World Downfall: Czech Republic

Uprise
Uprise
Shindy Productions
2006
Uprise, a pack of grinders from the Czech Republic featuring members of Alienation Mental and Ahumado Granujo, are a deliberate throwback to a time when Terrorizer leaned heavily on L.A.’s uproarious punk scene and Repulsion were just a hopped up thrash band with a killer bootleg movie collection.
“Marches of Waste’s” emulsion of ear-piercing riffery and bulletproof drumming will have your checking World Downfall for bonus tracks while frontman Putti’s guttural roar on “Edition of Vomits” even passes for a good Oscar Garcia impression when it’s not warring with a Jeff Walker snarl.
While Terrorizer clearly graces the band’s collective album collection, Uprise have dug deep in the grab bag of grindcore influences. “Severance of the Soul” is all thrash picking and cymbal grabs while “Super Way How to Pass a Day” is all stuttered trip beats and rusted guitar murk. And when Uprise is not in full blast mode, songs “Burglar of Season” falls back on late ’80s-style hardcore pounding and songcraft.
After all of that, what better way to slap exclamation point on a album that pays tribute to a punk-metal hybrid classic than with a raging mosh-worthy cover of S.O.D.’s scene-unity clarion call, “United Forces?”

World Downfall: Brazil

Every band that’s ever blasted a beat owes a royalty check to Napalm Death, and though they only recorded one true grind album, much has been made of all the Carcass clones swinging from that band’s dick. But pinpointing the influence of Terrorizer – the third head of Earache’s early grindcore Cerberus – is a little more subtle. It’s that peculiar admixture of punk exuberance and metallic precision that separates California’s finest from the hopped up hardcore and slaughterhouse floor scrapings of their transatlantic cousins. But the funny thing is just about every country seems to boast its own Terrorizer clone, so periodically I’ll pull one out of my magical closet o’grind to spotlight the myriad ways World Downfall continues to hold sway.

Expose Your Hate
Hatecult
Black Hole Productions
2005
Expose Your Hate never want to leave you asking, What was that band’s name again? Just in case you have a short attention span they shout their moniker repeatedly throughout the first song, helpfully titled “Expose Your Hate.” That’s just good marketing.
Repping Brazil in the Terrorizer analog sweepstakes, Exposure Your Hate capture the same blend of metal heft and precision and punk as fuck attitude that made World Downfall such an instant classic. Sure the cast of villains seems not to have changed in the past 20 years with the usual suspects such as religion (“Bible Bullshit”), the nightly news (“The Media Virus”) and war (“Faces of War”) getting one more verbal flaying.
Hatecult’s music is just as delightful an atavistic mix of knuckle-dragging Terrorizer worship with gargle/screech Carcass vocal handoffs. Grammatically confounding album standout “Despise for Animal Life” tattoos your long term memory with a pinch harmonic stylus while “Appreciate the Dying Planet” is a bass-led, sunbaked blister of arid grind and sirocco-swept doom trudge death that boasts better double bass than a pre-Morbid Angel Pete Sandoval could muster. To mix up the tempos, closer “Inherent Human Cruelty” lashes charnel vocals to grave moss pacing. Led by a Full Metal Jacket sample, “Lies” pierces your skull with the efficiency of a 5.56 mm round.
There’s a whole lot of hate going on during Exposure Your Hate’s Hatecult. Won’t you join the cult?

The Dirty (Baker's) Dozen 7: Terrorizer

Terrorizer
World Downfall
Earache
1989
Almost overshadowed by the various members’ subsequent bands, Terrorizer’s World Downfall, recorded posthumously, is a roaring, blasting furnace of punk-infused grind.
No experimentation like labelmates Brutal Truth, and tighter than the first two incarnations of guitarist Jesse Pintado’s future partners in grind, Napalm Death. Instead World Downfall is a 36-minute whiplash ride from the moment you hit play. Pete Sandoval’s relentless drumming would later earn him a spot on the throne for deathsters Morbid Angel.
Coming from the racially charged cauldron of L.A. – which would explode just three years later – Terrorizer raged against all that was wrong with the world with short jabs of vicious metal and punk.
World Downfall’s DNA is found in a legion of younger bands playing straight ahead, ferocious grindcore. Lesser bands have spent careers endlessly aping Terrorizer’s sound, but very few can rival the original.
Culturally, the three-fourths Hispanic collective was also an important step in shattering the white boys’ club that had been metal to that point, introducing a powerful new voice and experience into the mix.The dead did indeed rise in 2006, this time with Resistant Culture’s Tony Rezhawk at the mic, but the band had lost a step or two in the intervening 17 years and Darker Days Ahead just lacked that verve that propelled World Downfall. Unfortunately, Pintado died only weeks after the album was released, but his work with Napalm Death as well as World Downfall has secured his place in grindcore Valhalla