Following up a despairing, miserably heavy demo last year, Seattle’s Axefear unleashes a hellwave of horrific Metallic Crust on full length ‘Prophetic End’. Stenchcore from yesterday’s collapsed future, Axefear harbors the prophecy of doom within their furiously miserable metallic riffage, ringing the deathknell with roiling midpaced metalpunk chugger apocalypse, looming mournful melodies soar downcast into the abyss, evoking shredded battlestandards from the final conflict, cruising-speed thrash with killer riffs and despairing leads, muscular grinding war Bass and thumping, rocking, vicious drums with blast-forward moments amidst the metalicrust chug carnage, withering expulsions of grind within the more mid-paced bombardment landing like bunker-busters. ‘Prophetic End’ bears a particularly excellent production job, thunderously loud and sculpted, accenting every war-scarred lead and despairing bellow against clean guitar interludes with crowsong choir amidst the presumed dead. If you’ve been following and/or digging on Swordwielder, Cancer Spreading or Moribund Scum, you’re certain to dig this.
Step right up, earthlings, as we once again delve into the extraterrestrial escapades of Ahulabrum. Last week, we dissected the second demo of Ahulabrum, and guess what? They cranked up the atmosphere like they were playing at Area 51 at a moonless night. But hold onto your tinfoil hats because, on this demo, they decided to go further and even drop the drums – this is pure perfection. If you’re not equipped with a lightsaber to cut through the thick atmosphere of sonic wizardry, you might get lost in the otherworldly sonic abyss.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any spookier, there are interspersed ambient tracks featuring spare riffs, bass rumbling, and UFO-themed samples of people talking about their encounters. Because nothing says “out of this world” like a dash of extraterrestrial ambiance.
These tracks presented here aren’t just cooked up in a studio; they’re a concoction of field recordings, electrical effects, feedback experimentation, and the mystical resonance of ancient stereo equipment. It’s like a sonic séance conducted to honor one of the strangest encounters of mid-twentieth century UFO lore.
You heard right, The Phantom of Flatwoods isn’t your run-of-the-mill album; it’s a concept album, a musical odyssey wholly fixated on the Flatwoods incident. According to interviews, the main guy from Ahulabrum even embarked on a field trip to Flatwoods to record some ambience. No close encounters, mind you, but the resulting recordings went right into this demo.
Ahulabrum did it again, dishing out another dose of audio awesomeness with a release that’s so iconic, even your grandma’s hipster neighbor knows about it. Clocking in at only 14 minutes, you’ll be left panting for more.
Sick outsider Gore/Death split from the now-ceased Sickening Shit operation, peddlers of only the most intensely hostile Gore, recently resurfaced renamed as Slaughtered Records like a corpse full of putrid gas in an industrial refuse marsh. Effluence plays a brand of extra-choppy free death brutality nearly unmatched in it’s sclerotic insanity, nauseating and alienating permablasting death, a brick wall of Brutal Death Metal torment with atypical percussion elements, violent freeform ‘riff’ structures boiling and seizing, putrid superlow vocal, a free-flowing improvisational language undecipherable even to the most blast-hardened intellects. Blowtorch operates in a similar field but with half of the artistry and twice the narcotics, self harming outsider art Gorenoise Brutal Death drooling with incorrigible aggression and psychosis. Irrepressible vocal lunacies, demented half riffs grind and scour, rictus blast drums, low tech ‘production’ with the overwhelming whiff of occupational therapy set deep in the seams. Lo-fi as Avant Garde.
We’re back, folks, with the intergalactic rock stars of the UFO Black Metal underground: Ahulabrum. So, buckle up your tin foil hats as we continue to delve deep into their discography.
