Suffering Mind At War With Mankind Zaraza 2008 Think I was joking when I said the split with Lycanthropy immediately made me go out and buy more Suffering Mind? A few spins of that was all it took for me to immediately go hunting for 2008’s At War With Mankind, a scabies scab-raw crust platter of squatter grind. Shedding all of the metallic pretensions of modern grindcore, this multi-gendered Polish collaborative are a sterling example of crusty grind’s gloriously reductive joys. Album standout “Humanitarne Manipulacje” is keenly aware of that crusty majesty, enticing with a simple but weapons grade virulent riff that gets crushed by Bolt Thrower double bass. Suffering Mind - "Humanitarne Manipulacje"
Suffering Mind have a few other musical tricks rammed like rabbits up their black army jackets like the lepus lope of “Dead Part of Cause” or the timely down tempo passage of “Ekonomiczny Szczyt Bezczelnosci” (Pat, I’d like to buy a vowel, please). And while Suffering Mind are yet another band to close out an album with a doom-paced trudge anthem (“Ostateczny Pogrzeb”), it makes enough of an impression that I don’t mind all that much. It’s an album so good I can excuse yet another fricken bad sampling the “Pain has a face” line from Hellraiser IV (“Dead Part of Cause”). I’ll let it slide with a warning this time, Suffering Mind. Also, I heartily endorse everything this mind reading, post pre-empting chump had to say.
Every so often as an interviewer it’s instructional to be reminded you’re not half so goddmaned clever as you think you are. See, given Suffering Mind’s chosen appellation and penchant for punky throwback grindcore, I had thought it would be a humorous icebreaker to ask guitarist Kuchar “You suffer but why?” My thinking being it would make for one of those pun-y, self-satisfied U C WHUT I DID THERE? kind of leads. Instead Kuchar rhetorically handed me my comedy ass as he used the question as a chance to delve into his band’s decidedly jaundiced outlook on life. “Well I may say about two things causes the suffering: first is an interactional dystopia,” Kuchar explained gamely. “We live in the strange world where even the closest persons make others suffer. Bytheir acts,words,many different things. People are hostile, frustrated, often aggressive… There’s too much ignorance and selfishness which creates sad image of mankind.” I can’t really argue with that answer. But like Ron Popeil used to said, but wait, there’s more. “Second thing is a hydra called system, a ruthless monster with government, religion, military, police heads,a monster created by man but now totally under its control,” Kuchar continued. “It’s hard to fight even with one head. A hydra without one head is still strong and dangerous. Cutting off a head will regenerate shortly cause all heads are needed to [ensure the] system works correctly. Authority and religion always go hand in hand enslaving by brutal power and false promises.” With a killer, crusty full length racking up accolades all around the weberverse since 2008 and a slurry of splits (including a sweet callabo with similarly outfitted boy-girl band Lyncanthropy) to their credit, Suffering Mind are set to spread the pain evenly over the globe in 2010 with a new long player on 625 Thrash and Crucificados Pelo Sistema followed by more tag team efforts with Phobia, Audio Kollaps and possibly Magrudergrind or P.L.F. That’s a heavy agenda for a band that insists on keeping true to their punk roots. It’s not just Suffering Mind’s crusty sound that sets them apart from their more metallic European peers but also a fierce commitment to handle their own business as well. “There’s still lot of bands that want to have punk face and prefer to be connected with punk scene,” Kuchar said. “Just like us. In our music you may hear lot of different influences: from grindcore, crust, thrash to metal and sludge. We record all stuff D.I.Y. and we have control of how we sound. It’s lot of work, but after it’s done you’re just happy that you do something from start to end by yourself.” And while those of us sitting at home brushing Cheeto dust off our keyboards may opine at how vibrant and robust the Polish scene appears from the outside, looks can be deceiving. While the former Eastern Bloc country boasts Squash Bowels, Exit Wounds, Selfhate and the tricksome Antigama to its credit, Kuchar said all is not Zywiec and sunshine from a ground level perspective. “Well I don’t think that Polish grindcore scene is too big,” he said. “We don’t have too many bands and situation with gigs is not too good in my opinion. If you want to play a gig in Poland it’s only few places where you can play and get more than several people in audience. From time to time there’s some bigger grindcore fest like Mosh It Up for example when more bands play and people come to see them. Smaller gigs have low frequency even when some good grindcore bands play. That’s why Polish people pick also the Czech Republic fests like Obscene Extreme or Play Fast or Don’t. There they can see more bands.” Suffering Mind’s punk ethic and approach set them apart from their countrymen in more ways than one. “Mostly Polish bands play gore grind and there’s not too many bands connected strongly to the punk scene. I think that people asked about Polish grindcore bands will name Dead Infection, Squash Bowels and Neuropathia first. What for Suffering Mind: we sound probably bit different to them. Or maybe not? Well everyone can listen and have their own opinion about that.” We all suffer. Do we really need to ask why? Just listen to some fucking Suffering Mind.
