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: 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.

Good Reads: Oedipus Wrecks

The book: The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme

Don’t be alarmed. The loud buzzing and the flashing lights you’re experiencing are simply the Very Important Metaphor Early Warning System kicking in. You see, Thomas has a problem with his Dead Father. Thomas, along with his lover Julie and a host of underpaid, alcohol-deprived malcontents, is dragging the city-block sized corpse of his Dead Father across the country in hopes revivifying him. But the Dead Father is not, strictly speaking, dead. The Dead Father can still speak, hand down pronouncements and generally tries to order around everyone’s life. When he doesn’t get his way, the Dead Father has been known to run off into the woods and put various tiny woodland creatures to the sword to vent his rage. The metaphor seems almost insultingly obvious, and in the hands of a lesser craftsman, it would be. But Donald Barthelme wrote the way Monet painted. He steamrolls you with waves of sentence fragments that individually reveal little but taken together weave a pointillist tapestry of vivid, obsessive detail in the mode of David Foster Wallace. Barthelme was a master of ribald absurdity and telling anachronism. He turned Snow White into a farce of sexual mores and inverted King Arthur into a parable of the Cold War. Sure, he was working out some fairly Freudian issues with The Dead Father, but like poor beleaguered Thomas, it’s all about what the journey reveals.

A representative passage:

I don’t like this, said the Dead Father.
What? asked Julie. What, dear old man, don’t you like?
You are killing me.
We? Not we. Not in any sense we. Processes are killing you, not we. Inexorable processes.
Inexorable inapplicable in my case, said the Dead Father. Hopefully.
“Hopefully” cannot be used in that way, grammatically, said Thomas.
You are safe, dear old man, you are safe, temporarily, in the mansuetude of our care, Julie said.
The what?
The mansuetude that is to say mild gentleness of our care.
I am surrounded by creepy murderous pedants! the Dead Father shouted. Unbearable!
Thomas handed the Dead Father the pornographic comic book.
Now now, he said, no outbursts. Read this. It will keep you occupied.
I don’t want to be occupied, said the Dead Father. Children are kept occupied. I want to participate!
Not possible, said Thomas. Thank God for the pornographic comic book. Sit there and read it. Sit there with your back against that rock. Thank the Lord for what is given to you. Others have less. Here is a knapsack to place between your back and the rock. Here is a flashlight to read the comic book by. Edmund will bring your Ovaltine at ten. Count your blessings.

The album: The Jester Race by In Flames

Jumping off the grindcore track briefly, The Jester Race is an album that’s chained to the past and struggles with the way our histories come to define our futures. Each song seems to contain some nugget of the same thought from the backwards looking “Artifacts of the Black Rain” through the inability of mankind to learn from its prior mistakes in “Graveland” or the way “Dead Eternity” promises that “time will be your master in this laborious part of human subsistence.” And perhaps too on the nose for our purposes, there’s “Dead God in Me.”

A representative song: “Dead God in Me”



To slit the grinning wounds
from childhood's seven moons
the palette stained with the ejaculated passions
(of forbidden, hedonistic colors...)

Strike from omnipotence; all-seer, all-deemer
and haunt my severed country with your
dripping, secret games

You pick the unripe lilies
deflored and peeled the bleeding petals
made known to me
the grainy stains, the crimson lotus
of the Black-Ash Inheritance,
the semen feed of gods and masters
The worms still in me,
still a part of me,
racing out from leaking rooms,
swoop from broken lungs to block the transmission
to put an end to the nomad years