In this thrilling sequel to their first demo, Ahulabrum doesn’t just crank up the atmosphere – they throw a full-blown black-tie Illuminati gala. They’ve finally decided to grace us with the reverb we’ve all been yearning for since their debut effort. It’s like they realized, “Hey, our music is already out of this world; why not add a touch of intergalactic echo to make it even spacier?” Bravo, Ahulabrum, for giving the people what they didn’t know they needed – a sound so ethereal it makes angels (that are in reality aliens – see pt. 1) question their celestial playlist. This whole demo is like a sonic séance in your dingy basement. You’re down there, casually playing with your ham radio (because who needs regular hobbies when you can communicate with beings from beyond?), and after a day of tuning into Russian number stations, you stumble upon this on some forbidden frequency. It’s the kind of musical revelation that makes you question whether your basement has secretly become a portal to the cosmic unknown.
Walls of tremolo-picked guitars hit you like a sonic tidal wave, a barrage of sound that makes you question whether you’re at a metal concert or caught in the crossfire of an interstellar battle. The drumming? Oh, it’s a delicacy, barely audible, and exclusively composed of low-end non-blastbeat bass drums. Bass licks emerge like unexpected plot twists in an episode of the X-Files, making you wonder if Mulder and Scully are about to pop out from behind the amplifier. Muffled groans, the kind that would make ghosts jealous, serenade you in the background, creating an ambiance that’s part extraterrestrial séance, part black metal opera. And if that isn’t enough to make your auditory senses tingle, radio samples kick in, giving you a front-row seat to the strangest frequencies the universe has to offer. It’s like tuning into the cosmic equivalent of a pirate radio station. In case you were skeptical about the authenticity of these sonic escapades, fear not! According to interviews (because even extraterrestrial musicians do press), Ahulabrum took it a step further. They threw in some childhood tape recordings they made with deconstructed radios.
So, strap in, fellow truth-seekers, because “The Transitivity of Strangeness” isn’t just rich in atmosphere; it can be considered a conceptual journey into the heart of UFO incidents, with every track named after dates and locations of UFO encounters like “September 12th, 1952, Flatwoods, WV.” It’s like Ahulabrum giving you a crash course in extraterrestrial history, with the syllabus including encounters that are semi-famous, almost famous, and maybe famous if you squint a little. After the brief runtime of 12 minutes, you will question if the guy next door is actually an alien spider in disguise. Spoiler alert: he probably is.
Step aside, plebeians! It is time to explore the outer reaches of refined black metal tastes. The UFO Black Metal subgenre crash-landed on Earth somewhere around the 2000s and quickly became one of my latest obsessions with its otherworldly mix of cryptids, UFOs, and government shadiness. It’s like the Illuminati decided to form a band, but with questionable production values and fewer secret handshakes.
One band that can be considered a cornerstone of this micro-genre is Ahulabrum – a West Virginia black metal anomaly as mysterious as a cat burglar with a PhD in quantum physics. The lineup reads like a guest list for an intergalactic soiree – Indrid Cold on guitars and vocals, and Vadig keeping the beat like a cosmic metronome. Back in the glory days of 2005 to 2006, Ahulabrum cranked out demos and an EP, all while trying to establish a direct hotline to E.T. Fast forward to the present, where Ahulabrum is making a comeback just in time for the U.S. government to finally admit, “Yeah, we’ve been seeing some weird stuff in the sky.” Coincidence? I think not. It’s almost as if Ahulabrum predicted the government’s U-turn on UFO acknowledgments and decided to ride the extraterrestrial wave.