Suffering Mind/Lycanthropy Cycle of Extinction/Too Late to Survive Bullshit Propaganda Not to jack Cosmo Lee’s shtick, but Napalm Death’s Scum turns 23 in March and we’re no closer to answering the band’s eternal (though possibly, rhetorical) question: You suffer, but why? Scoffing at such existentialist piffle, Poland’s Suffering Mind would probably blithely retort that it’s all in your head and then grind all over your face with gutter punk brutality. The band boasts their half of this split was “100% DIY recorded” and it shows. It’s a staticky, near incoherent, beautiful mess. Cycle of Extinction is one of those recordings that’s so low fi and unpolished it’s explosive. Suffering Mind surge off the vinyl with screeching, screaming grind that revs like a dental drill boring into a rotten molar sans anesthesia while Ula rips the plaque out of your ears vocally. There is absolutely no definition to any instrument on this atavistic little treasure, but it all works. On paper there’s so many ways that Czech grinders Lycanthropy could have gone bad: a cutesy boy/girl band that evokes werewolves easily could have been a steaming slab of indefensible symphonic black metal that would have sent the Twihards swooning. These pitfalls would swooped over Indiana Jones style in favor of knuckledusting grind that, name aside, doesn’t really shift shapes. And that’s still cool. “Two Sides to a Coin” is a snappy start/stop blast with a drum that sounds like an early machine gun clearing a trench in All Quiet on the Western Front while frontlady Zdisha works up a plausible strep throat excuse for work the next day. The remaining four songs are just as tight. Drummer Ondra is a real star here and the band smartly shoves his metronomic performance to the fore with a snappy, dry snare sound like a krav maga bone strike. Vosuck (guitar) and Supin (bass) are no slouches, but they clearly know their spot, providing seething, scarred foundation for the drums and scathing vocals to land the finer body blows. Suffering Mind and Lyncanthropy are an inspired pairing, probably the best I’ve heard from Bullshit Propaganda so far. How good is this? I just ordered Suffering Mind’s full length and I’m on the hunt for anything else by Lycanthropy. [Full disclosure: BS Propaganda sent me a review copy.]
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.]
Suffering Mind guitarist Kuchar is the very reason I started asking this question of people. So thanks for the inspiration, Kuchar. See, last year I interviewed the Polish band, and being a smartass, I thought I’d open the conversation by asking him, “You suffer…but why?” I thought, given the band’s name, it would make an amusing interlude to hang a story on. But he took my question seriously, and that planted the germ of the idea in my head. So what makes him get his grind on?
“I was a young guy that started to explore more brutal genres in punk. I started to listen crust and grindcore,” he said. “I’m not sure which album was my first grindcore one, but I remember that Razor Sharp Daggers made by Agathocles was first one that makes me wanted to listen to it whole day.”
Kuchar went on to explain how grindcore eventually brought Suffering Mind together.
“Our previous band called People Hate (playing grindcore) had just split up and three of five members of the band decided to continue playing together,” he said. “We asked Ulka (vocalist) to join us for a sludge punk project influenced by Dystopia. After a few practices we decided to continue playing grindcore - and that was the birth of Suffering Mind. We decided in that moment that grindcore is the most comfortable genre for us. It's because we listen to many other grindcore bands and when we were making grindcore songs we had the feeling that they are much better than those sludge punk ones. When you do something good enough to feel satisfaction with that fact, it's just all you need at the moment, I guess. So we don't wonder now why we play grindcore. We just love to do that and we are very satisfied with playing, recording and releasing our stuff.”
Punctuality has never been my strong point, but I thought I’d get ahead of the curve this year and put out my year end list a bit early. Yay me.
This year, in particular, I have to thank all the cool bands and labels who were generous enough to share their music with me. Since the advent of the Lil Grinder, my discretionary music buying budget has been slashed to zero. So more than ever I’m reliant upon the kindness of strangers. And this year strangers had some pretty damn good taste. Let’s get down to it.
10. Dead Church/Suffering Mind Split 7 Degrees
Don’t get the wrong idea. The only thing that puts this split down at number 10 is the fact that it’s just one song from each band. But sweet holy fucking Shiva on a shingle, those two songs are absolute humdingers. Suffering Mind have been operating at an extremely high level for quite a few years now, but “War Street/Wall Street” may be the most perfect distillation of the Polish band’s polish and promise that I’ve ever heard. It’s just a perfect little grind tune. Flipside, Dead Church match Suffering Mind’s intensity, chewing through “I Want Nothing” like Al Pacino with an electric scenery gnawing machine powered by cocaine and incinerated copies of Godfather Part 3. Normally, one song from a band is not worth the wax it occupies, but this split is definitely the exception.
9. Detroit Reality Denied Grindcore Karaoke
Detroit have been on a roll recently and Reality Denied just keeps that trend trucking like one of the diesel huffing monstrosities churned out by their namesake city. The album may start with “False” but Detroit remains true: loose and spastic and flailing with the abandon of youth. Every song is hewed from the molds established by Napalm Death and Capitalist Casualties, but they’re played with an aplomb that keep that from being merely derivative. There’s a sincerity of focus that elevates them beyond their humble ambitions.
8. Rotten Sound Species at War Relapse
Just when I’d accepted that Rotten Sound’s Murderworks/Exit days were behind them and they were in more of a fast crust punk mold, the Finns start banging out awesome EPs that capture the vibe of their earliest material. Species at War was another great short effort, a snarling little bugbear of bad attitude and unrelenting pessimism. Rotten Sound sound ripped to the gills on humanity’s self-inflicted bullshit and they’re ready to push the button to end it all. The apocalypse has never sounded so upbeat.