Father
you are the
dead god in me

G&P Review: Dead Again

Dead Again
Occultus Lake
Bandcamp
Death-grind deadites Dead Again crawl forth from the crypt (of either Rays or the Keeper, take your pick) to raise a cyber-zombie horde that pays tribute to every failed space mission and righteously pissed off demon lord that boasts a body count worth noting. Occultus Lake draws from an admirable cross section of science fiction and horror such as Dune (“The Sleeper Has Awakened”), Alien (“Chestburster”), Starship Troopers (“Bug Hunt”) and the ubiquitous Hellraiser IV (“The Lament Configuration”) to pepper their B-movie broadsides.
Featuring members of Origami Swan and Anion, Dead Again rolls together death, grind and hardcore in approximately the same ratio as the most recent Napalm Death efforts but adds just a soupcon of NOLA sludge swagger to give their songs an extra layer of swing as they lurch from blasting biker grind to vein-opening trudge. In fact, the sludge may be Dead Again’s strongest suit. Opener “The Sleeper Has Awakened” swings a giant sandworm slither through a crusty hardcore groove that’s so captivating that it’s almost (but not quite) a letdown when Dead Again bring the grind. But that’s part of what makes Occultus Lake so compelling: the sheer diversity. With the exception of the extremely rare missed step (the plodding “Empty Burial” nearly derails the whole album early on), Dead Again has cobbled together a shifty little beast of a record that keeps coming up with new ways jump out of the shadows just when you think you've figured out their serial killer toolkit.

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

Blast(beat) From the Past: Kalibas

Kalibas
Eyes Forever Red
Howling Bull
2000
One of the themes I tried to develop in Lifetime of Gray Skies is that Anodyne, based on the sheer awesomeness of the bands that were birthed from it, should be regarded as a retroactive supergroup. I think you could slap the same made up monicker on one of Anodyne's contemporaries as well, Kalibas. Grok a lineup that includes Jody Roberts (Kill the Client) and Erik Burke (Lethargy, Nuclear Assault, Sulaco, Brutal Truth) who made the jump to drums. The star power would only get amped up on subsequent albums after they jumped to Willowtip, establishing the lablel's technically proficient death metal aesthetic in the process, and added Aaron Nichols (Defeatist) to the kill crew. How's that for one of the finest bands of musical miscreants you're ever likely to come across?
And Kalibas, for my money, were never tighter or grindier than on their four song debut 7-inch Eyes Forever Red.  With only four songs in the offing, Kalibas nevertheless flashed a wide array of attacks that teased what would be  coming on subsequent albums. They dropped probably my favorite Kalibas song right at the start with "Masticate." It buzzes and swarms, swirling and stinging from every direction at once in unrelenting waves of pointed guitars and strangled screams. The false respite of its stick in the mud middle passage just sets you up for another savage beating. Kalibas just layer on the torture from there with the thistle-shaped pinched harmonics of "Semantic Insanity" and the intergalactic goofballery of "All of Japa's" tech death opening, which serves as Silver Surfer to PSUDOKU's world eating Galactus insanity.
Kalibas were one of those bands loaded for grizzly from the outset and they only upgraded their armory with every subsequent release. A lot of these songs would get another working over on their debut full length Product of Hard Living, but I think I prefer these earlier versions. Nobody ever accused Kalibas of succumbing to the allure of sheeny shiny production, but there's a wonderful low budget grit to this four-pack of songs that introduced a very cool band that flew under too many radars.

G&P Review: The Black Coffins

It would perhaps be more accurate to state that we Necropolitans know more of the ways of the living than the inhabitants of their cities do. We know more of their funeral customs, at any rate.  And those we have forgotten are stored in the library of Letharge. Mortality can be a signal for festivity and drunkenness; for mourning and sobriety; for feasting; for fasting; for remembrance or forgetting.