In this cheeky retrospective, we dive into Ahulabrum’s discography like paranormal investigators searching for the holy grail of black metal. Are their tunes the key to unlocking the secrets of Area 51, or just a soundtrack for alien dance parties? Could they be a psyop run by the CIA to corrupt the most powerful black metal elitists? Join us as we sift through their releases and see if we strike gold or get anal probed
Ahulabrum – Magonia [Demo 2005]
Their debut effort, “Magonia,” from 2005 is the sonic equivalent of a UFO abduction, but with more charm and less probing. This lo-fi black metal gem takes us on a quirky rollercoaster through the unexplored corners of musical oddities. Throughout the brief running time of 21 minutes, a mysterious atmosphere hangs in the air like a UFO over Roswell, and the music is charmingly unbalanced and strange. Their peculiar brand of black metal offered here is almost drumless, with weird, otherworldly percussive sounds that could make even a Martian tap their three-toed foot. The tremolo-picked guitars boast surprisingly low levels of distortion, creating an auditory experience that’s like finding a black metal album in Area 51 – unexpected and slightly disorienting. The whole thing is topped off with genre-typical screeching and incomprehensible samples, because who needs understandable vocals when you’re communicating with intergalactic beings? Similarly, the lyrics are so elusive they make Bigfoot look like a regular on a daytime talk show.
What sets “Magonia” apart is its clever avoidance of black metal clichés. The tracks, appropriately titled after UFO sightings, take inspiration from encounters with entities that have been haunting humanity since the fae were the hot gossip in town. And let’s not forget the name drop – “Magonia” takes its moniker from Jacques Vallee’s “Passport To Magonia,” a must-read for anyone who wants to upgrade their UFO knowledge beyond the typical “little green men” trope. Vallee lays down some truth bombs about UFOs masquerading as faeries and angels throughout history, and Ahulabrum transforms it into a musical séance.
Now, onto the production critique – if “Magonia” had a touch more reverb and delay, it could transport listeners into a dimension where black metal and UFOs waltz together under the celestial disco ball. The dry production, however, gives it an experimental, art-house vibe that screams, “We’re not your standard black metal – we’re the cool kids at the UFO convention.” In the grand scheme of alien encounters, “Magonia” is a cosmic ride worth taking. Ahulabrum’s fusion of black metal and UFO lore is done with such finesse that even skeptics might find themselves checking the sky for flying saucers.
A highly anticipated debut project from one of drill’s most exciting upcoming artists this past year. Chinx has sort of acted as the main antagonist to Suspect, with Chinx rebutting claims from Suspects songs, re-using Suspect’s song titles as disses and by pointing out that actually, Suspects gang has suffered quite a few losses as well. The most well knownincident being Suspects friend known as Blitz getting shot in the head with a shotgun by Chinx himself several years ago.
It also certainly didn’t help that Suspect went to jail right after Chinx burst onto the scene in January of 2022. Since Suspect hastily released his (incredible) album after his arrest, Chinx has pretty much had a free shot at telling his side of the story now that his main rivals were either in jail (Suspect, Broadday) or relatively inactive in music (T.Scam, Strika). This on top of his obvious talent allowed him to quickly make his way to being an established name in the drill scene in 2022.
Which, after several hard-hitting singles this past year, brings us to his debut project, which in my opinion has his best qualities on display. At the same time, it also suffers from several pitfalls that are often observed on the debut projects of an artist who is highly praised for the quality on display on their singles.
By now, Chinx’ sound is pretty familiar to me and it just doesn’t have the versatility to keep things interesting for 47 minutes with only three features, which are all bundled up on one song. The bangers certainly bang, but the few introspective/romantic-ish cuts near the middle of the tracklist are not enough to keep things intriguing to me. The few slower songs, while lyrically they do show a bare-minimum level of variety to Chinx’ personality, musically they don’t quite hit the spot. The track Imaginary Girl, where he raps about the kind of girl he’d like to be with, loses a lot of its meaning when a few tracks later we hear him say he doesn’t need a girl.
I know it’s wrong to compare this project to Suspects debut from last year, since they’re very much each their own artist. However, one can’t help but appreciate the effort Suspect put into making his album sound like a cohesive project rather than a collection of songs. A handful of features also would have gone a long way when it comes to keeping things interesting, especially with how limiting the genre of drill can be in terms of variety.
