From Brum (Again) with Hate, Despair and Desolation

I know this is my 3rd album I have reviewed which features at least one member of the Kenny brothers, and my second review of Anaal Nathrakh, but what can I say I love Anaal Nathrakh. If you wish to read generally about  the band and also my review about In the Constellation of the Black Widow you may do so here. For those who have already or just read or just wish for me to skip straight to the review then carry on reading.

Thinking hard about it this album is probably my favourite album of all time. In fact I love this album so much that I have 2 versions of it and am awaiting to get my hands on the 3rd and 4th version. The first version is the basic 9 song, the second a reissue by Earache with the Peel Sessions featuring additional tracks which I do not have, the 3rd, I believe to be a fan made one which features live tracks and the final one a reissue in 2009 by FETO records which I also lack.Ironically the two I lack are the two released by my two favourite record labels. However all good things come to those who wait.

This album generally had a mixed reception, with some proclaiming it was the greatest sound to hit the earth, whereas others claimed it was aimless. I tend to find that die hard black metal fans are the ones who detest this album so much, whereas those who aren't big on the black metal genre are the ones who really like it. In fact my house mate who likes drum and bass loves the Humanity Loves Cancer track, one which I highly recommend. I remember reading a journalist describe the track as the gates of hell are being opened up, and further more it was the track used on the premier of an epic british horror film 28 Days Later, another overlooked masterpeice.  I really have been painting this album with Gold, and best get on to reviewing it.

This album is neither Black metal, Death metal, Grindcore nor any other genre you can think of. It is a sort of hybrid beast that possess the best elements of all 3. The underlying clockwork and machinations of their songs are rooted in the rawest black metal, with that constant layered guitaring and a sense of mortal fraility and global demise. However this release and band all together borrow heavily from the death metal  and Grindcore end of the spectrum of the extreme metal family. In my opinion they take some of the better elements and nail it into this already cruel black metal framework.

As I believe I have previously described them, they don't create music so to speak but create this grim and eerie atmosphere, and other points just release forth all manner of dark odium in a tornado of brutality coupled with despair. The use of audio sampling is used frequently to give their songs that additional ingredient for success. My favourite of which is the Technogoat, which samples Event Horizon, which is another masterpiece which has received minimal attention it deserves.
If we think of the songs in terms of verses and choruses then the songs often consist of a audio assault as a verse, which is loud fast and aggressive (not to the extent of grindcore, but more on the lines of early death metal or even thrash) and then we have this sort of more melodic break into the songs, this sort of repeats itself 2/3 times and then we have this sort of well structured climax which combines the two. This is the general formula used, and they manage to pull it off very well. There is no one song that I dislike, there are times that some songs have that sort of amateurish feel to them, but if you listen closely you realise how much of a coordinated effort.

The Vocals are your savage screams, to your low bellows and occasional sort of being told through a fuzzy microphone, which paints a picture for me of some sort of Fallout scenario (I have been playing too much fallout recently).  The drums are good and are pretty standardised apart from your occasional machine gun blast, and the use of the beloved blast beat. The guitaring is layered and fluid, and tends to be different with each song, and is always well integrated with the fast tempo set by the drumming. For you grind fans I suggest checking out the song Pandemonic Hyperblast, for me the beginning feels like some put Insect Warfare through the Hadron Collider and recorded the result. Another highly recommended song is the first track, the Supreme Necrotic Audnance, infact I have it as my alarm clock, it isn't a song that is about speed or heaviness (that comes later in track 2), but is a well crafted peice of art.
In my conclusion I will copy a qoute from another review, as I pretty much think it summarises my views about music and the band in general.
"They've released several great albums since this one, but I always return to 'the Codex Necro', their finest and darkest hour, and I recommend it to you as your inaugural neckbreaking to this band. Jesus avert your ears."

