneful efforts; “Hemingway” and “This World Belongs to Us” practically beg for the sing along treatment. “Pillbox” slithers with a slimy sleaze before the song is devoured by a colony of army ants on the warpath.
But there’s a bomb at the end of this EP. The fuse gets lit somewhere around sixth song “Niere Kopf” as the wonted angularity and ambition start bleeding through Who’s My Saviour’s pores. The preceding five tracks were only intended to tenderize your mind to let their multidimensional daggers slide in all the more easily. The exuberant songwriting explosion bombs out of final track “Weedeater,” which builds a wall of stoner drone feedback into cyclopean citadels of circular riff insanity every bit as obsessive as the finest moments of “Shizo” or “When Magic Turns into Black Plague” on Glasgow Smile.
After my first listen to Wall of Sickness, I was disappointed. I thought Who’s My Saviour had sacrificed the quintessence that made them special. That changed a dozen listens later (all in the same afternoon, on endless repeat, I must add). Turns out I was too busy listening to the baseball discussion and not paying nearly enough attention to that bomb under the table.

[Full disclosure: 7 Degrees sent me a download.]

G&P Review: Wake

Wake
False
Handshake Inc. /7 Degrees
On albums like Leeches, Wake have proven themselves to be past masters of the grindcore gallop: smushing all of their brutalizing songs together into one spiked-bat wallop. But with False, the Canadians are letting things air out a bit more. There’s a defined space between songs and the tunes themselves seem to breathe a little easier. While that means False may not have that same bull charge rush you’re used to from grind, it shows Wake have supreme confidence in their work and their faith and your attention are rewarded by a pack of precision crafted grind tunes.
There’s attention to detail at every level of False, and Wake have delivered genuine songs as a result. The album sounds a bit like Heartwork stripped of its suffocating melodicism and rewritten with Circle of Dead Children’s brutal songwriting economy. Bolstering that impression, Wake’s cynicism is seethed in a Jeff Walker sneer, making their declamations almost discernible. That’s all to False’s benefit, but the real triumph is the way every song has a distinct personality. Musical natural disaster “Vacant” battens down under windswept guitars and pounding hail drumming before succumbing to the wildfire inferno of “Smolder.” Later in the album, “Bleak” is all hedgehog prickle as the guitars spike and keen like a defensive layer of spines. Each of the 11 songs boasts little moments like that to separate them from their kin.
Great grindcore albums thrive on being roller coasters of screaming adrenaline that drag you face first through 20 minutes of whipsaw insanity. Wake have sacrificed some of that aggression with False, but the tradeoff is a throwback to an era when grind bands had the chops to bust out songs with strong enough hooks to stand on their own. That Wake managed that feat 11 times in a row in less than 20 minutes is nothing short of remarkable.

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

G&P Review: Fuck the Facts

Fuck the Facts
Amer
Big Cartel
If you took a hammer to Fuck the Facts’ seven-song Amer EP, you could probably kludge together a halfway decent screamo/shoegaze jam from the remaining shards and a bit of Krazy Glue.
Amer’s first moments on “Une Triste Vue” run through a tinkling crystalline forest, like listening to Jesu on fast forward. But winter is coming and the night is dark and full of terrors. So as the snow drifts pile up, and you have a premonition this won’t end well. From there leap ahead three songs to the befogged bewilderment of “A Void.” Decisions have been made in the gloom, unthinkable, irrevocable. Another judicious use of fast forward will wrap you in the Vicodin overdose warmth of the second half of penultimate song “L'enclume et le Marteau” and its resignation in the face of death. Taken together those snippets make a suicidal triptych of longing and the inability to cope.
While that all makes for a great game of what-if, you’ll notice we’re skipping over a lot of material. You can’t really overlook the fact that grindcore is these Canadiens’ chosen avocation and that the four or five minutes of slow motion mopery you could stitch together out of the remnants of this 17 minute EP are far more interesting than anything that blasts a beat. Against the open veined crimson of Fuck the Fact’s extra-genre digressions, the actual grind feels as gray and rigor mortised as a week old corpse. There’s something lifeless behind the eyes when Fuck the Facts start blasting that leaves the grind portions wanting. While that can be a bit disappointing, there’s no denying Amer is ripe for a clever remixing.

