G&P Review: Daighila/Sarjan Hassan

Daighila/Sarjan Hassan
Redefining D.I.Y.
Revulsion
Southeast Asia has been kicking so much ass the last few years that it was overdue for a clunker. This thrashtastic Malaysian tag team manages to blend the inoffensively pedestrian with the outright unlistenable into a single cassette that screams caveat emptor.
For the merely inoffensive, Daighila sound a tad like old Anthrax or maybe Corrosion of Conformity's Technocracy played at the wrong speed. Their side of the cassette rounds up eight songs recorded between 2007 and 2009 whose sound quality varies wildly, making it hard to enjoy the whole experience. The double picked "Between Lines" and the ironically menacing "Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining" are probably the two best of the bunch and smartly kick things off. So while the sound quality takes a noticeable dip from there, it's still manageable and the wonderful "Certainty Approaches" hits that blurred relativistic space where thrash bleeds into grindcore.
Things go from passable to worse when you flip the cassette. Sarjan Hassan, who swiped Nuclear Assault's logo, failed to learn from Daighila's example and start with the shittiest sounding song of their 12. To say that things improve from there is only an acknowledgement that there was nowhere else to go but up because you have to strain to tell that "Live Free" is not an instrumental. Unfortunately, when the singer does become audible in the later songs, his featureless delivery, repeating the same phrasings line after line, detracts rather than adds to the songs.
It's a shame because Sarjan Hassan's fractured English (see "Greatest Fucking Sham Ripoff," "Do It Yourself Not Means Do it Crappy But Do it Properly" or "Hardcore Scene Not For an Asshole") has a certain smile inducing charm. Sarjan Hassan, I'd say skip the English lessons, spend some more time in the rehearsal space and invest in a decent studio next time out.

[Full disclosure: Revulsion sent me a review copy.]

Blast(beat) from the Past: SMG/Carcass Grinder

SMG/Carcass Grinder
Split Tape
Revulsion
2010
Mieszko Talarczyk was not only Nasum's soul and principle songwriter, but he was also a studio wizard whose work drastically advanced the sonic form of grindcore, introducing bigger, punchier sounds. Talarczyk's studio work bolstered not only his band's sound, but gave full life to albums by Rotten Sound, Disfear and Expose Your Hate.
That's all well and good, but sometimes the shitty, tinny, punky sounding albums scratch that grinding itch better than the most pristine, big budget record. That's where albums like this 2010 split between Japan's Carcass Grinder and SMG from Malaysia come in. Each side of this cassette sounds like the bands skipped fineries like tuning and checking sound levels. Instead they set up in a big room in a cut rate studio, plugged in and just banged their shit the fuck out.
Carcass Grinder's side is so raw you can hear the amp humming in the background when the instruments cut out. It's a great trick because the guitar, itself, is completely buried under an avalanche of blown out, pounding snare and face first screaming. But it really works against the head-nodding thrash attack of "NFCB" or the Napalm Death-snarking "CG of Power," which may be the best song of the lot, is a staggering cheap shot straight to the jaw that leaves loose teeth and pooling blood in its too brief wake.
SMG are still raw as skinned knees after a skateboard wipeout, but their attack is more balanced. Each instrument stakes out its own space in the tornadic swirl of noise. When I start up a new blog in my next life, I'm totally stealing "Speed Shit Sayonara" for the name. It's just a bonus that it's actually a pretty kickass little song that entropically collapses in on itself in a wash of yowling guitar feedback, slamming shut the door on the album.
There are big name metal bands who probably spent more on catering than these two spend recording the whole album, but I doubt they achieved half the spontaneity and energy to be had here.