7. Sacridose Anxiety Tremors Financial Ruin/Bandcamp
Cellgraft offshoot Sacridose sound like the former crossed up with a soupcon of Cloud Rat’s fast hardcore rampage. It’s a winning combination. Plus they cover Rudimentary Peni. Always a bonus. That aside, their original material is a shattered glass tornado of whirling aggression and vertiginous blasting twists. It’s lean and it’s mean and it’s got a hardcore soul that keeps it from being too easily tagged as Cellgraft resurgent.
6. Slavestate 641A Masochist Grindcore Karaoke/Name Like His Master
This is not grind in the musical sense. It’s grind in the tectonic sense. It’s the slow motion smashing of giant plates of earth, buckling and crumbling under the pressure of uncompromising repetition. Born from Robocop, who helped lead the power violence resurgence, Slavestate 641A pull much the same trick on classic Godflesh and Swans, reinvigorating heavy as fuck slow motion misery that crawls along at a stumble step. It’s death by degrees and it’s demanding but the payoff is emotionally satisfying and enervating. It take it that’s how masochism is supposed to work.
5. Gowl Buzzbox Self Released
Gowl raged right out of nowhere (i.e. Connecticut) in 2013, leaving a smoldering nuclear crater of irradiated awesomeness in their too brief wake. The onomatopoeitic Buzzbox lives up to its name with a snarling tiptoe through Backslider’s garden, which is planted high with amp buzz and clanking snare. It’s a glorious little cacophony that doesn’t offer too much in the way of originality, but it’s delivered with bravado and abandon. That’s really all I ask.
4. Wake False 7 Degrees/Handshake Inc.
Wake have been churning out amazing records with such regularity now that it’s almost easy to take them for granted. False is another immaculate entry into their already enviable discography. Its chief success is corralling together another 11 songs that each have their own voice and personality and then having the confidence to let the songs breathe and stake out their own space. Wake haven’t stumbled yet so False makes me truly eager to hear what the Canadians churn out next.
2. Who’s My Savior Wall of Sickness 7 Degrees
Look, I’ve been raving about Who’s My Saviour for years now. I think Glasgow Smile is a certified fucking classic. So I don’t know how much more I need to say to them. Why aren’t you listening to this shit right this fucking minute? Because Wall of Sickness is another brilliant slice of twisted grind from the German trio, who refuse to be bound by grindcore convention but never leave their roots too far behind. Wall of Sickness is an amazing slow build EP that boasts some of Who’s My Saviour’s catchiest songs and these guys excel at writing a memorable grind hook.
IFB/Halo of Flies/React With Protest/7 Degrees
I called this one back in January. I stand by it 11 months later. Simply put, there has not been another album that comes close to Moksha’s transformative emotional experience this year. Cloud Rat sneak in His Hero is Gone melody and a Neil Young cover as part of the most unabashedly emotional and riveting album in recent memory. Moksha is harrowing in its honesty and plaintive in its frustrated sincerity. No matter how bleak life gets, Cloud Rat still strive for the light of hope. Madison absolutely brought it this album, screaming her soul out to make Moksha the standout musical experience that it is.
The people have spoken and it wasn’t even close. Here are your 1-8 winners.
North America Pig Destroyer terrifier-ed crust grind lifers Phobia, blowing them out 17-4. Turns out a fairly consistent record over 20 years and an unwavering commitment to DIY ethics just can’t compete with Hull et al’s scathing art grind nightmares. (Bonus points go to Bill Willingham IV Esq. for better articulating my problem with recent Phobia albums. I also agree they’re too safe.)
Asia and Australia In the most lopsided contest of the lot, Wormrot eviscerated Captain Cleanoff by a vote of 18-2. Though many of you argued fiercely for the Australians’ right to slot in the contest, their booze drenched nods to classic Carcass just couldn’t stand in the face of Wormrot’s exquisite ferocity.
Scandinavia Though a few of you offered up spirited defenses of Infanticide’s new jack noise, Rotten Sound’s legacy of consistently crushing records drove them to a 16-5 victory. Give Infanticide a few more years to build up their reputation and I suspect the results would be much closer.
Continental Europe and the United Kingdom Maybe it was just wishful thinking since I’ve been on an Agathocles binge lately, but I had smelled upset going into this one. You, the voters, were having none of it. Old dogs Napalm Death’s new tricks crushed Agathocles’ relentless singelmindedness by 15-6. It was the tightest contest of the day, but it wasn’t even close.
The winners have advanced and you can check out the revised brackets here. Meanwhile, we move on to the 3-6 matchups. The faceoffs should be more evenly matched so I expect closer calls and some really interesting arguments. Let the streets flow with the blood of the unbelievers. Argument’s open until Saturday.