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Grind to Death 3.0

Welcome to Grind to Death's new overhaul, sadly for me all these little tweaks have consumed hours of my time, however I have learnt many things. I am sure the first thing you noticed was the new logo which has replaced the original header. This was entirely created by me using a combination of two wonderful programs, Paint.net and Pixlr. Although this is a musical blog, I must say that these two programs are highly recommended if anyone wants to do any graphical work, the first is a desktop program which is free and the second is a amazing web based service, both come highly recommended as Paint Shop Pro alternatives. The logo looks very black metal like, which is ironic since the blog is not black metal orientated, however the visual themes used in black metal are very appealing to myself. The only image that has a purpose are the Capricorn which represent myself being a Capricorn, everything else is there only to make it look nice(I hope).
 Another change I have implemented is that there is only one post per page, as I usually elaborate my posts with images, hyperlinks and videos, it has a high amount of data, I would like to keep this anti-minimalist feature rich Blog, but I don't wont to make it a burden on my viewers, so by limiting it to one post per page it optimises the site to only relay the relevant material and features and no dead weight information.
The Navbar has made a return, to be honest I don't even remember getting rid of it, must of done it by accident somehow.
Other change in features include a search bar, and a tag cloud instead of a tag list, as the list was starting to get too long, I have also removed the label sphere, although it was my favourite feature it seemed to have stopped functioning and I can't fix it.
All in all html coding and JavaScript coding are royal pain in the assess, hope you guys like the alterations, feel free to complain, if need be.

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Grindvirus Alert! May result in Compressed Innards!

The Difference between the virtual world and the real world is that those who frequent my blog and don't know me in person believe me to 100% English, well this is a falsehood I am infact 50% English and 50% Polish. The Grindcore scene in the U.K is quite big, not big enough to be mainstream but big enough to have a recognisable following, most be people know of Carcass and Napalm Death, even if they are unaware of what Grindcore is. However in Poland Grindcore seems to be very much a minority within a minority, you have the occasional metal fan, and then out of a possible 100 metal fans you might get one person who likes Grindcore. This is really a crying shame because Poland does put out some good grindcore and metal for that matter (I am a big Vader Fan). And this review will be about the Epitome of the Polish Grindcore scene(No reference to fellow Polski Grinders Epitome intended)

Grind Virus is contagious, there is no doubt about it, once you hear it, you just can't stop playing it, then you go forth and recommend it to your friends who in turn repeat the cycle. The Grindcore Epidemic takes form. These Grinders date back to 1994, thus not old enough to be in the Old School, nor new enough to be  in the New School, to my knowledge there is no term for this middle strata so I will use the term "Mid-School"  to describe these sort of groups. In my opinion they often are the Cadre of Grindcore, they take the best elements from the innovators and pioneers and mould it into something else, and they lack the impurities that have tainted the good name of Grindcore (i.e Deathcore).

Unlike some early grindcore and hardcore bands who strive to achieve a sound which was faster, louder and heavier than anything else, squash bowels have opted not to follow this route. The core element they do possess, is something I can't really put a word on it is sort of like a slow paced groove that still retains the most pure grindcore, it is catchy as hell. They are a sort of early Gore-Grinding Carcass incarnate which has opted instead of going on melodeath or death 'n' roll route, to refine their sound to a alternate better approach. For those of you who have read my review on Jig-AI here, you may be aware of my general loathing of most Gore-Grind bands. However Squash bowels try not to sound the most sickest and demented sound on the planet, they try to stay true to the essence of music and just write stuff the best they can.

The sound possess that underlying raw very heavy metal feel to it, everything they do is nothing new or unique to the genre put what they amalgamate together is just amazing. For a Grindcore release, the song lengths are quite long the shortest being 1minute 28 seconds, but the songs tend to be about 2 minutes in length.  At no point the songs are felt that they have over extended themselves or repeat themselves, each song is crafted uniquely and barrages your ear drums with the finest Grindcore.
The vocals are your typical 2 types one growly and one screamy, add in your clotting bass line, your earth shaking drums and a hell of lot of shredding and you got yourself one hell of a catchy tune.

