SAKATAT – ‘BIR DEVRIN SONU’

Sakatat’s 2012 7″ ‘Bir Devrin Sonu’ is a masterpiece of the Grindcore form, hyperactively dynamic and creatively concise to the point of abandon. Superblasting devotional megafast fleet-of-one-footed-kick drums & super snappy snare sound cuts like a knife, humming with irradiated energy, bassless Guitars screeching treble attacking in cruster chord patterns tumbling briefly into thrashing aplomb or downcast breakdown death kickings, perfect-pitch vocal in pants-shitting low/deranged squawk high trade offs, technical and precise through sheer force of bloodthirsty will, devastatingly utterly fucking fast, dynamic and fucking heavy, the equal measure to any any heavyweight Grindcore band of repute and reverent to Repulsion, Discordance Axis, Terrorizer and Excruciating Terror in a single insane exhalation of tripartite energy and audial disgust – old school grinding madness, honed and concise as it gets. It’s a fun nostalgia trip to read the hype snippets from the killer grind blogs of (not that) old on the Bandcamp liner, too. The first place I was given the opportunity to write reviews was for Alex at the formidable Grind To Death. His style was impeccable, a colossal influence on my writing – “All hell breaks loose as Sakatat pour every last joule of energy, every lesson learnt and every bit of protest they have into a dense 8 minute rupture last felt in Krakatau 1883”. Perfectly surmised. Anticapital annihilation.

Bandcamp

VARIOUS ARTISTS – ‘PERIHELION INFINITE’

Disinclined to toe the self-limiting line of genre fundamentalism, Brooklyn-based imprint Ohm Resistance may be a broad church, but the primacy of bass over all other sonic prerogatives is, and always has been, its raison d’être. The fourth, and apparently final, instalment in OR’s annual sampler series, ‘Perihelion Infinite’ is a comprehensive showcase of the label’s lurid, low end-led aesthetic, featuring sixteen exclusive tracks (un)lovingly crafted to rupture every gas main within a 9-mile radius. Despite the occasional nod to stylistic orthodoxy (‘Subterranean’ by Metalheadz stalwart Jaise is a case study in drop-forged industrial jungle), the majority of these beasts are defiantly chimerical; scaly, multi-appendaged hybrids with their gaze fixed firmly on the future. Atsushi Izumi’s ruthlessly overdriven ‘Casaurius’, for example, fuses drum & bass and techno at the spine whilst a cannonade of scimitar-sharp breaks ensures the happy hardcore sugar rush of DrillBasser’s ‘Even’ leaves a distinctly sour aftertaste. Elsewhere there are forays into critical mass post-dubstep (DEFCE’s suffocating ‘Pain Centers’) deconstructed breakcore (the alarmingly vertiginous ‘Eat Sleep Repeat’ by Belfast belligerents Slave To Society) and even Emeralds-esque kosmische (Bob Rogue’s luminescent ‘Asteroids’), but the predator at the apex of this sub-chomping food chain is Sagana Squale’s nightmarish ‘Blood Goddess’, a paranoia-wracked bolus of malice aforethought trip-hop Portishead would have killed to concoct. Embrace the bass.

Ohm Resistance

AVALANCHE KAITO SELF TITLED

An inspired collaboration between Burkinabè urban griot Kaito Winse and Belgian noise-punk ne’er-do-wells Arnaud Paquotte and Benjamin Chaval, Avalanche Kaito follow up their astonishing ‘Dabalomuni’ EP from earlier this year with an incendiary debut album that refashions their crotchety head-wrecking clatter into a cornucopia of exotic new shapes. Never a band to abide meekly by the ossifying precepts of ‘world music’ (fuck that self-complacent A&R doublespeak and the donkey it rode in on), Avalanche Kaito bring the noise by the truckload, ram-raiding the repository of outernationalist wonder once plundered by freebooting firebrands like Faust and 23 Skidoo. Lashing together an exoskeleton of plangent bass and corkscrewing polyrhythms with sinews of caustic electronic dissonance, Paquotte and Chaval are the Igors to Winse’s Frankenstein who jolts this fire-breathing postmodern Prometheus to life with his high voltage vocal callisthenics. Able to switch seamlessly from incantatory croon to the sort of strident glossolalic hectoring that was the late, great Grandmaster Masese’s stock-in-trade, Winse is an unstoppable force here, spinning lyrical gold from the proverbs of his homeland amidst a heat-haze of twanging jaw-harp and effervescent peul flute. Picking favourites is next to impossible but ‘Goomde’, a paranoid psych-dub lurch that sounds like World Domination Enterprises on the wrong end of a three day speed comedown, is heavy with a capital H. Not black midi, THIS.

Bandcamp

PAIN JERK – ‘1993’

Archival release from Pain Jerk, featuring both tracks that would make up their abortive first 7″ release, and the track ‘Rocketry’ from the ‘ペイン・ジャーク’ cassette release of the same year, an early 90’s work of out-and-out Harsh Noise. These tracks are some of the few that feature Pain Jerk as a two piece operation. A fascinating fulminated electronic howl, catastrophic conveyorbelt channel-switch mayhems of early-ish so-called Japanoise, featuring abstruse cut up technique and volume immersion/endurance testing, battering extreme temperature maligned signal electronics to sear and confuse, dotted liberally with mangled, half audible bludgeoned sampling. Extremely hazardous and ego-killing. Archaic, difficult and perfect. Even as early as ’93 Pain Jerk was already setting new standards in the Noise of coldly implacable cut up electronics, removing new perceptions of objectivity and furthering the genre into furtive plateaus of electronics enmity and extremity. Pain Jerk’s Bandcamp page is a Noise fan’s nirvana, be sure to check through the various other releases hosted within.