Neil Gaiman
Sandman Vol. 8 Worlds' End

The Black Coffins
Dead Sky Sepulchre
Black Hole
Though it's spent 30 years growling about the cessation of life, death metal has rather narrowly confined itself to the mechanistic processes of death both in and out of the grave. Very few bands have mustered the wherewithal to muster more insight into what the end of life actually means. Brazilian death metal quartet The Black Coffins get a bit more philosophical with a handful of songs that consider not what death means for the corpse, but how those left behind process its ramifications and the rituals that ease the passing for survivors. They also bang out a bunch of tunes about hate and destruction and bombs and all that other stereotypical death metal folderol, but they're at their best when they think a little deeper.
So it's kind of a bummer that Dead Sky Sepulchure sounds so flat and lifeless, especially considering it was mixed and mastered by William Blackmon of Gadget who has always done a stellar job of pulling the best sound and performances out of his own band. The Black Coffins' death metal won't bowl over with originality anyone who has heard the first two The Haunted records, but that still doesn't excuse a tepid performance. Even throwing in stolen Motorhead riffs in "Below the Roots" doesn't spark that primal urge get up and rage.
I can cheer on a totally generic album that's delivered with verve and bashed out with panache, but there's just something embalmed about Dead Sky Sepulchre. It's a shame to hear an album that strives for something original lyrically be dragged down by a forgettable recording.

[Full disclosure: Black Hole sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Beastplague

Beastplague
Manifestation
Bandcamp
Promiscuous Florida trio Beastplague adventurously grab every musical tool at hand and toss them into Manifestation's seven songs as they see fit. Bits of hardcore, grind and death metal jumble out of their amps. So that puts Beastplague in steady company with Exitium and Mother Brain even if they haven't quite put all of the pieces together as well as either of those other bands.
Swinging like the fulcrum of Manifestation is "Labyrinth of Torture," which is probably the most complete song of the bunch while the hardcore band with Bolt Thrower double kick shtick of "Crown of Scorn" might be a close second. There's a really nice weight and sense of physicality to Beastplague's sound that would probably crush live in a sweaty basement filled with amped up hooligans, especially when that low-bridging bass swings through "Born of Sin" like Scott Stevens catching a forward with his head down coming through the neutral zone.
If there's one area I'd like to which I'd like to see Beastplagues maybe devote some more effort, it would be at the mic. The vocalist roars through triumphant exhortations sort of like a grindcore Jamie Jasta (only without all the, ya know, suck), but the shouted-just-short-of-intelligibility approach is a bit one dimensional. I'd love to hear the vocalist mix it up more and bring some more dynamisms to Beastplague's assault. Do that, and it would maximize this band's punch.

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

G&P Review: Blastanus

Blastanus
Collapse
Self Released
Blastanus sounds like it should be the title of some super-skeezy Eastern Bloc porn flick investigators would find n the VCR of Buffalo Bill's body part-strewn sex dungeon. Instead, this Finnish quintet (featuring a saxophonist) churn through death/grind that leans heavily on the balance of aggression and obsessive technicality established by the early Willowtip roster on this 2011 album. Comparisons to Decapitated would not  be far off either because Blastanus shove the guitar histrionics to the forefront for better or for worse.
Over 11 songs in just under 45 minutes, Blastanus's vocals veer between Afgrund rasping and Karl Sanders straining to drop a deuce after a Taco Bell binge, which puts the band squarely in the realm of metal's norms. The drums are afflicted by that modern typewriter rattle, but they serviceably move the songs forward. So make no mistake, this album belongs to guitarist Antii Oksanen. Where everyone else is turning in a by the books performance, Oksanen's florid freakout at least endeavors to give the band some personality outside of the zillions of other bands who have mastered odd scales. One note will never serve when he can squeeze in 50 and he takes full advantage of the range the full neck of his guitar offers. The solo of "Liberation/Salvation," one of the few really stand out moments on Collapse, is ganked straight from the Slayer playbook but given a skronkological rectal exam.
Blastanus spend about 90 percent of Collapse toiling to turn in a generic but inoffensive death/grind record, but then out of nowhere they tack some smooth jazz on to the end of the album. If you have a full time saxophonist in the band, it seems odd to keep him lurking around for one track just in case you were wondering what it would sound like if Kenny G ever went on tour with Sadis Euphoria. Nobody has ever wondered that.