That aside, the tracks that are on here are for the most part on par with the quality people have come to expect of Chinx. He absolutely delivers in terms of his bars, flows, delivery and beat selection. Most of the songs on here would work excellently as singles, which I think Chinx realized too since almost half of the tracks on here were released as singles before the project dropped. Secrets Not Safe, Mucky, Dinga, Levels, Fish O Filet, What I Mean stand out the most for being the bangers that they are. I must give a special shoutout to One Style, which to me is the absolute highlight in the tracklist. I can’t help but compare it to one of those group projects where everyone pulled their weight, including producers JJBeatz and Ron. The crushing bass along with the haunting vocal and piano melodies make for a perfect backdrop for the quartet of rappers RO, Chinx, Fiz and R1 to deliver cold blooded bars over.
While this project has a lot of great qualities on display, most of these do not include the ability to make for a consistently enjoyable project. I’m still however very much a Chinx fan and greatly enjoyed what he did on the vast majority of these songs. I hope this won’t be his last project, especially considering how rare full length projects are in the UK Drill scene. Chinx is a rapper far above average and album-making capabilities aside, he’s certainly shown his talent on One Sided Story and it deserves the attention.
Noothgrush’s ‘Entropy’ 7″ EP, released in 2014 on the estimably consistent Fuck Yoga, the last of a run of new material and re-releases following their 2011 reactivation. Two intensely miserable tracks from one of the most under-rated bands in the Sludge scene, the masters of despairing minimalism and brief Doom leaden atmospheres. Hulking mid paced drums plod and tumble a sodden death march, mournful sludge riffs curl from the speakers drenched in spiteful intoned melodies atop a coil of torqued Bass, grooves decaying under Dino’s life-impaired vocal scraping the varnish from a false hologram of reality… the morose melodies are wounded and calloused, furious with damaged psyche and broken outlook, the production is concrete and caustic. The re-recorded ‘Life Shatters Into Pieces of Anguish’ features clean vocal, Dino wailing a sorrowful bellow to devastating affect across the dismal Sludge feast, the sound of inert rage and exhausted agony. Great 7″, get one here.
Essential double header that unites the prodigious talents of Irish underground legend Alan O’Boyle, aka Of One, and mercurial noiseniks Whirling Hall Of Knives for two epic excursions through electronic music’s storm-lashed hinterlands where the usual rules of engagement are broken with gleeful impunity. Of One fires the first broadside with ‘Recoil’, a menacing deep techno leviathan that pivots around the most incendiary acid line since Barnt’s remix of C.P.I.’s ‘Proceso’. Burrowing through a thick loam of distortion and bass viscera like the Graboid from Tremors, it periodically breaks cover to snap its scabrous jaws, spatters of caustic 303 eating away at the track’s juddering wheelbase until it comes perilously close to disintegrating. It’s a face-chewing monster of a tune that simply begs to be cranked through a skyscraper-high system, but no less formidable is WHOK’s astonishing ‘Greywash’, the sonic equivalent of a malign Lovecraftian cryptid with more tentacles than an octopus farm. For the first half of its 15-minute runtime a fractured rhythm is slowly strangled to death by thistly creepers of static like Skee Mask getting out-jammed by Rafael Anton Irisarri. Almost without warning the chokehold is broken by a skyrocketing blast of superheated Galaxian-esque electro before a plangent ambient coda irradiates the soundfield and silence finally descends. So good it should probably be illegal. Indulge.
Oath of Cruelty with their 2012 EP ‘Hellish Decimation’, two tracks of the other OTHER War Metal, summoning the murderous intensity and hammering barbarian Teuton Thrash of ‘Tapping The Vein’ era Sodom and dialing everything beyond taste and decency via berzerker blast beats and Death Metal aural dimensions. Replete with temple crushing grooving Thrash riffs and stacked up infernal rhythms, disastrously lethal leads frothing with bloodlust and razor throated vocal from Hades. Deathleaping from blitzing fast Death Thrash mayhem to full-on pit frenzy mid-paced near-crossover thrashing murder, massive tom strikes prelude the devastation as posers are wasted in no mans land amidst the chugging, fist banging riff affront. Guitars are provided by Dave Callier, he of the mighty Texan Grindcore institution P.L.F., and there are many similarities between the two band’s mean-as-fukk riffing styles to be found here. Boundless, blasting Death Thrash perfection borne of cruel, maniac zeal and fleet-footed fervor. Concrete production provides a deadly weight and martial power to these tracks. ‘Hellish Decimation’, indeed.