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

G&P Review: Kratzer/Kvazar

Kratzer/Kvazar
Split
7 Degrees/Blastbeat Mailmurder
There’s a gray-scale anti-rainbow that haunts the periphery of the visible spectrum and Kratzer and Kvazar divide its hues between them on their fog-colored split effort. The effect is like a reverse Wizard of Oz where all of the color and joy are leached out of a broken and disappointing world.
German crusties Kratzer dwell at the center of a bizarre Goode homolosine projection of the punk rock world in which the sneaky melodicism of Scandinavian d-beat somehow abuts raging Japanese hardcore. Kratzer chip their seven crusted cries from the cracking cement of abandoned playgrounds, ruptured highways and crumbling brutalist highrises, choked in the ash of industrial smog and sickened by the pestilential runoff of industrial waste. It’s the gray grime of our own claustrophobic modernity as its plaster veneer chips away, exposing the flimsy foundation beneath. The moody, mercurial “?/!” glooms its way through the broken landscape, the pivot point of Kratzer’s contribution, a murky slow motion encapsulation of their dimmed horizons and pervasive hopelessness.
After Kratzer managed to paint so evocative a portrait using only monochromatic tools, it’s kind of a bummer that Kvazar’s side is also bogged down in gray. Only this time it is the uniform mush of a bowl of oatmeal.  Apparently the band has been lurking in the Greek grind scene since time immemorial and these, their final songs, were trapped in cryostasis until they recruited Dephosphorus’ Panos Agoros to come in add the missing vocals. Unfortunately, the murky, mushy production that squashes everything together doesn’t play to the astro-grinder’s strengths, burying his distinctive yelp behind flat sounding drums and guitars. The endless gray horizons of one anonymous song after another only makes things worse as Kvazar just slog their way along colorlessly. Where Kratzer’s grays are an accurate snapshot of a black and white world, Kvazar’s contribution is a despondent drone through a missed opportunity. After the intriguing opening half, it’s a shame the second side of this promising split doesn’t live up to its amazing gray art.

[Full disclosure: 7 Degrees sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Heartless

Heartless
Certain Death
Halo of Flies
Certain Death’s finest moments perch on that nanometer wide precipice that razors anticipation from action. Heartless are a hardcore band that revel in that held-breath moment that comes before unleashing chaos, and their eight song EP is a punk rock pep rally that’s there to prep you for the big game. While this Pittsburgh quartet never quite achieve that orgasmic release they keep building toward, you won’t walk away from Certain Death with your rabbles unroused either.
Like a leaner Black Ships or a less intricate Trap Them, Heartless yank the hardcore rip cord and set off in a straight line to stomp, obstacles be damned. The slow burner “Mute” eventually crashes through the scenery at a near grindcore pace, but Certain Death’s strengths come in the down moments where guitarist Rick Mauck nearly scrapes his knuckles on the pavement trying to get low. It lays a foundation for vocalist Cory Smith to bark his way into your heart has he rends his trachea at the world. Certain Death stumbles to its demise 11 minutes later with the bummer trip of its title track, a chug-a lug-roundabout that takes the peaks Heartless spent the EP cresting and bleeds its out to a gray faced death. But by then you already know that only death is certain.

[Full disclosure: Halo of Flies sent me a download.]

G&P Review: Infanticide

Infanticide
Misconception of Hope
Willowtip
I once had a Dodge Neon with a failing transmission. It would whine and strain and huff at low gear, but if you persevered and rode it out, it would eventually lurch into third and you were good to cruise. So that was all good, provided all you wanted to do is cruise around in third. That’s sort of how I feel about Misconception of Hope.
Sweden’s Infanticide have turned in a cruising record the revs past the low gears and never settles down again. But it feels like interstate cruising; it’s two lanes of blurring blacktop anonymity as songs slide into each other like endless highway mile markers. Infanticide are competent composers and performers, but Misconception of Hope is lacking some intangible vitality that would add some interest to this cross-country grindcore road trip. Instead, this feels like a monotone gray bit of background noise to fill the emptiness as you drive between the boundaries of two radio stations. The riffs never rise to the level of memorable and the overall production is missing that gut punch that blastbeat junkies crave. Even on the first listen you can anticipate where the growls will drop out and the shrieks take over. It all just feels so rote.
Infanticide’s prior work put them squarely in the 50th percentile of the grindcore Bell curve, but they were enjoyable efforts nonetheless. Ninety percent of Misconception of Hope evaporates like a gas spill in a hot parking lot the minute I stop listening. I’ll never forget that piece of shit Neon though.

[Full disclosure: Willowtip sent me a download.]

G&P Review:Sick/Tired

Sick/Tired
King of Dirt
Cowabunga Records
Putting on King of Dirt is like boldly striding face first into a tornado of glass shards. It’s a maelstrom of whirling slivers intent on rending your flesh, a vortex of unremitting insanity. Sick/Tired will leave you panting and breathless after all 19 minutes of vertiginous noise lurch to a halt with the groaning lumber of the title track, a five minute mutant that’s not quite grind, not quite sludge and one of the rarest examples of successfully pulling off a slow song at the end in all of grind’s history. But that’s probably to be expected considering it was penned by Adam Jennings who also wrangles sublime noise with electronic neuromancers Winters in Osaka.
I can’t say enough about how Sick/Tired have turned in one of the noisiest, most hostile grind albums I’ve heard since Blood I Bleed’s Gods Out of Monsters. And I fucking love Gods Out of Monsters. This Chicago mob hits somewhere between Threatener's serrated fastcore and Anodyne gone full grind. And I fucking LOVE Anodyne.
King of Dirt snarls away from that precariously balanced perch between unlistenable chaos and production sharp enough to open your veins with the copious amounts of guitar feedback that get unlimbered like audio nooses on a gibbet of blasting death. Every song manages to surprise as the band bashes and hammers away at fragments of grind, beating each splinter of song into a twisted wreck distinct from the others. You won’t be humming along to Sick/Tired’s onslaught, but every song prickles the skin in a different way, giving King of Dirt a constantly evolving personality that staves off boredom even after compulsive re-listens.
This is simply one of the best records I’ve heard in years. It’s absolutely everything you can ask for in a grind album. Even after days spent listening to King of Dirt on endless repeat, Sick/Tired’s twisted hulks of songs have ways of refracting into new and more interesting shapes. Come get your tickets to the car crash.