I often think that most reviewers and listeners tend to forget the importance of production value, talent is talent without a doubt and regardless of production value you can tell whether something is amazing or shit. However I like to see production value as a metaphorical amp,by being good you amplify how good or bad the release is, by having minimal production value you leave it to the more unprejudiced person to unearth the hidden treasures. The production quality in this is most definitely praiseworthy it really does give this release an additional amazing edge. On a side note I do love some bands particularly in death metal that sort goes well with that amateur minimal production value, check out some Cannabis Corpse, recorded in the blokes Kitchen.
It is a tear up between Squash Bowells, Wormrot and Napalm Death as to my favourite album of 2009, I am trying to remove all personal national bias I may possess, and even so it is a tough one to call. In short this has to be the most catchy Grindcore release I know, it aint fast nor brutal but it still is in the finest Grindcore you can treat your ear drums to.
Grind Out
Rating: 96/100

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For the Good, the Glory and the GRIND!

Agathocles are pretty much the Marmite of the Grindcore genre. I am not sure how well Marmite is known outside the U.K, but it is pretty much a product that people love or hate, there is a lack of middle ground and mediocrity, it is either rubbish or insanely good. I personally like my Marmite, in addition to liking Marmite I also like very much Agathocles, perhaps there does exist a correlation between Marmite likers and Agathocles, who knows? However I didn't spend the last few hours researching about Marmite, I infact spent that researching Agathocles.

To those of you who have not heard of Agathocles yet classify yourself a Grindcore fanatic, then I suggest you re evaluate your stance from to just grindcore fan. The self labelled Mincecore Legends play a style of Grindcore that is high politicised and has its own sound of sorts. I am not entirely sure why they would need create their own sub-genre to my knowledge the grindcore scene at the time was highly politicised just look at the likes of Napalm Death.
On the other hand, I do tend to find that Agathocles play a very unique style of grindcore which distinguishes themselves from other Political Grind bands, and they tend to be more blunt and straight to their point with their political message, unlike most bands who adopt countless metaphors and sublime imagery to paint their political views.
Agathocles are notorious for the number of releases they have done, most of the releases they do are with up and coming Grindcore bands, examples of this are Nasum. I honestly have no idea as to the number of Agathocles releases, although at a guess I place it at well over 200.
For those of you who frequent this Blog, you may be aware that I usually like to play with words in my title and then explain it prior to the review, well this is also the case today. Agathocles is named after the Greek Poet of the same name, and his name stands for Good Glory, hence the Good, Glory and Grind.

The Review

This best of compilation released in 2008 is for me the best Agathocles release so far, although I doubt I have even heard 5% of Agathocles material. The title itself really sets the tone of everything Agathocles represent. In my internet travels I have come across many a blog with a image stating Grind is Protest, and it seems to be the unofficial slogan for Mincecore Maniacs across the globe.
The compilation is a 40 track of foggy guitaring intertwined with a static bass, and then add in a rampant raging fast drum beats. To add to this already monstrous political machine is a 2 man satire founded rage, spewing forth all manner of political discourse with that added tint of European Satire which is somewhat lacking from our friends over the seas.

Totalling an entire 34 minutes and 36 seconds, with the exception of the first song there is a non stop assault of the finest mincecore, songs like Bon apetit and Ministries of Arms, you get a high level of diversity with the sub genre. The first track mentioned I associate as a cross of Insect Warfare and old timers Repulsion, and then with Ministry of Arms you have a sort of early death metal outfit encapsulated by grind. Through a high level of borrowed elements from D-Beat, death metal etc which varies track to track, you never feel like it is one continous song or sound for that matter, but more a collection of fine materials taken from all ends of the mincecore spectrum.
This really is a great compilation after reading a somewhat shocking review on Encyclopedia Metallum,  I do respect peoples freedom of speech and opinions and do not have any problems with scoring this album at a mere 10%, however what I did find to my distaste was as follows. As within his rights can complain about the Musicianship, but he treats it as if it was an album and is complaining how only a few years ago they were of much better quality, after looking up a random sample of tracks, I can conclude that those tracks pre-date the given date he has said Agathocles has gone down hill. Now the purpose of the last paragraph was not to spite a fellow journalist (If I may be so humble to be blessed with such a title) or to criticize him for his musical opinion, the message is a much more important one. Do your research before you make a statement or conclusion, now to be honest I am being a hypocrite, as I make assumptions and hold them as fact, however by actually researching his statement I have in fact learnt what he said is wrong, thus teaching me the importance of research.
I will make the conclusion quick and concise: You either like Agathocles or you don't, if you so happen to like your fuzzy and somewhat amateurish musicality infused with a raging agenda of Anti-(Insert Whatever Noun you see fit for mincecore), grounded together with fast drumming and a range of styles and a tad of quirkeness then this is definitely a must have for you.
Rating 76/100