North America Kill the Client (3) vs. Graf Orlock (6) Go mess with Texas. I dare you. Yeah, didn’t think so. Kill the Client are an audio pipe bomb packed full of nails and the knucklebones of lesser competitors who shred their fingers to the nub vainly trying to keep pace. But there’s just not another band working right now that’s as purely pissed as Kill the Client. Champ Morgan is a man possessed and he’s backed by of top shelf musicians. Jesus, is there any grind band that Bryan Fajardo hasn’t joined? But the secret sauce to the Dallas barbecue may be bassist James Delgado who anchors the chaos and quietly shapes the sound from behind the scenes. If the MPAA sends out a flurry of new cease and desist letters, cine-grinders Graf Orlock must be back in the studio. The band has dropped a triptych of releases that follow the formula of introduction/conflict/and violent conclusion that stitches together a narrative from cinematic samples and swiped dialog lyrics. And while that has been the bit of trivia that has formed the basis of the Graf’s identity, don’t overlook their quality of the hardcore tinged noise they bang out. The music is just as sweeping, emotional and explosive of the meathead movies that inspire them.
Asia and Australia Magnicide (3) vs. Unholy Grave (6) A fascinating matchup between two Asian acts that are perhaps better known for their artists they ape than the music they make on their own. Singapore’s Magnicide do a capable 324 impersonation as they play second grind fiddle to countrymen Wormrot. But do Wormrot have grindcore didgeridoo? Hmm? Do they? With 324 frozen in carbonite for the time being, Magnicide are your best bet to scratch that crusty grind holocaust itch until the masters’ triumphant return. Unholy Grave are the Asian Agathocles both because they bang out a consistently lo-fi morass of punky grind with only a fleeting acquaintance with 21st Century recording techniques and technology and because the list of their split-heavy back catalogue outweighs your average phone book. But the Japanese quartet has defined its niche in the grindcore ecosphere and have burrowed in comfortably. You don’t pick up an Unholy Grave album expecting to be wowed with the latest thinking in songsmithy. However, the band has a deft hand at grinding the fuck out, never swaying from their strengths.
Scandinavia Afgrund (3) vs. The Arson Project (6) Some of you have had the temerity to develop your own surprisingly cogent opinions, making lucid arguments in favor of Afgrund’s superiority to Sayyadina as Sweden’s top working grinders. How dare you? Oh, I can certainly see where you’re coming from because Afgrund raged out of the abyss (all of those who got that pun, raise your hands) with a potent brew of punk- and metal-distilled audio aggression. When the sometimes Swedish/sometimes Italian/sometimes Finnish sometimes trio/sometimes quartet (OK, their lineup is not stable) clicks, the set all of Europe aflame, like the song says. The question before you is if that is strong enough to overcome the band’s insistence of larding albums with thoroughly pointless and dreary doom passages. Against them comes upstarts The Arson Project who only boast one EP to their name to date, but it’s a corker. Hobbled by a name stolen from the bad metalcore handbook, The Arson Project have a slick hand with a tune and a poise and energy that belies the band’s relative youth. Do 14 minutes of prime noise and bucketsful of future potential stack up against the here and now attractions of Afgrund?
Continental Europe and the United Kingdom Suffering Mind (3) vs. Attack of the Mad Axeman (6) Suffering Mind couldn’t be more serious; Attack of the Mad Axeman couldn’t be less. Do you prefer the rage or the jester? Poles Suffering Mind are grind incarnate. Far more hardcore inflected than many of their European kin, the band blasts and huffs and doesn’t waste its time with much else. They know their strengths and they will throttle you with their raw rage and bullwhip attack. Against them stands Germany’s Attack of the Mad Axeman the ecologically minded grinders harness the sounds of the animal kingdom in the name of animal activism and environmental responsibility. They also know their way around a thoroughly infectious riff over the course of two increasingly awesome full lengths. And yes, they wear fuzzy animal costumes on stage, but don’t let that lull you into thinking they’re a joke band.
Anybody else barely sleep last night, giddy with anticipation? It's like Christmas and the Oscars and the NHL trading deadline all rolled into one! It's the most important day of the grindcore calendar. Right? ... crickets. Ok. Moving on. We're about to crown the best grindcore record in history with two of the genre defining records vying for the honor. But first, let's take a quick trip back to see how the standings broke down so far.
32. Unseen Terror-Human Error
31.Cellgraft-External Habitation (tie) 31. Sakatat-Bir Devrin Sonu (tie) 31. S.O.B.-Gate of Doom (tie) 28. Liberteer-Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees 27. Enemy Soil-Casualties of Progress (tie) 27. Mortalized-Absolute Mortality 2 (tie) 25. Extreme Noise Terror-A Holocaust in Your Head (tie) 25. S.O.B.-Don't Be Swindle (tie) 23. Agoraphobic Nosebleed-PCP Torpedo 22. Nasum-Helvete (tie) 22. Carcass-Reek of Putrefaction (tie) 20. Siege-Drop Dead (tie) 20. Agoraphobic Nosebleed-Altered States of America (tie) 20. Suffering Mind-Suffering Mind (tie) 17. Napalm Death-From Enslavement to Obliteration 16. Dephosphorus-Night Sky Transform 15. Kill the Client-Cleptocracy 14. GridLink-Amber Gray 13. Disrupt-Unrest 12. Brutal Truth-Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses (tie) 12. Wormrot-Abuse (tie) 10. Assuck-Misery Index 9. Brutal Truth-Need to Control 8. 324- Boutoku no Taiyo 7. Pig Destroyer-Prowler in the Yard 6. Napalm Death-Scum 5. Terrorizer-World Downfall 4. Insect Warfare-World Extermination 3. Assuck-Anticapital
You could put together a pretty damn good grind collection using that as a template. So with that trip down memory lane behind us, let's get down to business. It call came down to two albums, Repulsion's genre-defining (literally!) Horrified and Discordance Axis' new millennium game changer The Inalienable Dreamless. Would you go with tradition and nod back to the festering zombie that started it all or would you crown an anime-core classic as the greatest grind that ever ground? C'mon. With my readership? We all know where this is going. The Inalienable Dreamless swept to a commanding 22-11 win, doubling up on Horrified to take the title as the single greatest grind album ever as chosen by you, my intelligent, charismatic, wise, dexterous, strong and ... ummm.... constitutional readers (D&D Second Edition 4 Lyfe, bitches!). I hope you can live with your choice. Thank you everyone for participating. Until next year.