Bandcamp

NUCLEAR DEATH TERROR – ‘EQUINOX’

Savage shockwave Stenchcore from Crust warrior cult Nuclear Death Terror. ‘Equinox’ stands amid their fearsome discography as the furthest within an epic Stenchcore sound with lots of Metal influence, melted skylines and carbonised thrashing bodies, dynamic cloud burning mid-paced deathfog of Metalpunk! Snaking, chugging Metal riffage with moments of clean, downcast melody slung across hard driving deathgroove Crustcore, muscular Bass and concussion Drums march fearlessly into the mushroom cloud of tomorrow’s end, distorted deathly cruster vocal, scalding lead Guitars sounding a demented funereal dirge, hefty heavyweight production – merciless and miserable, Geiger counters screaming as the clock strikes midnight, mankind in the motherfucking microwave!  Despite being only three tracks long ‘Equinox’ leaves a marring impression, like a putrid blood and mercury taste in your mouth, crammed with murderous riffing and hopeless stench atmospheres to ride out the slow-motion apocalypse. Get disintegrated.

Bandcamp

LAPSE DISCOGRAPHY

I found this trawling through To Live A Lie’s main label page on bandcamp and realising that they separately host a bunch of their older releases here, all available to download for free. Lapse’s complete discography, lean and mean as FUCK brutal Hardcore/Grindcore amalgam, pummeling limb crushing arrangements switch tempos from smash and grab grinding blast to slow beatdown toothless carnage, ugly and nasty like a spiked fucking bat – bright burning Guitar, mid Bass strangle/bulge, stacked snappy drumming and baited breath teeth gritted/low burly vocal of outsider pain and rage. I first discovered Lapse from their excellently savage split with Eddie Brock (tracks 1-3 here, some of their best), and I’m chuffed to have gotten around to listening to the rest of their killer output. A Hardcore/Grind alloy to alienate yourself from your ‘peers’.

To Live A Lie

DIRECT CONTROL – ‘FAREWELL’

Released in 2011 on Feral Ward, ‘Farewell’ is Direct Control’s nasty, gnarly Skel masterpiece(piss) stamped in 12″ wax – furious skate thrashing Hardcore for freaks only, an acid cruster rager deranged and off the rails. Super raw guitar scratch riffs tearing across mad manic thrasher Bass twang with perfect punchy blown out sound, careening drums just on the right side of in-time and super sick aggro kid vocal dripping with demented energy! Channels the mutant waste of Cryptic Slaughter and Excel’s early melted Crossover Thrash sound right into the eye of their DC Hardcore, and draws from the spirits of old Heavy Metal and Hard Rock too, with little Surf  passages and jams here and there, warped from some rad dimension and psybeamed into Richmond VA. 15 minutes of far out fast-as-fukk Hardcore/Thrashcore perfection, deep fried in shitty blasting in-the-red production where the drums sound serrated and the vocal booms like a motherfucker. I don’t often throw a link to youtube on here but I had to revisit this record and it’s not on bandcamp. But who cares, it looks like it’s still available on wax – get one and hesh the fuck out! RIP Brandon Farrell.

Grave Mistake Records

Sorry State

youtube

THE GATES OF SLUMBER – ‘SUFFER NO GUILT’

The Gates Of Slumber’s 2006 epic second album ‘Suffer No Guilt’ is a near perfect record of horseback Frazettan Doom enthralled to groovy Crom. Possessed of the warring spirit, this is Doom drawn from the ore of it’s rich mineral Heavy Metal influence and ground to a deathly stern edge, slow and ponderous, muscular and intensely powerful, driven to destroy in exalted power-trio-sound battle – dry, melodic psychedelia of the warrior poet, acoustic/medieval atmospheric passages and winding warcamp percussion interludes serve as chapter headings in a tale of godless bloodshed written in booming, blood crazed, heaving Heavy Metal of the Manilla Road/Cirith Ungol variety, via Saint Vitus downer blues-oriented psychedelian heavy Rock and the ancient foreboding Doom of Candlemass. Songs driven with obstreperous melodies that spiral into mournful dissonance, galloping mid pacers and triumphant marching rhythms written in stern granite drumming and stout, taught Bass standards, mercurial, rapturous dude vocal, power trio excellence and might in the solo sections where the dominating, battling Bass lines are laid bare beneath pealing, dazzling guitar solos – the sound of ancient death in the exalted Metal master form with many turns into stoned oblivion groove – Thunderous! The production is nicely balanced and plenty rough and clattering, yet stately and solid as fuck. There’s good reason this was slavishly reviewed at the time of its release. It’s worth reappraising yourself with the axe. RIP Jason McCash.

Bandcamp

BUTCHER ABC – ‘NORTH OF HELL’

Butcher ABC’s 2017 full length ‘North of Hell’ is a grand guignol of bloodthirsting groovy fucking DETH – they’ve been kicking it since the early 00’s and this is their only full length so far. It’s a festering triumph! Goregrinding Death Metal mastery full of Crust and Thrash, super enormous hell Guitar and Bass barbarities with hades groove riffing and surprisingly melodious metallicrust denouements and soaring leads, domineering heavy as fuck drumming with lots of single foot blasts and slobbering pitched low vocal grotesqueries with crusty old school outcry vocal, too. Loud and booming production job. Head-banging crusty Gore/Death with lots of simple as sin Death and Roll influence, this really is a drunken orgiastic delight. Bullldozing, grinding, disgusting, gurgling, and totally deadly, striking a masterly match between metallic melody and punk provocation. If you enjoy Carcass, Sacrilege, Autopsy or CBT (who doesn’t?) wait no longer!

Selfmadegod

Power It Up

Bandcamp