25 Years of Mincing!!! RIP Tony Schepkens, suicide was a bad move!

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Hell is Empty and the Horror is Here!

The Kenny Brothers must have extreme music in their genetic code, it is just amazing in how many top rate bands, and playing a array of instruments to a high degree can be achieved by the same source of heritage, yet again they make me proud to be British. Whoever said family and business can't go together, clearly did not embrace the horror of FUKPIG!!
To those who are still pondering  as to the title it is a play on words from Nathrakhs Hell is Empty and all the Devils are Here and the track by Fukpig the Horror is Here.

The Review

Spewings from a Selfish Nation, just sounds raw before you even begin listening to it, its got one of those typical sort of Political-Punk or Agathocles styled titles, and if you put that alongside the band name of Fukpig you can already tell that this is going to be a savagely cruel album.
I have never really been into the punk scene, and only within the last year I have learnt its importance on the grindcore and metalcore scene, and when I first saw this album labelled as Crust Punk infused with Black metal, this forced me to research the finer points and history of punk.
Opening up with an operatic chime with that lightly static radio interference, then the guitars slowly dredge their way through, with a standardised but prelevant drumbeat then come in this harsh vocals, the first 40 seconds pretty much set the tone for the rest of the album: this grim desolation has taken musical form.

This album is just cruel and dissonant all the way through, much like Anaal Nathrakh, Fukpig create this truly grimmoire outlook, but they have opted for a different take on this Weltschmerz than their other bands. To my understanding Anaal Nathrakh opt for a more moralistic and rational argument as to painting this barren world, Fukpig go for this more current affairs aproach with song titles like: As the Bomb Falls, Mother Nature's Tears and Millions Dyings, they really capture my understanding of the political punk scene, which seems to be a source of nostalgia for the mass of punk wannabes and counter conformists.
I seem to be talking alot about the Punk element of the band, by doing so I have greatly neglected to mention the intricate Black Metal elements that are melted in. Crust Punk + Black Metal ≠ Absurd Combo that will never take off, this rudimentary attempt of implementing mathematics into Music is a very good diagram to summarise my next few sentences.

Fukpig take the high level of politisation and aggression of punk and add a layer of black metal to add this sense of impending doom, and they do it very well. I would of never of considered that fusing of these genres was possible, however as we have now learnt it has been, and very well at that. I don't think we can expect too many more crusty black metal hybrids, I am pretty sure that Fukpig has pretty much taken all that's good from the fusion, leaving only the dregs.
The guitars and bass have this sort of sluggish down tuned despair in them, that sort of conjures up pictures of soldiers slowly dragging themselves through a mass of mud and shrapnel as all around them death and misery pollutes the surroundings. The drums are pretty standardised, but at times add to that much needed break in Fukpigs agenda which may just start to get a bit samey but the drums rescue it. However it is the vocals that are definitely extremely praise worthy  , they are the sort of things that give kids nightmares and really give that global distress a voice.

Songs worthy of praise, not to be confused with songs of praise are As Millions Suffer, and Caught Out, the first one adds in a kick ass metal guitaring and the latter just really epitomises the whole essence that is Fukpig.
To conclude Fukpig are the more politically active cousins of Anaal Nathrakh, but share that same dominant morbid depressive gene on the outlook of humanity. Fukpig goes on a relentless audio barrage to show all the injustice and problems in this World.

