Going Dutch: Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom

Scrotum Jus

2007

“Doom.”

And the word hangs dully in the air of the cell. It is a moment before Fury realises that he is being told a name. And even as he does … it is already too late.

Neil Gaiman

Marvel 1602

2003

I’m more of a Vertigo guy anyway, but I’ve always been a little vague on where Marvel’s fictional despotic principality of Latveria is actually supposed to be, but I really doubt the Dutch national character was the inspiration for one of comics’ most iconic villains. Those people are just too chill to get all wrapped up in the whole global domination trip.

Unlike the devious genius of the comic pages, this Dr. Doom, who previously shared a split with Collision, crushes with a death metal ponderousness and scattershot grindcore acceleration. This is Clandestine-era Entombed tunes pared down and given a hardcore work ethic for grind attention spans. Blue collar firebrand “Working Class Crusade” might be the only marriage of Bruce Springsteen’s earthy idealism and Repulsion’s danse macabre in the metal lexicon. The breakdown-laden “My Life as a Teenage Materialist” is a sly piss take on religion wrapped in inchoate, near-suicidal adolescent rebellion.” Keys to My Heart” rides the kind of hardcore knuckleduster like Trap Them or Black Ships routinely crank out.

Simple tunes cross-pollinated by hardcore and grind, Dr. Doom are not the flashiest of bands, but they’re solid and enjoyable and worth the occasional listen.

G&P Review: Attack of the Mad Axeman

Attack of the Mad Axeman
Scumdogs of the Forest
Scrotum Jus
I spent the bulk of my teen years in Germany without ever picking up the language because pretty much every European on the planet has a better grasp of English than I do. So I don’t know what the German word for “sophomore slump” would be, but I imagine it’s one of those impressively polysyllabic compound monstrosities at which the Teutonic tongue excels. I bet Attack of the Mad Axeman don’t know it either because the cosplay crusaders took everything that made 2007’s Grind the Enimal awesome, and belying their animal rights motif, chained it in the back yard, tazed it into submission and subjected it to ruthless experiments involving forced injections of Kill the Client extract for second album Scumdogs of the Forest.
In case the subliminal messages in “Grind, Grind, Grind!” and “”I Like Bands” didn’t make it through, Attack of the Mad Axeman love to grind and grind like bastards they do. There’s a scything riff that mows through “16 Fauste Fur Ein Halleluja,” miraculously cleaving the concrete-density guitar and bass. And “Elefantophobia II” plays like an audio book on fast forward recounting of Hannibal’s pachyderm trek over the Alps. Axeman also seem intent on goring metal’s sacred cows, from the GWAR-spoofing album title through songs like “Morbider Angler,” which is actually about fishing, and “Squirrel vs. Glen Benton,” a subtle brew of blunt force brutality and Sciuridae dexterity that takes aim at the infamous squirrel shooting incident.
Everything about Scumdogs of the Forest from the perfectly balanced but still sandpapery production through the single minded performances and fat-free songwriting sees grind’s favorite furries elevating an already impressive game. This should be the album that takes the focus off the band’s goofy getups and gets it back on the music where it deservedly belongs.

G&P Review: Wormrot

Wormrot
Abuse
Scrotum Jus
Ignore the moldering moniker and Fulci-approved artwork, the only graves Wormrot seem intent on defiling are those housing dead political ideologies. Despite an amusing disparity between songs cataloguing the band’s hatreds and others calling for the world to come together in peace, Abuse is a Singapore slingshot of barbaric grind in the vein of Insect Warfare. And one that just might be better than World Extermination? (Did I say that out loud or did I just think that?) At least the scab-raw production is, anyway.
“Freedom to Act” jumps like a frog with a firecracker shoved up its cloaca, and “Fuck…I’m Drunk” boasts an involved, scuttering riff that belies the deliberate stupidity of the title. “Murder” fractures an Iron Maiden gallop over a 324 blast. And how many other bands would have the balls to Ginsu indie rock ingénue The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Rich” – boasting some of Abuse’s tightest blasts, to boot – on their debut fucking album.
The only word for Abuse is precision. It's a fractal infinity of craftsmanship that demands repeated, attentive listens. When’s the last time you said that about a grind album? Jon Chang bitch screams war with toilet busting turd grunts, trading off just before either manages to push a song into boredom and banality. There’s a precision involved that almost gets lost in just how familiar Abuse is, even at the first listen. You can anticipate the vocal changeups and Rasyid’s whiplash guitar stops and rubber ripping peel out assaults. And I could write a dissertation on Fitri’s astonishingly tight, stuttered drums on “One Round Away.”
With the end of the year rapidly upon us, I had been sifting through the year’s offerings. It’s been a year of good grind but I had not found an obvious front runner like in 2008. Until now?

G&P review: F.A.M.

F.A.M.
Bullet(in)
Scrotum Jus
Despite what I hear about Tina Fey’s dead on Sara Palin, I haven’t wasted 90 minutes of my life being bored by Saturday Night Live since Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey were both on staff (which, in itself, dates me in ways almost as frightening as the amount of hair I find in my comb every morning). All that pointless prologue is merely my way of excusing myself should anybody think I’m trying to make some trendy-four-years-ago observation when I say, was that just a fucking cowbell I heard in the middle of “Driller,” an otherwise respectable grindcore tune from Poland’s F.A.M.?
It takes a lot to distinguish yourself in a musical scene as whose frontiers are as deliberately limited as grindcore. In a vain bid to somehow distinguish their unique strain of punk-meets-metal-in-a-basement noise from everyone else with the same idea, some bands simply rename the style, as though we wouldn’t notice. Agathocles pass off their Napalmisms as mincecore; Japan’s leading grind export, 324, dub their music darkness grind; and Kataklysm remain the sole purveyors of northern hyperblast. Furor Arma Ministrat, as they call themselves, bill their particular brand of blastbeat racket as “Panzer Grind” (an odd notion given Poland's 20th Century history with panzers). But it’s just grind and it will take more than a new nomenclature to separate F.A.M.’s love of pig squeal vocals and beer hall drum beats from the crowded hordes. Compounding the problem, there are occasional flashes of crafty songwriting that leave me salivating like Pavlov’s proverbial pup. The skipping riff that propels the latter half of “Tapping Nerves” is more catching than ebola at a Jack in the Box drive through window. When they click, as with their savage cover of The Exploited’s “Beat the Bastards,” F.A.M. begin to live up to their panzer grind tag.
If F.A.M. could trim the lard and double down their effort to write decent songs (lose the cowbell), I could be all over this. For now, it’ll land in my occasional listen pile.