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

G&P Review: Vimana

Vimana
The Collapse EP
Bandcamp
In The Sandman story arc "Calliope," Neil Gaiman told the story of Richard Madoc, a washed up writer who buys and repeatedly rapes the titular Greek muse to revive his flagging imagination. When Calliope's ex eventually shows up to liberate his former lover, he curses Madoc with an overflowing of ideas. The inspiration comes so rapidly that the writer can't keep up, drowning under the weight of what he sought the most. Something of the same could be said about Vimana, which features former Cephalic Carnage mainstay Zac Joe. The band shove a cornucopia of musical ideas into the scant four songs and 15 minutes that comprise The Collapse, but it’s that very fecundity that stunted my enjoyment of Vimana’s music.
Like Cephalic Carnage before them, Vimana are intent on cramming every possible idea into every song, but they often struggle to develop a coherent through-line that unifies their music.They deploy a full ’80s arcade of blippity blooping guitar noises to explode the song “Destroy Industry.” It’s a five minute loop of frogger croaks and pong-splosions of 8 bit booping that occasionally q-berts its way back to something resembling death-grind. Alternately, “Resent Complacency” is nearly two minutes of the title being howled at you in a deep-chested Nile growl and little else.
Vimana's music far too often feels like three or four much shorter songs shmooshed together with greater (all seven moody minutes of "Fire is Born," paradoxically the longest and most focused of their material) and lesser (the scattershot "Destroy Industry") success. Vimana loom and zoom around like the cosmic chariots for which they are named, but I'd like to see a little more control and a better sense of direction.

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

G&P Review: Wretch

Wretch
The Senseless Violence EP
Bandcamp
Australian quartet Wretch came to wreck everything and ruin your life with a scathing brew of misanthropic hatred, bonesaw guitar and death metal gurgles. The secret to The Senseless Violence EP is that Wretch is lying to you. This brand of sadism if thoroughly premeditated, purposely distilling the keenest killing edges from death metal and grindcore. The tempos blast but that razor across the femur guitar tone and brewing diarrhea vocals are dredged from the sleaziest septic pools of gore flecked death metal.
True to its name, "Shit Shovel" sounds like about what you'd expect from somebody who toils in human feces all day: a downtrodden death metal anthem about sickness, decay and filth. Other songs like "Purveyors of Senseless Violence" and "Gorging" slap the sickest death vox on top of Bolt Thrower chug like a cave man riding a cruise missile.
If that sounds like it's a heady brew, it is. Wretch writhe through an amazing atmosphere and their songs have character. What they don't have yet is a consistent hook. Maruta and Priapus have also plumbed the fetid depths of death metal tone and grindcore ambition, but those two outfits know how to consistently marry those elements into something that's got heft and a memorable hook. If Wretch work on that part, they'll be a seriously scary bunch of dudes.

Blast(beat) From the Past: Exit Strategy

Exit Strategy
United State of Amnesia
Self Released
2008
Now I don't need some smug-ass Canuckle-head talking shit about the United States' backasswards invasion of Iraq just because their government had the good sense to politely decline their invitation to the Coalition of the Willing. If they lack the sack, then they can just go back to their socialized death panel health care system, their polite neighbors and a homicide rate only a third of America's. USA! USA! USA!
But I'll let my patriotic fervor pass when America's 51st state is handing out death-grind as good as Alberta's Exit Strategy. The quartet cluster bomb what's left of the United States' Bush-era dignity with nine death-grind cruise missiles in 37 minutes. Exit Strategy stitch together the best parts of Circle of Dead Children's glower and the doodlee-deedlee riffsplosions of Decapitated. Every so often they dredge up a smidgen of Burnt by the Sun playfulness or the occasional nod to Dying Fetus just to keep things interesting. Though their songs inherited their girth from the death metal side of the family (they're consistently in the three to four minute range, for all you ADHD types), they never seem to drag or lose pace. Instead, Exit Strategy constantly introduce a twisted bit of riffery or a kamikaze scream to keep your attention focused. They're not without the occasional misstep ("The Hand of Victory Holds the Pen of History" veers dangerously close to br00tal slamz territory before the blastbeats slash back in), but on the balance Exit Strategy keep the ship upright even if they're sticking pretty close to their forefathers' playbooks.
Now the snarky asshole American in me might want to know why a quartet of Canadians is so obsessed with the United States' international malfeasance (I'd suggest taking a look at your country's odious hate speech laws one day), but I also can't deny that many of their critiques are also spot on. "Just?" appropriates the pledge of allegiance, holding it up like a perverse funhouse mirror that throws into sharp relief the gulf between America's lofty rhetoric on freedom and human rights and its often compromised implementation.  While large chunks of United State of Amnesia seem to be frozen in the amber of a bygone era of hubristic mission accomplished banners and unknown unknowns, when you remember the current Hoper and Changer in Chief has arrogated the power to kill American citizens with virtually no judicial oversight, then suddenly Exit Strategy's criticisms don't seem so dated. Or so funny.

