The Jester Race

We all know metal is SRS BZNESS otherwise it wouldn’t be filled with endless photos of identical bands in identical black shirts making identical SRS faces at the camera. Oooh, scary.
Sometimes I just feel like telling the entire metal community to “lighten up, Francis.” Punk and metal are supposed to be fun, dammit, but it seems like only grindcore remembers how to crack a goddamned smile anymore. Despite the lingering influence of the No Fun Club, even fastcore punks and power violence nerds have been spotted sporting the occasional goofy grin.
If the Dead Kennedys taught me nothing else in my life, it’s that sometimes ridicule can be the most effective form of protest. The powers that be, from your local scene queen douche at a basement show straight up through the big Jehovah himself, hate being mocked. So with that in mind, I pulled together a collection of songs whose titles never fail to make me giggle. This is in no way an indication of how good the songs themselves are. It’s merely a representation of my bent sense of humor.
Feel free to offer your own suggestions in the comments as well.
Enjoy.

Population Reduction – “Yuppie Assault Vehicle”
Voetsek – “WWLD [What Would Lemmy Do?]”
Squash Bowels – “Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Ass”
Spoonful of Vicodin – “My Idea of Anarchy is Taking a Shit on Company Time”
Guyana Punch Line – “Home Fucking is Killing Prostitution”
Psycho – “Carnation Instant Death”
Total Fucking Destruction – “Seth Putnam is Wrong About a Lot of Things, But Seth Putnam is Right About You” [ed.: best song title evAR.]
Anal Cunt – “Our Band is Wicked Sick (We Have the Flu)”
xBrainiax – “Lenny Kravitz is His Answer”
Spazz – “The One With a Goat has an Orgy Up His Sleeve”

Covered in Napalm

Let’s be honest. Covering Napalm Death is not the most revolutionary idea a grind band can hit upon. In fact, recent research has pretty conclusively proven the correlation between people who love grind and people who love Napalm Death. So covering the band that pretty much wrote the rulebook by which you're playing isn't going to win any prizes for originality. However, Rotten Sound are just joining a well-established fraternity of punks and grinders who have paid tribute to the grindfathers.
Enjoy.

Rotten Sound – “Suffer the Children”
Ablach – “Unchallenged Hate”
Discordance Axis – “The Kill”
Agoraphobic Nosebleed – “Control”
Capitalist Casualties – “From Enslavement to Obliteration”
Xbrainiax – “You Suffer”
Cellgraft - "Scum"

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.

G&P Review: xBrainiax

xBrainiax
Hail Fastcore
625 Thrash/To Live a Lie
Oh fastcore gets hailed on this hour-long, 99-track compilation from this fleet-footed Michigan quartet. As an added bonus, power violence gets a shout out, punk gets a what’s up, hardcore high-fives, crust occasionally wakes up from its mystery pills and gutter wine stupor to mumble a friendly hello and Star Wars gets sampled liberally. Which pretty much tells you everything you need to know right there.
xBrainiax play fast punk and regardless your preferred nomenclature, they do it pretty damn well for a band that recorded most of these songs themselves in their practice space. Hail Fastcore is all frenetic drumming, indistinguishable guitars, unhinged and ranting vocals and largely indistinguishable songs that would probably rule your local VFW basement hall on a bill with Threatener (fitting given 625’s involvement) and Asshole Parade.
xBrainiax will never be accused of being mucsical visionaries, but they ably acquit themselves of a whole host of punk clichés with panache and aplomb. “Jaded, Twisted and Evil” is your classic example of the slow build intro giving way to breathless blast finish, and blink and you’ll miss it “Trekkie Killer” is the band’s equivalent of “You Suffer” (which they also cover along with Y, No Comment and Infest tunage). The band does whip out one truly unexpected WTF? moment late in the collection with “Idiot,” a five minute bit of ponderous epicus doomicus hardcore-icus that could have been swiped from St. Vitus’ cutting room floor. Unlike their brooding, oh so serious compatriots, xBrainiax prefer to let their seething sarcasm do the heavy lifting excoriating their targets on songs like “Finishing Last in the Human Race,” Lenny Kravitz is His Answer” and sly Dead Kennedys reference of “Young Republicans Fuck Off.”
You’ve probably heard a hundred other bands that sound exactly like xBrainiax but sometimes it’s nice when an old friend like fastcore comes back around to say hi or hail or whatever.