Any person who’s talked to me these past two years knows how much of an obsession UK Drill has been. To me it’s probably the most exciting subgenre of hip-hop to catch a wave in recent times. The major aspect about it that deserves acknowledgement is the fact it’s a genre that got picked up, given a different spin on and executed by kids and teenagers from the streets of London. Whereas hip-hop and its subgenres that gained popularity in the past have mostly come out of the USA, UK Drill is really something that belongs to the UK. And its influence only keeps growing.
There’s already been so much digital ink spilled to simply explain what the genre is, so I’ll keep that part short. Drill is a subgenre of hip-hop that originated in Chicago, popularized by artists like Chief Keef in the early 2010s. Hip-hop has never been a stranger to featuring violent themes in its lyrics, but these artists kicked it up another notch by rapping pretty much exclusively about gang violence. The dark and ruthless sound quickly spread all over the States and to the rest of the world. Since then, drill rappers and producers from (mainly) London have turned the sound into one of their own, both in sound and lyrical content. Drill rappers from the USA mostly rap about carrying firearms. While these are still used and all over the place in the UK, they are very much illegal, which means gang members often tend to go with the “safer” option of carrying knives instead.
In an effort to both keep the aforementioned growing influence going and to be somewhat original, this post is not going to be a list of songs or facts you *need* to know, since there’s so little room for creativity in a write-up like that. Rather, the rest of this post is going to focus on lesser-known songs from nonetheless well-established artists within the genre, with a bit of background to make sure I’m still hitting my word count (kidding).
Lil S x JMash x MJ x Earna – Normal Procedure
There are a lot of drill songs where it is quite obvious the artist(s) involved don’t really care to make a musical statement or even a quality song. This was especially common in the early days where there was not yet much of a chance to find fame or money in the genre. In those instances the “song” was purely about sending a message to rival gang members; to boast about violence, to make threats or to make fun of deceased rivals.
‘Normal Procedure’ loses none of that violent energy while perfectly channeling it into a fast-paced, aggressive and dynamic song with rude disses, catchy flows and memorable bars. Every artist was pretty much a newcomer to the drill scene when this song dropped in late 2020, which only makes this powerhouse of a posse cut all the more impressive.
Armz – Slide First
Woodgreen’s young Armz as of right now is still fairly new to the rapping thing, with this only being his third official song. You certainly wouldn’t say so; starting at his excellent beat selection, it only gets better once his fiery delivery and rapid flows are on full display. Even on the hook Armz doesn’t allow himself a break. Anytime it comes on it feels like the highly anticipated climax after all the speed he built up in the verses.
Suspect – Covid
“Sample drill” is a term that’s been floating around for a bit, referring to drill songs on which the instrumental samples an often high pitched or cartoony vocal chop from a popular song, a videogame soundtrack or another source. Its “merit” within the context of the drill genre has been highly debated, as its often goofy and playful sound takes away a lot of the brutality that drill first became known and loved for.
Suspect shows that when it’s done right, it’s done right. He delivers funny and clever bars over a high-pitched vocal sample beat while still sticking to the dark and violent style him and UK Drill as a whole became popular for.
Lil Krafty x BroadayYay – BOOM
South Side Kilburn has long been an underrated gang in the drill scene. The beat on this (crafted by Saint Cardona) alone is such an impressively multi-faceted piece of music, and the way Lil Krafty floats over it with confident boasts and detailed descriptions of violent attacks proves you don’t need an aggressive delivery to come off as convincing.