G&P Review: Vortex of Clutter

Vortex of Clutter
The Ghosts of New Generation
Self Released
Vortex of Clutter is a pretty apt name because there doesn't seem to be a death metal innovation in the past 15 years that these Turks haven't appropriated and tried to shoe-horn in to The Ghosts of New Generation. It's not enough to make their four song EP unlistenable, but the tunes careen from death to hints of tech to chunky grooves without ever settling into something you feel you can really wrap your ears around. And that's all before they start working in the Iron Maiden vocals.
Case in point, typical effort "Patriarchy" meanders across the death metal map without taking up residence in any one locale long enough to make more than a cursory survey of the terrain. At its core, it's a hefty death metal tune that nods in the direction of melody without going full Gothenburg. The fact that it's the most deathly of their metal tunes overall makes it the most palatable.
Vortex of Clutter's one stab at a signature move is the Bruce Dickenson vocal wailing. They start sneaking it in on the song "Abdul," craftily mixing the highs deep in the song to double the death metal grunting. However, by the time "Cocktail" screeches on to the scene, the classic air raid siren takes center stage.
It's not the Vortex of Clutter are untalented -- quite the opposite, in fact. On a technical level, they achieve every mode they try. What they still need to master is combining all of those disparate impulses into coherent songs that develop their own identity. If they can harness the vortex and clear out the clutter, this would be a much stronger effort.

[Full disclosure: The band sent me a download for review.]

G&P Review: Zodiac

Zodiac
Menschenstaub
7 Degrees
Menschenstaub is that rare album that seemingly does its job competently and with aplomb, but still leaves me feeling disappointed because it rapidly evaporates into nothingness. Crusty death punks Zodiac, musically, are custom built to tick off everything that sets my neurons a-tingle, but on Menschenstaub (People Dust) seems to slip from memory the second it's over. Is there some bizarre category of good albums that just don't quite succeed despite being perfectly acceptable?
The Germans hybridize fellow countrymen Keitzer and Audio Kollaps, pairing the former's Bolt Thrower chug with the latter's crusty grind. That forms the spine of Zodiac's attack, but then they dress it up with a patina of various metal flourishes, some successful (the early At the Gates swirl of "Genullt"), some less so (the pointless electronic twaddle at the end of "Abwesenheitsnotiz").
That protean nature means Zodiac never give themselves over fully to any particular musical impulse. But even with the myriad styles at play on Menschenstaub, Zodiac keep them all balanced and in check. For all that though, the band actually leaves very little impression. Menschenstaub is absolutely enjoyable when it's contributing to my inevitable tinnitus--the guitars are wonderfully thick, the vocals are deep and pissed and the rhythm section is tight--it seems to evaporate once the ten songs are over and nothing stands out in particular. I can't even pinpoint what makes it ephemeral (maybe it's only me), but I'm looking for something more memorable from them.