I asked you on the Facebook page if you're up for yet another round of bracketology, and you all seemed most enthusiastic about pitting your favorite grind albums of all time against each other in a musical Hunger Games. So here's Grindcore Bracketology 3: 32 albums enter, only one blaster gets to run Bartertown.
For those of you who missed out on the last two years, here's how it goes down. I've broken the albums down into four conferences of eight albums each. Just like in the hockey playoffs, the eighth ranked album has to face the first ranked album while the others are paired up 2-7, 3-6, and 4-5. For the visually-minded, you can view the brackets here.
You vote for your favorite in each match up and the winners get to fight another day.
One important change this year: I'm opening up voting both here and at the Facebook page. Vote where ever is most convenient for you. You're on the honor system to vote only once, but I know most of your real names so I'll keep you honest.
Before we kick off the voting next week, here is your chance to nitpick my set up. Feel free to offer suggestions about reordering the initial matchups or adding or deleting albums before we get started. I've organized the albums into two leagues: The Geezers (representing the classic first and second wave records) and The Upstarts (the modern classics). Within each league I've created two conferences. For the Geezers, I've (very roughly, here) broken out albums that seem to have more of a metallic base versus those that seem more directly tied to punk and hardcore. Over on the Upstarts side, I'm pitting your arty pretentious types with their weepy songs and carefully cultivated angst against the knuckle-dragging troglodytes who like to pick their nose and kick your ass without over-thinking it.
Voting will start next week. May the best record win.
THE GEEZERS
More Metal
1. Repulsion-Horrified
2. Napalm Death-From Enslavement to Obliteration
3. Terrorizer-World Downfall
4. Brutal Truth- Need to Control
5. Carcass-Reek of Putrefaction
6. S.O.B.-Gate of Doom
7. Assuck-Misery Index
8. Enemy Soil-Casualties of Progress
More Punk
1. Napalm Death-Scum
2. Brutal Truth- Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses
3. S.O.B.-Don't Be Swindle
4. Siege-Drop Dead
5. Assuck-Anticapital
6. Disrupt-Unrest
7. Unseen Terror-Human Error
8. Anal Cunt-Morbid Florist Extreme Noise Terror-A Holocaust in Your Head
THE UPSTARTS
More Arty
1. Discordance Axis-The Inalienable Dreamless
2. Pig Destroyer-Prowler in the Yard
3. Mortalized-Absolute Mortality 2
4. Dephosphorus-Night Sky Transform
5. Agoraphobic Nosebleed-Altered States of America
6. GridLink-Amber Gray
7. Nasum-Helvete
8. Liberteer-Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees
More Farty
1. Insect Warfare-World Extermination
2. Wormrot-Abuse
3. Agoraphobic Nosebleed-PCP Torpedo
4. Nasum-Human 2.0 Suffering Mind-Suffering Mind 5. 324-Boutoku no Taiyo
6. Kill the Client-Cleptocracy
7. Sakatat-Bir Devrin Sonu
8. Cellgraft-External Habitation
Despite Jon Chang's laughably desperate attempt to stuff the ballot box by voting twice, some of his favorite records just got torched. I call that justice. Everyone savor the tears of his failure. Which sons of bitches met their mortality? Read on.
THE GEEZERS
More Metal S.O.B.'s Gate of Doom met its World Downfall at the hands of Terrorizer, falling by 16-2 (and I only counted one of Jon's votes).
More Punk Disrupt disrupted S.O.B.'s second entry in the contest when Unrest stomped all over Don't Be Swindle by 13-5.
THE UPSTARTS
More Arty No matter who goes down, Takafumi Matsubara won this round, and you guys decided GridLink's Amber Gray was superior to Mortalized's Absolute Mortality 2 by 14-4.
More Farty Kill the Client's Cleptocracy stole the show, outlasting Agoraphobic Nosebleed's PCP Torpedo by 9-6.
As always, the updated brackets are available for your perusal here. So that brings us to the last batch for the first round. Here are the 4-5 matchups. As always, you have until Sunday to vote either here or at the Facebook page, whichever suits you. Just a friendly reminder, you only get to vote once (*cough*Chang*cough).