Rating: 90/100

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And now for something less serious: French splattering neo-death grind pop metal fun....???????????

Foreword

I know what you guys are thinking, how absurd it is to use a whole eight genres to describe a band, however I can safely say that I never assigned the band this tag, this tag is a copy and paste job from the bands website, now I know again what you are thinking: who the hell are crazy enough to sound like that? well the answer is ULTRA VOMIT!(A clue was in the banner above) Once you have finished pondering on what that would sound like, or how it is even possible, then feel free to read the rest of the review.




Band Info

Ultra Vomit are absolutely phenomenal, everything they play and do is a parody of music and modern life, although not the first nor the last band to do so, they do it with such a high level of perfection and maintain a high level of professionalism throughout. They are often tagged and describe themselves as grindcore, I am not entirely sure whether this is an accurate description or not, they certainly play some sort of metal with grind elements, however I personally feel that grindcore may be an incorrect tag, with the exception of a few songs. However I must add, the album I am about to review is the only main material by them I have heard, and will come into possession of more material.  The way I prefer to classify Ultra Vomit are a insider joke for those who are versed in the metal genres, parodying everything from Motorhead, Slipknot and Immortal. They just play the stylistic traits of the said bands perfectly and the whole time, make a parody through the lyrics and stylistic shifts, an absolutely phenomenon.

The Review

Like mentioned in the Band Info section, I am not even sure if this album fits into any genre between death metal and Grindcore, although it parodies death metaller veterans Cannibal Corpse, Infact you can't even fit this album into any neat genre category as they just parody most forms of metal. Of the self assigned title of French splattering neo-death grind pop metal fun, the only one which must be emphasised and is 100% correct is the tag fun. This album is just fun to listen to from start to finish, it is sort of a catalogue of all metal parodies from metal pop to bordering grindcore/hardcore punk. Even if you are not a fan of other metal genres you will love this album, it has that quirkiness about it that everybody loves. The only problem with this album, is that all lyrics are sang or in some cases shouted: in French. This is quite a vulgar Anglo-centric comment to blurt out, however I will elaborate,because the lyrics are in French and not English this album has failed to hit the mainstream as well as it could of, and sadly has only retained a cult underground following and not the full recognition it deserves.

I personally like the fact that it is all in French, it makes me think back to my pre and early teens, sitting in all those French lessons and attempt to use my rudimentary French linguistic knowledge to decipher the lyrics of the band. About 30 minutes prior to writing this particular section, I showed my house mate who has a very good grasp of French some videos of the band, the fact he was laughing all the time, has convinced me in a paranoid round about way that there is another joke in the lyrics that I have not bothered to look up, thus fuelling me to relisten to this album, in an attempt to find the joke.
The instruments are all perfect, whatever genre or band they attempt to parody they sound exactly like how the band sound, occasionally they add in a comical twist in the musical playing, so they don't sound 100% exactly like the band, but it is done on purpose to add even more humour to the already hilarious songs. There are two vocalists one main and one support, it is amazing how they sing. Its not like anything impossible, it just the level of diversity , when they scream, they sound like a heavier metal band, when they sing they sound like exactly how these pop rock bands sound like, they even at particular songs convincingly sound like a French Lemmy and even a French Michael Jackson!!!

A thing that I absolutely love, and sadly a dying trend is amazing art work, and the art work for this release is just so hilarious, as pictured far above, it depicts the band members in some Tolkien fantasy, using their instruments as weapons, already from the front cover alone you can tell this album is going to be filled with laughs.
Not only do Ultra Vomit play metal amazingly well, and parody the stylistic habits of the particular artists and genres, they chuck in their heritage in the songs. Featuring tales from French Folklore and French Children's bed time stories and even dedicate a song to the one and only Jack Chirac.
Objective Thunes is not heavy nor is it "brutal", but it just is an absolute laugh to have, it will never bore you and is one of those must haves for any true metal head.
Grind Out.