–
That’s all for now, though I’m very keen on sharing more songs, information and background in the future. I tweet quite a bit about drill on my Twitter, so feel free to hit me up if your interest is at all sparked. – @CaughtInDaRain
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.
Apotheotic crusty Goregrind from one man project Metastasis, brainchild of Evan from Campaign For Musical Destruction and other gore/crust/metal endeavors. Amidst the bands and projects who deservedly received some attention in the late 2000’s and earlier 2010’s for their contributions to mice/gore/crust/noise like Archagathus, Hyperemesis, Violent Gorge or Haggus, Metastasis seems a little neglected, which sucks! ‘Putrefied Humanity’ is an overlooked album, and a perfect entry point to Metastasis’ foul discography of demos and splits. Evan’s incredibly dexterous, careening drums captured in lo-fi blasting excellence on 4-track, super raw crushing cancerous crusty gore Guitars slop on 1000 speed, full of nasty catchy grooves and gnarly details, and atrocious pitch-shifted mega-wretch vocal eruptions congeal into totally anti-human, pro-environment and punk as FUKK Goregrind. A thing of mephitic perfection. You’re only getting a couple preview tracks below – Still available from CFD right here, or grab the recent reissue from Strangulation Furrow here. Sleep no longer!
This was the first Gore Tech mix I heard back in 2010 or 2011, and I was immediately gripped. This mutant sound was everything I wanted from the burgeoning Dubstep scene, complete with 2 step crushing beat perversions and ultra low Bass violations, but with a contamination swirl of tooth chipping Breakbeats and chittering weaponised Jungle mist – A Drone strike of murderous thumping Raggacore, Noise step, breakcore wildman cyborg menacers, ultrafunk bang bang bangers with grainy hellacious textures and fat Bass dangers, lean as fuck rhythms with distorted death kicks and impressive dissonance – spine-ripping Predator bloodrave music! Extreme and metallic, dense with breakbeat design and entropic Dub coursing through it’s veins. Fucking killer.
2 Bands from Finland, 3 members total, 1 Urho. Just under 12 minutes of devotional punk as fukk Grindcore! Tolerance spews 9 tracks of overdriven, putrefying grinding Goreslop Bass puking Gore/Grind with awesome sounding cyber drum machine and vomitous stomping future-Neanderthal cyborg blasting, super low mutant vocal. Lots of disgusting grooves present here, too. Tunkio plays similarly Gory Grindcore with not much difference in sound from Tolerance, more of a band sound as opposed to Tolerance’s bedroom project vibes, and relatively closer to straight Grindcore. Crushing piledriving Gore vocal spew, lots of tempo variations in the fearsome brute drumming, beneath single guitar grooves and grinds. A perfectly insular rehearsal room blast of split 7 GRIND. Tunkio’s link here is just a teaser track, unfortunately.
The sneaky bastards. “Having released 10 albums since their debut in 2008, it’s hard to believe that ‘Crystal Bullets b/w King Tears’ is the first ever 12” single” from White Denim, so sayeth their Bandcamp page. But in a delightfully devilish move from the band, it’s actually their first ever secret vinyl-only album. And it’s friggin’ great! Maybe even the best thing they’ve done since “Performance”! It finally seems like the current lineup of the band is gelling as well in the studio as when I’ve seen them live, and there’s enough space in here to give each member room to shine. There’s a sly nod to Bernard Purdie in the shuffling rhythm of the track “Crystal Bullets”, which just sits so deliciously inside the lush and luxuriant sound they’ve been adopting lately. It’s subtle, sleek and sexy, but above all, it’s MEMORABLE. The rushed feeling I got from their previous two records isn’t anywhere to be found here, every track has been gloriously crafted into a swirling, jubliant vessel. On the whole, the album is quite a mellow affair, even the parts where they bring the energy up have a light and breezy quality to them. Unfortunately, unless you grab the vinyl, you’ll only be able to stream the title track(s) through their Bandcamp page. I’m well aware that White Denim reviews make up about 40% of my contributions to this site, but if they continue to put out such great material on a regular basis as they have been doing for the last few years, don’t expect me to change any time soon.