THE GEEZERS
More Metal 4. Brutal Truth-Need to Control v. 5. Carcass-Reek of Putrefaction
More Punk 4. Siege-Drop Dead v. 5. Assuck-Anticapital
THE UPSTARTS
More Arty 4. Dephosphorus-Night Sky Transform v. 5. Agoraphobic Nosebleed-Altered States of America
More Farty 4. Suffering Mind-Suffering Mind v. 5. 324-Boutoku no Taiyo
Grindcore is hit and run music. Its strength comes from an unrelenting campaign of musical shock and awe, dispensing with songwriting conventions like verses, choruses and all that other assorted folderol to boil tunes down to their atavistic core. And then it pummels you with a dozen songs in a row, often with no pause between to catch your breath. It's that synergistic adrenaline rush that gives the style its power. So why do so many bands muck it all up by ending albums with drawn out slow songs? What is this inexplicable compulsion to tack on an unnecessary slow song at the end? It doesn't have to be this way. Discordance Axis made "A Leaden Stride to Nowhere" the penultimate song on masterpiece The Inalienable Dreamless, stabbing you in the earholes with the brutalizing "Drowned" as you limp off spent and bloody. Nasum probably wrote the single greatest slow song ever penned by a grind band with the poignant "The Final Sleep" on Helvete, but they recognized the power of what they had in the tune and stuck it in the middle rather than relegating it to the end. I've mentioned bands throwing unexpected bits of musical failure at the end of albums before, but this ending on a doom song thing is so pervasive to have become a cliche. How did we get to this place, you ask? Here's a quick jog down memory lane.
Don't Fear the Reaper
Probably the first instance of the phenomenon can be traced to arguably the first ever grind album, Siege's 1984 demo Drop Dead. The length and contents have Drop Dead have shifted and grown over the years as bonus tracks have been added and deleted, but one constant remains: it always ends on the seven minute sax-laden freakout that is "Grim Reaper." The band took the training wheels of fast hardcore and set it on the path of the one true grind, but they also inadvertently established the ending on a doom song cliche as well.
Cursed to Crawl
As with any good grindcore cliche, of course Napalm Death has to factor into the script. Though they set into stone what Siege had pressed into clay, Napalm Death took their time to leave their mark on this one. In fact, the Side A Scum lineup went to the opposite extreme, closing out their half of the album with the two second bliss of "You Suffer." No, it wasn't until 1988's From Enslavement to Obliteration that Napalm Death caught the slow song bug, capping off the album with three minutes of fake Swans plod in the form of "The Curse," which served to bookend the album with slow motion starter "Evolved as One."
Another dozen albums and a whole new lineup later, Napalm Death are still pulling this trick out on occasion. In fact, for The Code is Red...Long Live the Code in 2005 Napalm Death pulled the double whammy, closing out with a pair of slow songs (and again shamelessly stealing from Swans) in the shape of "Morale" and "Our Pain is Their Power."
Semper Grind Fidelis
The stylistic tick didn't take long to embed itself in the second wave of grindcore royalty either. Brutal Truth have never had a problem mixing and matching styles and tempos, but they never really fell under the spell of the last song doom phenomenon until 2009's comeback album Evolution Through Revolution and its end piece, the decidedly non-grinding "Grind Fidelity."
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
While I keep saying Phobia's 1998 album Means of Existence is my favorite album of their extensive catalog, the longer I keep writing about it, the more I keep picking up on irritating little quirks. Like the seven minutes of stumbling doom slumber that are album finisher "Ruined." Obviously, I need to stop thinking critically about this record before I ruin it for myself. However, this does help put drummer John Haddad's later jump to doomsters Eyes of Fire into perspective.
In fact, Phobia pulled the exact same stunt three years later on follow up full length Serenity Through Pain. This time they kept last song "Sovereign" to a more concise four minutes of ambient drone and spoken word mumbling.
Go, Go Gadget
If there's a formula to Gadget albums, it would be this: slam listeners in the face with a crazy intense song off the bat and then chill it all out at the end with a slow song. It's a remarkably potent formula that's apparently served them very well because they've done it twice now. Starting with 2004's Remote, Gadget said fare thee well with the rolling bit of ambient unease that was "Tema: Skit."
They clearly thought the formula worked because they did it again at the end of 2006's The Funeral March. Once again the plodding dirge of " Tingens Föbannelse" calmed everyone out on their way out the door. Unfortunately, this one's not available on YouTube and SoundCloud won't let me upload it. So you'll just have to take my word for it on this one.
Mess With Texas
Kill the Client have a well deserved reputation as unrelenting grind maniacs, but they've also succumbed to the seductive allure of getting all down in the dumps at the end of an album. For 2005's Escalation of Hostility, the Texas chainsaw massacre crew departed from their frothing mouthed style to slow everything down like a sizzling, lethargic Texas panhandle summer on "Negative One." Interestingly, they've not gone back to that move since their first full length. The subsequent two long players have been all grind all the time instead and are probably the better for it.
Rotten to the Core
Rotten Sound are fond of shoving the longest song on the album to the end, but they usually kept it grinding. They never went for the full slow song closer until 2008's Cycles. Five albums in, that's when the Finns decided to mix the formula up a tad and get their doom and gloom on with the four minute plod that is "Trust." This is not what Rotten Sound are known for or what they really do best, but if they keep it to one album out of every five, I'll let it slide.