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

G&P Review: Squash Bowels

Squash Bowels
Grindcoholism
Selfmadegod
Hello, my name is Andrew and I’m a grindcoholic.
It’s been about 15 minutes since my last Squash Bowels marathon. It’s hard, you know? I try to take it one day at a time, but that dive bombing guitar that slashes through “Tastelessness” is just such an awesome album opener. Just thinking about it gives me the jitters and shakes. I thought maybe I could manage my grindcoholism. Take a small taste here and there and move on. But it’s not like that. By the time “Trap” hits, the grisly Jeff Walker bass is rumbling through my brain and I know I’ve lost control again. I’ll be spinning Squash Bowels on endless repeat for most of the afternoon, bobbing along to head-nodder “Surrender,” an excellent early album respite. I won’t be able to control it. The live-in-the-room reverberation of the cymbals and the stuttering blasts just get inside me and I lose all sense of time and place.
I thought I’d hit rock bottom the day some random woman on the Metro was staring at me as I was clutching invisible citrus and making screaming faces during the morning commute. But recovery has been a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’ve come to understand my grindcoholism is not something I can cure. It can only be managed. I’m in a program and I’m working the steps. I hope to one day be able to manage my disease. I’m trying to stay strong and just take it each day as it comes. When I think I can’t manage any more, I call my sponsor for help. But the last time I tried all I could hear over the phone was the stomping tread of “Steering.” Somebody else may have fallen off the wagon.

[Full disclosure: Selfmadegod sent me a download.]

G&P Review: Dead Church/Suffering Mind

Dead Church/Suffering  Mind
Split
7 Degrees
So I says to myself, "Self, bands like Dead Church are the reason you keep getting out of bed in the morning. The song 'I Want Nothing" has everything you ask from a gloriously grisly grind tune. This Michigan trio quartet sounds like somebody royally pissed off the G'mork from The Neverending Story and if you come any closer he'll rip you to shreds. Self," I said, "Dead Church pack an insane amount of aggression into a miserly 56 seconds of minigun guitars and skull thumping drums that crash and careen like a room of ADHD toddlers on a Red Bull binge. For as short as the song is, Dead Church manage to cram in several distinct movements, stuffing less than a minute full of variety that never slacks off on the attitude. Self," I said, "'I Want Nothing' is a practically perfect grind song. What more could I possibly ask from?"
"Flip the fucking record over, asshole," Self said.
"Holy fucking shit, Self, Suffering Mind are at the absolute apex of their powers. 'War Street/Wall Street' is like the very essence of the Polish band distilled down to concentrated hatred. Dead Church are fan-fucking-tastic, but Suffering Mind probably turned in the sharpest 54 seconds of their keenly honed career. You hear that, Self? That is the sound of inevitability crashing down on your dimpled dome. It's the concerted evil of the world being barfed back on society, a putrid bile melange of everything venal, corrupt and compromised. It's the hatred slime from Ghostbusters 2 turned into weaponized audio.
"My only complaint, Self," I said, "is what the fuck is up with just a single song from each band on this 5-inch EP. Because this blue ball tingler demands a full release."
For once, myself and I agreed.

[Full disclosure: the label sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Spewtilator

Spewtilator
Inhale Awaits
Boris Records
Inhale Awaits is like walking through a party and guzzling, snorting and popping every pharmaceutical shoved into your greedy drug hole and letting the kaleidoscope of highs crash through your CNS. Spewtilator brew up Metal Blade-era Slayer thrash (as if the parody cover weren't enough of a tip off), crossover intensity and grindcore's patented high/low vocal tradeoffs over three songs that revel in everything fast and pilled up.
Spewtilator start their gonzo trip through the realms of recreational pharmacopeia with an attack of "Xanax Fury." Clearly the anti-anxiety drug, obviously being taken without a qualified prescription, is not doing its job because the song is a rager that runs like a blower and eats like a grinder as it goes all epic mid-80s thrash up in your grill. It perfectly slides into the most Slayerish of the batch, "Burn in Hell," complete with multiple atonal Hanneman/King solos. Vocals aside, you could probably slap the song on to Hell Awaits as a long lost demo track that didn't quite make the final cut without too much of a pause. Flipping the wax, Spewtilator spelunk their way through an extra sepulchral tour "Into the Crypts of Rays" just to round out their obvious influences.
I know retro thrash was the king of the kegger about four years ago and has pretty much partied itself out at this point, but Spewtilator drag knuckledragging metal far enough into the 21st Century that nothing sounds dated or stale or derivative. Inhale Awaits is an EP that takes nothing seriously, particularly itself. It's just a damn good time. Take a deep puff because hell is just going to have to wait for the party to end first.

[Full disclosure: the band sent me a review copy.]