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

G&P Review: Swamp Gas

Swamp Gas
Operation Frantic
Brute! Productions
Swamp Gas emanates from that murky, humid bog that muddles the taxonomical boundaries between grindcore and death metal. Straddling the border leaves the band free to draw from either side at will as songs demand. The result is a brutish noise that would not have been out of place in the Pittsburgh death/grind scene of 15 years ago. I could see them chumming around with Fate of Icarus in particular.
Swamp Gas’ riffs, which rely on an excellent guitar tone to add heft and menace, stop just short of tech metal wankery but have a bit more going for them than just three chords and the truth. They don’t indulge in samples or any other bullshit. Instead, they string together that strong guitar, a well balanced production and a concise attack and wield it like a mallet at your delicate nethers. The vocals are a bit of a weak spot, though. The screech ‘n’ growl approach is pretty typical and maybe doesn’t have enough personality to really put Operation Frantic over the top, but it’s not detrimental to the overall impact in any way.
I particularly liked the way the drums interacted with the guitars on a song like “Severed Lines of Communication.” They lock into a loping gait at the start before blasting everything off only to crawl across the finish line on bloody knees.  The blastbeats are deployed more tactically than your average grind band (though “Third Degree” is your traditional three second song) instead of being pounded willy nilly. That means songs are allowed to breathe and tempos and intensity shift, giving the songs more life and personality over the two- to three-minute runtimes.
The fun of Operation Frantic is that its various influences and stylistic nods lets you play contra-historical what if games to pass the time. What if Cattle Decapitation got down with grindcore concision? What if Rob Marton had more death metal in his soul? What if none of that really matters and instead you should just enjoy Swamp Gas for what they are?

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

G&P Review: Mutant Supremacy

Mutant Supremacy
Rotting Season
Blastbeat Mailmurder
Death Metal grave robbers Mutant Supremacy have looted a whole cemetery stocked with festering corpses named Bolt Thrower, Entombed and Cannibal Corpse. They're redolent of their obvious influences' stench just in case you couldn't seem them printed on their longsleeves. Mutant Supremacy's morbid tales and everflowing streams of aggression are not going to blow away anybody who's been paying attention to death metal at any point in the last two decades, but the performances are spot on and Rotting Season nails the scrappy, maggoty ambiance of a bygone era.
The four song EP, which was actually recorded back in 2010, states its intention off the bat with "Kill Without Question." The song divebombs onto the scene with full whammy bar abuse before chugging along in familiar Entombed mode. Mutant Supremacy ride that wave of retro classic death that puts more emphasis on hook and sepulchral atmosphere than the ability to play a gazillion notes a minute. "Memento Mori," which, naturally, closes out the proceedings, pulls that morbid creepy crawly opening before blasting up the remainders of the song. You can tell the tempo shift is coming, but it's still a fun moment when it happens.
While (judging solely by their promo photos) most of Mutant Supremacy where probably pooping their Pampers back when Death, Morbid Angel and Dismember were pooping out classic records, the quartet innately understood what made that era of metal special and do their best to recapture that vibe. While your nostalgia could probably be more adequately addressed by playing those classic records, Rotting Season is an adequate stopgap in a pinch.

[Full disclosure: Blastbeat Mailmurder sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: DeathAmpmhetamine

DeathAmphetamine
The Lost Album
Obscenity Cult
If there were an underground punk/metal version of VH1's I Love the 80s, DeathAmphetamine would be the not-so-ironic cast member dishing on their love of the Reagan/Thatcher years' musical bounty. DeathAmphetamine dwell in that twilit netherworld between blackened proto-death metal and grind with heaping helpings of throwback adornments. The Lost Album is an emulsified whirlpool of hardcore swagger, grind speed, death metal chunk, rasping black metal vocals and the occasional foot on the amp Iron Maiden gallop. And then "More Sauce for the Goose" lards on King Diamond shrieks just for good measure.
If that all sounds convoluted, it's because it occasionally is. While DeathAmphetamine's undercarriage is plotted firmly along the death/grind axis, their songs' superstructure is piled Babelian high with confections of florid guitar solos and extra-genre excursions. There are times when the planets align and the pieces neatly fall into sharp profile, as on "Losing it All," which sounds a tad like a slightly less assured Dephosphorus. The supple bass undercurrents of final song "The Last Man" are another clear album highlight. But there are other times, again King Diamond vocals, where the souffle collapses under the weight of its own metal cheese. The mileage you get out of The Lost Album will depend largely on your affection for heavily ornamented music. Though I found some of DeathAmphetamine's musical digressions distracting, I'm sure others will gravitate to their unique blend of various influences and give them their proper credit for trying something different.