You Suffer...But Why?
I'm going to say it. It needs to be said. If you're in a grind band, your strength is probably in writing great grind songs. Doom is not your thing because otherwise you'd be in a doom band. Case in point, Suffering Mind's "Ostateczny Pogrzeb," which puts paid to At War With Mankind. Now Suffering Mind are an excellent grind band and you won't catch me disparaging their way with a blastbeat, but "Ostateczny Pogrzeb" finds one slow motion riff, rides it to death and then takes it out back and pokes with a stick for a couple extra minutes just to be sure. In a shorter, tighter incarnation, I wouldn't have a problem with it. However, I think as is it ultimately deflates the end of At War With Mankind a tad.
Blasphemy Made Flesh
Baltimore's Triac actually pulled off one the better slow song finales on short album Blue Room. The band's signature brew of blasting grind and scrungy power violence came to a nicely fermented hardcore head on last song "My First Blasphemy." Unlike a lot of other grind bands, Triac actually have a way with a slow song that doesn't completely negate the preceding album experience. Ending on a slow song may be a tired cliche, but I wouldn't be as irritated by it if more songs were this good.
Bloody Hell
The slow final song shows no signs of fading into grindcore history, either. Bloody Phoenix got into the act in 2010. The title track of album Death to Everyone, which opened with a rip on Neurosis, closed out with three minutes of slow rolling drums and jabbering about god being dead. Band mainstay Jerry Flores has been kicking around grindcore for 20 years, but as far as I know, this is the first time he's resorted to this particular genre trope.
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
So after all that bitching, I don't want to leave you with the impression that I'm opposed to ending on a slow song entirely. In fact, quite the opposite. Done well, a good slow song at the end lets an album's ideas simmer in the brain, slowly seeping through your cortex to embed themselves in the stuff of your nightmares. Tusk very effectively pulled off that move at the end of 2004 masterwork The Tree of No Return with not one but two slow doom songs at the end. It works largely because the band's cross breeding of Pig Destroyer and Neurosis give them the musical palette to explore wider vistas and the EP's central narrative -- a man gets lost in the wilderness, goes crazy from hunger and thirst and is subsequently eaten by bears -- demands a musical arc that bends from initial grindcore panic to doom metal delirium. So Tusk left us with the twin desolation that was "Starvation Dementia" and "Ursus Arctos -- Walk the Valley." This is how you do ending on a slow song properly.
Looking back on another year of grind, I’ve got to share Flesh Monolith’s general sense of disappointment. This was a year that lacked a clear, breakout star. Instead, we were treated to a lot of good albums and a whole lotta meh. Keep in mind, though, my discretionary music buying budget took a brutal hit so things like the new Suffering Mind, Bloody Phoenix and even the fucking Wormrot/I Abhor split have eluded me. So I feel a little funny even doing a list since I don’t really feel like I can pull together a list as authoritative as I would prefer. But fuck it. Up front, I’m also gonna cop to padding the list so bring it to a nice round 10 to fulfill some bizarre numerological compulsion I can’t quite explain.
Before we get down to it, though, I want to briefly ruminate on a couple of positive trends I saw this year: the rise of the tidy EP (if you don’t have the material for a full length, don’t waste people’s time with filler) and bands eschewing the traditional label structure to throw their music out to survive on the Darwinian internet.
As always, feel free to call me an idiot, point out gems I may have missed, hash out the order and berate me for bands I foolishly left off.
The veteran Poles’ return to the grind scene after a lengthy hiatus was a welcome surprise in 2010. Nearly a decade older and consequently a step or two slower, Selfhate still bring quality riffs and perfectly poised dynamics in place of setting new land speed records. The band also stand out in an area where grind is usually deficient: emotional weight. The song “Dajesz Zycle/You Give Life,” which tells the true story of a murdered child, is chillingly grounded without giving way to typical metal posturing. Selfhate were a landmark band in the 1990s and they still have a lot to share with a new generation.
Grind Killers was not one of the best albums of the year from a song writing standpoint and it could definitely stand to lose three or four songs to make it a tighter experience, but Unholy Grave’s live in the studio romp had a sense of spontaneity and just plain old fashioned fun that’s missing all too often. Fun? You guys remember that? Amid all the bitchnig and screaming and howling about powers that should be seiged and our extreme response to extreme conditions, it’s nice to occasionally see a band bust out a Ramones cover and just have a good fucking time.
Given the art on pseudonymous Dutch power violence/grind twosome Jesus Crost’s second album, soccer hooliganism is the easy, go-to metaphor for their boisterous brand of blast beaten noise. But I prefer to reference a far more refined, dignified and ultimately understandable sports moment: the 1994 Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver. That’s pretty much what 010 sounds like: rioting punters caught on tape as they blast, huff, puff and chuff their way through blasty-violency tunes that know just when to throw in a tempo change up or an unexpected vocal flourish like the occasional pig squeals. It makes you want to smash a window front and shit talk some cops after your hometown team blows the championship round.