Sorry goregrind goobers & mincecore meatballs, but scary lo-fi murder punk is the sexy hot flavor those dang underground bandcamper kids wanna suck down this season. Hell, take a gander at Iron Lung Records/Youth Attack/ect’s latest crop of stuff & you’ll see what I mean. And when digging through the proverbial fruit bucket of similar bands you’re bound to find a supremely juicy one. Here I present this plumper: Fashion Change blast out 10 minutes worth of grating intense Negative Approach style hardcore mixed with Flipper-infested groove with a dash of Crossed Out on this tape. Mix it with an almost hypnotic feedback & background hiss that makes it feel like you stumbled across some gross ancient hardcore demo tape made by bad people & you have a most memorable listening experience. The six songs seem longer than they are, each one having their own specific vibe. It’s not fast. But it also kind of IS in a weird way, with the almost tribal-like drums & building waves of distortion crashing like rusty cars being demolished. And after it’s over you’ll wish it kept going because it’s also extremely catchy. You won’t get out of this without listening to it at least twice. Heavy, gross, depressing, but also super fucking energetic & groovy as all hell. Track this tape down & pray to your weird Henry Winkler bedroom shrine that they put another release out some day because this rips. This feels like a 1 and done but you never know.
Tunkio is a Grindcore two piece from Finland, featuring Urho from one-man nuclear meltdown Tolerance. Crusty Gory Grindcore from an industrial wasteland – nightmarish, blasting and noxious, splattering and sputtering in carbonising contaminated convulsion! Putrefied mutant pitch shift vocal atop road warrior sounding Crustcore chords, with hyperblasting drums full of mincing and grooves, punk as fuck presentation and filthy non production, ultra lo-fi & DIY, aggressively and incensed at a world of, well, maniacs. As with Urho’s other affiliated projects, there’s only a couple teaser tracks to tease you here – check out MELTAAARGH!!!! / Bringer Of Gore Records and see if you can scoop a copy.
Check it out kids, it’s Japans amplifier imploding death grind super trio MORTIFY, returning to the scene of the crime. The offense: eviscerating frontal lobes with their patented brand of HM-2 powered Swedish death inspired grindcore madness. Continuing where “Stench of Swedish Buzzsaw” left off, Grotesque’ is slightly shorter, clocking in at under ten minutes with 12 original songs & an Agathocles cover. Sonically it’s even more blown out that the first full length with the guitar tone dialed in through multiple HM-2 pedals, screeching through every track, while the drums fill the back end just as loudly & twice as fast. I ha e to say, when the instruments are running through just two humans playing at this level, the stop/go precision is usually more prevalent & shines a bit brighter than most (see Assück/D.A./Ruins/HIRS), and MORTIFY definitely fit into that category. The songs feel more thought out while keeping that sporadic element you need in grind. And the voice work on this entry elevates this production to even higher peaks as Adam Jennings wretches & snarls his throat muscles into the reverberating abyss like the corpse of a rotting lunatic murderer being brought back to life mid-kill spree. MORTIFY have even worked a couple cinematic soundbites into this venture, adding to the overall gruesomeness of the affair & showing the right amount of growth without cheapening the impact (or worse yet, slowing down!). Everything crammed into this 9 minute horror show is a solid A+. Musically, lyrically & aesthetically (the art & logo work/layout on all their releases are top notch) they hit all the right notes & manage to not roll out a lazy chunk of laughable cheap shit you’ve heard before (something I’ve noticed many many many grindcore bands have been extremely fucking guilty of as of late, especially a lot of these “super groups”). Hearing this gets me even more pumped for their upcoming split 7″ on 625 Records w/ LA’s H.A.R.M. And hopefully after that we get blessed with another installment of the MORTIFY tale, because I don’t think these guys are ready to put down the buzzsaw & stop killing just yet. So if you like GOOD grindcore, get this thing. If you like death metal but hate that they fuck around & play way too long, get this thing. If you hate your neighbors & have a CD player with a loop function, get this thing.