G&P Review: Napalm Death (Post #666!)

We walked along Beaufort Avenue to the centre of the estate. The herb gardens, the cheerful children's rooms filled with sensible toys, the sounds of teenagers at violin practice, were given an odd spin by the notion of imminent revolt. Most revolutionaries in the last century had aspired to exactly this level of affluence and leisure, and it occurred to me that I was seeing the emergence of a higher kind of boredom.

J.G. Ballard
Millennium People
2003

The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world...

J.G. Ballard
Kingdom Come
2006

Napalm Death
Utilitarian
Century Media
When it came time for Napalm Death to record their fourteenth album, Utilitarian, apparently not a single fuck was given the day they hit the studio. After 20 years together, the current lineup has enough confidence in their grind-inflected death metal to fully indulge every musical digression that came to mind. The result, surprisingly, is their strongest album since Smear Campaign, and possibly of their post-Earache oeuvre.
From the Swans churn of opener "Circumspect," the Dimension Hatröss vocals of "The Wolf I Feed" and the saxual assault of Everyday Pox," courtesy of avant-jazz nutbar John Zorn, Napalm Death spread their musical wings further than ever. But between all of that, they've set to tape the most concise and focused death-grind tracks of their last decade. The rollicking "Collision Course," a fulminating ball of spite, is destined to be a live set standard and the 65 seconds of "Nom de Guerre" is the most pointed we've heard these Birmingham bangers have been since Lee Dorrian decided to trip back into the '70s.
Utilitarian finds Napalm Death sounding punchier than they've been in years. There's a jaunty spring to the quartet's step you wouldn't expect from a bunch of middle aged guys who still cling to death metal so tenaciously. Particularly reinvigorated is Danny Herrera whose thumping is somewhat shortchanged by a production job that stifles the snare drum, but the toms shudder with brain-rattling force. Over top him, Mitch Harris has never sounded so catchy as he bangs out one great crust-inflected riff after another. Mark "Barney" Greenway's phlegmy roar is augmented and counterpointed by new screams courtesy of his bandmates. However, Napalm Death's recent fondness for chanting gets way overused on Utilitarian in one of the few false steps.
Even if Utilitarian violates the 30 minutes or less rule, Napalm Death do their best to earn every extra second of their 48 minute runtime with an renewed intensity that makes me think they might have another 20 years in them.

G&P Review: Head Cleaner

Head Cleaner
Resistance, Determination and the Sheer Will to Overcome
Clean Head Productions
What you get out of Resistance, Determination and the Sheer Will to Overcome, Greek death-laden grinders Head Cleaner's third release will largely live or die on how much you enjoy Napalm Death post-Spitfire Records. The quartet, featuring personnel from Homo Iratus and Disembowel, have that same death-crust vibe the English institution have pioneered since they split from Earache. Vocalist Jim "Mitch" Evgenidis has a convincing enough Barney roar that he could probably slide into Napalm Death's lineup unnoticed in a pinch.
From the EP's Soviet-chic fonts and propaganda-style art, Head Cleaner are rousing the same rabble Liberteer is trying to incite to revolutionary fervor against their monied masters. Where Matt Widener enlisted a drum and fife corps to hearken back to America's hardscrabble founding, Head Cleaner hit hard with grind intensity and tactical deployment of pig pen death metal a la Cattle Decapitation on songs like "The Chain," which leans more grind than death. And you know I can't help but smile at a song entitled "Crime and Punishment."
So after six tidy songs of serviceable deathy-grindy-nasty, it was really disappointing to see Head Cleaner go and shit the bed by committing the sin of the final song with the tedious "Departures-Arrivals." At nine minutes, the track is a meandering, pointless stylistic jump. It's a mess of fx-heavy vocals, thudding industrial beats and aimless guitar droning. The endless repetition adds nothing of substance. After the previous buildup, "Departures-Arrivals" forces this revolution to end with a whimper and not with a bang.