I almost feel bad for including the six song EP, half of which is Napalm Death covers, but if Napalm is any kind of precursor to Rotten Sound’s impending full length, the Finns have found their footing again. Napalm was a gnarly, snarling, underproduced bit of racket that reminded me of the kind of noise Rotten Sound used to bring back during their Murderworks prime. Though it may be more gimmick than honest expression of Rotten Sound’s own ouvre, Napalm is still a fun listen that sees them reconnecting with what made grind great originally.
That Circle of Dead Children frontman Jon Hovarth is still alive to make albums after contracting a near-fatal infection is enough to make me smile. That Circle of Dead Children recovered from the false step that was Zero Comfort Margin and barged back with the crushing, multifaceted Psalm of the Grand Destroyer is almost more than we all deserve. But there it was, that perfectly pitched blend of blasting snarl, deathly crush and sludgy misanthropy that was just as bleak and hopeless as Hovarth’s lyrical outlook. Given a light production touch courtesy of Scott Hull (thank you for dumping Steve Austin, guys), studio trickery took a back seat to a pack of guys with a handful of crushing songs that were perfectly performed.
Cellgraft got all up in your guts in 2010 with their self released, biologically tinged 11 track album External Habitation. The Floridians channel Assuck attack and visual tropes by way of Jouhou acceleration and refinement for a 21st century brand of science-minded aggression. Intelligent, articulate, fiercely DIY, and most importantly, armed to the bicuspids with a passel of quality songs, Cellgraft are a young band with brilliant future ahead.
To call the final Gigantic Brain album “grindcore” would not only be woefully inaccurate but would also trivialize the one man band’s affecting space opera of twisted electronica and drum machine stuttering. Yes, there are still grind elements, but Gigantic Brain has evolved so far beyond ordinary grind since the Mars Attacks/Nintendo-core days of The Invasion Discography. Now the grind elements serve as a substrata to emotionally churning layers of affecting keyboard swaths and plaintive yowling. The paranoia is palpable and the moments of transcendence and even joy are fleeting, making They Did This to Me an emotionally suffocating workout and the perfect capstone to an adventurous outfit.
Canadian crushers Wake got their Carl Sagan worship on with a nail studded grindcore bat on the Surrounded by Human Filth EP. Think of it as the musical equivalent of Nietzsche’s philosophizing with a hammer. Taking all the best, ugliest components from grindcore, death metal and power violence, Wake set their sonic phasers to stun (they could probably lecture on why phasers wouldn’t work according to phsyics). Not overstaying their welcome at a tidy 11 minutes, it’s the perfect grind amuse-bouche (to radically change metaphors) that leaves me craving a full course of their sonic smorgasbord.
That client has done been killed good and dead by the Texans on third full length and Relapse debutSet for Extinction. Though it’s not much of an advancement over Cleptocracy, don’t underestimate a band like Kill the Client that does all the small things relentlessly well. Grind is not about singles or standout tracks and Set for Extinction is a ferocious blur of madman howling backed by the tightest – and probably most overlooked – rhythm section working in grind. Everything just clicks into psychotic place like an Ed Gein jigsaw puzzle carved from human flesh.
1. “The reason that people sing songs for other people is because they want to have the power to arouse empathy, to break free of the narrow shell of the self and share their pain and joy with others. This is not an easy thing to do, of course. And so tonight, as a kind of experiment, I want you to experience a simpler, more physical kind of empathy.”
Everyone in the place was hushed now, all eyes fixed on the stage. Amid the silence, the man stared off into space, as if to insert a pause or to reach a state of mental concentration. Then, without a word, he held his left hand over the lighted candle. Little by little, he brought the palm closer and closer to the flame. Someone in the audience made a sound like a sigh or moan. You could see the tip of the flame burning the man’s palm. You could almost hear the sizzle of the flesh. A woman released a hard little scream. Everyone else just watched in frozen horror. The man endured the pain, his face distorted in agony. What the hell was this? Why did he have to do such a stupid, senseless thing? I felt my mouth going dry. After five or six seconds of this, he slowly removed his hand from the flame and set the dish with the candle in it on the floor. Then he clapped his hands together, the right and left palms pressed against each other.
Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
1997
Grind is the ultimate expression of emotion played with every fiber of the player's being straining until it literally tears the people apart who make it. I think this is one of the reason true grind bands can never last. You are literally tearing yourself down and rebuilding yourself everytime you play those songs - practice or live. There's only so much of that you can endure as a creator, challenging yourself to raise the bar every day. Believe me it takes a toll...
Invincible Gate Mind of the Infernal Fire Hell… Or Did You Mean Hawaii Daisuki may be a rounding error short of actual grindcore BPMs, but the thrashtastic alter ego of the almighty GridLink is not some side project goof. The band brought every bit of the passion and urgency you would expect from the grind collective on their second EP. Packing four times the energy of Reign in Blood in half the time, Invincible Gate Mind is an exhausting, exhaustive expression of pure sonic abandon. I said it then and I’ll repeat it here: when Jon fucking Chang is the most improved aspect of an album, you know you’re performing in front of a world-beating collection of musical bad asses. Hayaino Daisuki pretty much shamed everyone else who set a blastbeat to tape or byte in 2010 with four body-rending songs of screaming catharsis.
Suffering Mind 