[Full disclosure: Revulsion sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Compulsion to Kill

Compulsion to Kill
Lack of Tolerance
Revulsion
I found myself fighting Lack of Tolerance's production, straining against the murk because what I could pick out from Compulsion to Kill gave me heart palpitations. The production, courtesy of the band, ably captures that raw, live in the rehearsal room feeling, but it leaves very little texture and definition. It's unfortunate that the snare drum, in particular, sounds like a wood block because this is the calling card of an upcoming percussive badass. The speed and precision at play are goddamned astounding.
Compulsion to Kill's self-styled "peninsular grind violence" features ex-members of the late Malaysian grinders Torture Incident. Like that prior band, Compulsion to Kill specialize in straightforward grind beatings without recourse to subtly or nuance. I think; again, it's hard to pick out pieces of riffs when they all blur together into unremitting buzzsawing noise on their latest cassette. But that's also part of Lack of Tolerance's charm. The songs bleed into each other with barely a pause between to draw a breath. It's just a constant barrage of energetic noise poking and prodding at you. When they rise above the noise, Compulsion to Kill do pull some pretty nifty tricks, like the pitch-perfect Scum-style dun Dun DUN, dun Dun DUN riff that punctuates "Corporate Slayer."
This racket may not compel you to kill, but it will get your ass up off the couch and moving.

[Full disclosure: Revulsion sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Coche Bomba

Coche Bomba
Vectores de la Muerte
Revulsion
Whatever evolutionary detour hardcore has taken throughout its existence, polyglot French punks Coche Bomba were happy to come along for the ride. Their discography record, collecting all of the band's output from 1995 through 1997, is an explosion of screaming, fastcore-to-grindcore beats, mic-passing choruses, the occasional whoa-oh-oh ("TRBNG") and even some halfassed reggae ("Le Sangre de Christo") just for good measure. These audio automotive explosives even reach back deep into punk's history when it was still recognizably anchored in swinging rock 'n' roll ("La Patria Es") and Ramones-style buzzsaw ("Tout de Suite").
That's a lot of different elements coming through Coche Bomba's corpus over 45 songs recorded over a three year period, and, ultimately, those elements are notable for how they accent the band's fairly standard Heresy-core. So don't expect them to explode your notions of hardcore/proto-grind despite their admonition to take these 45 songs and "annoy people//play loud." I'd be lying if I didn't say a million other bands were playing this exact same style, and Coche Bomba sit comfortably in the middle of the pack.
However, Revulsion did a nice job putting this package together, which features artwork like They Live glasses gone horribly wrong or a photo essay on Neo Tokyo after Akira came back to town. It's a nice cartoonish post-apocalyptic vibe when so many of their contemporaries are still ripping off Discharge's nuclear test and war zone style. So overall it's a cool wrapping around a fairly average band, but Coche Bomba can scratch that hardcore itch if you come across a copy somewhere.

[Full disclosure: Revulsion sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: PSUDOKU

PSUDOKU
Space Grind
Revulsion
It’s an old truism that when a movie franchise or television series ran out of juice it would jettison its cast and crew out INTO SPACE! That’s why we’ve been subjected to cinematic indignities such as Jason X. Thankfully, Papirmollen wrecked the wretched grade curve on that one when he launched the almighty Parlamentarisk Sodomi into the astral expanses with his latest one-man-grind-awesomeness project PSUDOKU (apparently, it’s an acronym).
Oh, the Norwegian auteur opens Space Grind with a series of riffs that wouldn’t have been out of place on a Parlamentarisk Sodomi release, but out of nowhere everything gets all The Locust. IN SPACE! Rubber bass runs get funkdafied, slithery riffs and electronic experimentalism collide like doomed galaxies in chaotic bursts of Big Bangin’ energy. In fact, while Mollen rubs his tonsils raw, the keys and crazy strings, in their own way, substitute for and augment the vocals in unique and perplexing ways, adding an amazing extra layer to what could have been another expected (though awesome) grind album. And that’s the key; the soul of Parlamentarisk Sodomi is still lurking under PSUDOKU’s outrageous riot providing that necessary anchor to something recognizable. Now there are new additional layers that will need to be processed through repeated, attentive listens. Additionally, Space Grind’s A side (I got the cassette version) is relentlessly, exhaustively high energy. While side B tends to get looser and more experimental, this is an overwhelming listening experience that could easily stand toe to toe with Orphan on an adrenaline level. Yeah. I just said that. This is an album that leaves me physically exhausted and emotionally spent at the end.
Parlamentarisk Sodomi was something undeniably awesome, but PSUDOKU is something unique, which may be even more exciting. No matter what pseudonym Papirmollen adopts, dude has proven once again that he is a perennial album of the year contender. Norwegian grind, my god, it’s full of stars.

[Full disclosure: Mollen asked Revulsion to provide me with a review copy.]