[Full disclosure: Head Cleaner sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Beyond Terror Beyond Grace

Beyond Terror Beyond Grace
Nadir
Willowtip
Beyond Terror Beyond Grace have moved far beyond simple grindcore with Nadir, a scalding wall of volcanic gases and suffocating clouds of gray ash.
The Australians once slotted neatly next to Maruta and Crowpath, but with Nadir they have abandoned any pretense at concision and driving blastbeats to experiment with girth, texture and tempo. Now they sound like Ulcerate songs reinterpreted by Circle of Dead Children with a rime of blackened frost. Eschewing the wonted grindcore brevity, the album is chock-a-bloc with nine minute death metal overtures that look beyond how many beats can be crammed into a minute. The ghost haunted lead off "Dusk" allots plenty of space for its atmospheric middle passage, which bifurcates the blastbeat opening and its screaming conclusion. The song imparts a sense of claustrophobia that coats the album like a greasy film.
That song lays out a template that a bulk of the album will follow. Nine minute bangers "Requiem for the Grey" and "Throatless Sirens" follow, riding the same churning swells and crests. Not that Nadir is a one trick gray-painted pony. The abbreviated title track is a concise instrumental that revels in melody bolstered by barely heard samples.
It's rather boggling to realize this the same band that gave us the pig-headed brawl of Extinction/Salvation just five short years ago. This doesn't sound like the same band at all (and it's not because the band slotted in a new singer and guitarist in 2010). Nadir may not be Beyond Terror Beyond Grace's zenith, but it shows a band waxing into their perihelion.

[Full disclosure: Willowtip provided me with a download.]

Kaiju Big Mettal

Like a lot of guys my age whose childhoods revolved around dreary nowhere Midwestern towns, my formative Saturday afternoons often consisted of marathon sessions of Japanese dudes in rubber monster suits whaling on each other. Kaiju eiga were a staple of my childhood, and I've been binging on them lately after a good decade away. Watching the original,uncut Gojira (sans a drunken, condescending Raymond Burr) and Rodan (which is essentially a doom lovers' story), I was struck by just how grim, how metal those movies really were in context. The subtext was probably lost on me at 10, but, like me, plenty of heavy musicians have drawn inspiration from what, on the surface, were pretty ridiculous seeming popcorn flicks.
If you'll allow me to step away from grind and hardcore for a moment, I want to pay tribute to four monstrous sounding bands who also have a fondness for the King of All Monsters. It's like Kaiju Big Mettal.

Starting with the very first generation raised on rubber monsters, proto-metallers goofs Blue Oyster Cult went straight for the best of the beasts with "Godzilla."

Godzilla

When they weren't being all dour and gloomy and bummed out by Birmingham, industrial titans Godflesh sang the praises of peaceful lady creature "Mothra." Look for her to be stamped on tramps everywhere.

Mothra

Whales in space would make for a great kaiju flick on its own, but French metallions Gojira prove their titanic monster bonafides by going straight to the source, swiping their name from a more correct anglicazation of our beloved Godzilla.

Gojira

I'm just gonna straight to Wikipedia for this one because I can't make it sound more metal: "Gigan is a cybernetic monster sporting a buzzsaw weapon in its frontal abdominal region and large metallic hooks for hands. Gigan is considered Godzilla's most brutal and violent opponent, alongside Destroyah, both of which were easily able to severely injure Godzilla. Gigan was also the first monster in the Toho sci-fi series to cause Godzilla to visibly bleed."

Gigan

Now I'm totally in the mood to start a Halo- and Burmese-style bass and drums sludge band named Battra.