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| #FOR FANS OF: Grind, Nasum, early Napalm Death |
The second release from this Australian act, this is a rather typical output and really serves to be appealing for the hardcore fans of the genre. As is typical of the kind of music usually produced here, it’s a blinding wall of noise that rips through intense, chaotic patterns that usually recall the early hardcore punk scene in terms of sheer chaotic energy and random guitar wailing is being undertaken. Still, the focus on the Death Metal roots here in terms of the rhythm section and how dexterous the rhythms become allows this one to stay more in tune with the truer side of Grindcore than most other types of bands like this, as there’s a rather more profound attempt at incorporating blastbeats and guttural Death Metal growls into the music that are a part of the general Grindcore scene. In this sense, the band certainly sets out on notable paths accomplishing this feat pretty well, but there are several problems with the album. The DIY approach to the production leaves the whole thing sounding way too thin and under-produced in comparison to more traditional Grind acts, making it plainly obvious in regards to the drumming that this is an amateur effort by clattering away on what sounds like a homemade drum-kit instead of professional-sounding equipment. There’s no power or punch in the blastbeats, which should be the most extreme part of the whole album but come nowhere close to the devastation wrought by upper-echelon bands. The repeated samples that have nothing to do with the track as a whole is another big issue, making them seem distracting rather than integral to the song as a whole, and the croaking-frog like vocals that repeatedly show up here are nothing more than a general embarrassment that it made it to tape and thought it sounded good. That just leaves the fact that the whole album is barely a half-hour with none of the tracks reaching a minute and half and having so many on here to begin with that it really could’ve gone through longer stretches of extending the songs since hardly any of them stand-out at all and don’t leave much of an impression at this excessively short length. This one really could’ve been given the time and space to stretch itself out instead of just constantly blaring through the indecipherable patterns through the awful production and then a minute later you’re stuck on another track and you can’t tell where you’ve been as the whole thing is so scattershot and disorganized that it leaves the feeling of bewilderment rather than out-and-out pummeling. As for Grindcore fans in general, this is good stuff and plays into the scene quite well with all these points about the genre proving the there’s still quality old-school Grindcore still being made, and should therefore add onto the total score below. That’s mainly for the more mainstream metal fans to follow. (Don Anelli)
(Lesstalk Records - 2014)
Score: 40