Rounding out the gelatinous pulsating ball of moose diarrhea that is 2020 & hot off the heels of the swankiest feel-good grindcore LP of the summer (Internal Rots ‘Grieving Birth’), we have yet another top-to-bottom deep dish megaton goreblast of excellence from the mind of Brad Smith & his singular mammal-like kill squad TAKE THAT VILE FIEND. On the bands second offering “Surplus Flesh”, Mr. Smith has compiled & treated us to over 30 minutes of unrequited hyperfast goregrind so heavy it borders on volcanic. This release in particular is a masterclass in the fusion of old school fistfucking blast grind and thundering modern gorenoise blursts. The ultra-primative guitar tone does exactly what it intends to do in complimenting the ungodly fast drumming that distinctly hits a nostalgic nerve yet also highlights the steady progression of modern rapid percussion. Vocally it’s all over the map with mostly low-end ubervomit burp shrieks, throat clogging cancerous ribbits & distorted bong hits. Yo, this is legit the third grind release I’ve heard this year with bong noises for vocals and I’m not even mad. If it works, it works. And hey, there’s definitely enough groove & drop d sludginess to balance out what seems to be an unrelenting hammer storm of snare stabs so the insufferable riff nerds won’t cry too hard.
Now, to the untrained ear this album could easily pass as some super gnarly mid-90’s Warsore-era grind madness, but it’s too fast & that’s where its youthful vigor is revealed to the listener (none of this is a negative btw). The envelope is most definitely being pushed & Mr.Smith is one of the few active grind drummers currently at the forefront (others included in this international cadre are Japans Yuya Yakushiki & North Americas Isaac Horne). Weather it’s TTVF, Internal Rot, his 1-man/10arm monster the Blarghstrad, Umbilical Tentacle or any other of his side projects, one off’s & spontaneous combustions he continues to innovate & melt boundaries from the other side of the planet. When grind is good, its REALLY good. Massive big dick energy on this porkchop.
Tolerance’s first album is a post apocalyptic vision of the inhumanity, despairing violence and perpetual inequality of our present. Urho has honed Tolerance’s deathly toxic riffs, drum programming and rhythmic grooves into something blasting, grooving and despairing, punk and cybercrust with a slew of grind genre influences, like CUM, LDOH, CBT, Napalm Death and Sore Throat coalescing into a uniquely grinding, putrid sound. Pong blast beat cruster bangers, Noisecore primitive style blurred-out blaster tracks, gory downtuned groove midpaced thrashers with switch hitting tempo changes causing whiplash, unwieldy drum machine set to kill, gut-punch Guitars, deadly savage (and audible) riffing with amazing tones and ghastly grooves, sick weird 90’s effects mauled low vocal attack for that uniquely mutant anarchist humanist survivor of the unfurling apocalypse vibe, warped, sleazy and slimy eurobeat synth segues framing each side of the record in a haze of creepy Italian post apocalypse movies. Extremely impassioned inaudible lyrics – perfectly blunt, poignant and dramatic, describing both the carnage of our current world and the nightmarish futures it beckons. The whole album has a really palpable mutant apocalypse, sewer HQ resistance vibes, a Grindcore Terminator 2 sci fi mirror to our current state of fucked up reality at the crest of capitalist psychopathy meltdown. Crucial record. A mutant Grindcore masterpiece. Get an LP from Bringer of Gore, Grindfather or Selfmadegod.
GonzoKaraoke 