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Humanity versus Machines, Insects and a Street Sweeper, we are truly screwed!

Band Info

Insect Warfare are a legendary Grindcore band that hail from Houston Texas, and have over the course of  5 years been perfecting the said genre, with a no holds bar "old school" 90's grindcore that has been fused with some modern grind elements.Sadly even though they perfected Grindcore and had been touring far a field they decided to call it quits in 2009, I don't have any qualms with the band doing so, and wish them well in their ways, but what I do have problems with is the choice of final release! Their final EP Noise Grind Power Death, was more Noisecore than grindcore, however to qoute the band themselves
“The IW “Noise Grind Power Death” noisecore 7” EP is our final release. fuck it, end it on a noise note.” Well I suppose it's better to burn out than to fade away.

However I will not elaborate on their EP we are looking at a very special album, Insect Warfare: World Extermination.

The Review

World Extermination, is a full length released by Insect Warfare in 2007, and it is a grindcore atomic bomb. This album is void of any impurities that may taint or skew grindcore, each track just tears it up, unleashing a tornado of grind. 

The vocals are top rate, completely unintelligible but capture the sound of a futuristic machinations of apocalyptic despair. The guitars are just pure grind, imagine a love child of Brutal Truth and Napalm Death that possesses the best elements of both, and that is the best way to describe the guitars. The riffs and grooves are played in a crunchy down tuned manner, with the occasional catchy riff that batters away at the inside of your skull,  until your brain haemorrhages. True to the statement that this album is true grind, we have the staple blast beat booming away, combined with on occasion the  well placed normal metal drum beat, but the sort that is used in Grindcore all the time. The bass here takes more of a complimentary and atmospheric role, giving the song that sort of asthmatic smog induced groan across the songs, painting this vision of a dystopian industrial dying world.

When you put all these elements together you get this gross manifestation of a noise that physically grabs you by the face and across the course of 22 minutes continues to slam your head with waves of 100% grind. This is album should come with a disclaimers warning that it is no suitable for those with a weak heart condition, its fury  just never ends or wanes, it just builds up on this idea  of bleak desolation without compromising or substituting any element of grindcore. 

If Grindcore ever had its own religion then this would be the album that had everything in its purest form,an analogy/situation of describing this album is, If any one ever asked the question what is Grind in its raw state, or what is Grindcore then this should be the album you  show them, although much like fine wines the pureness of this album can only be recognised by fellow grindaholics, and on this note I end the review.

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Site Revamp!

Hello fellow readers, for those of you who have been on the site before you may notice now that it has been totally revamped. Just as I promised in my very first post here, I will continually Strive to make my blog as good as I can, some of the new features are as follows:

Label Sphere: This label sphere has replaced my previous one with a more customizable and preferable one it may found here, and is highly recommended.
Labels: A exhaustive list of all my labels and with a counter on them to identify how many times each has appeared, labels such as post # have been removed, to make it more aesthetic and compact.
Google Chat: I Have added the Google Chat feature, This website is not only here to read reviews, it is to meet like minded people. If you have any queries, requests or just want to chat then feel free to do so!

Comments: I have coded in the Intense Debate commenting feature, I am not sure whether this restricts those without an Intense Debate account, however after looking through the features I thought this was a must have for my blog not only because of functionality but also because of aesthetics.
Layout: I have taken the granite layout option which can be downloaded here, although fellow bloggers I suggest you look through the whole selection the website has to offer at My Template Box.
Starring System: I took the starring system from Outbrain, and am very impressed with it, feel free from now on to leave comments and rate my reviews.

On the whole all these features where not too hard to install, and I am very grateful that people have posted how to implement them, thus saving me hours of time wasted on attempting to do so single handedly. I still intend to integrate many other features into my blogs. Firstly I would love to have a chat box, that way people can leave generalised comments, I will also be creating a gadget which has links to other blogs and websites (email/message/comment me any sites you wish me to include), The most important feature I wish to do which I have already started although possibly may scrap is a banner, something aesthetic which people can identify with this site. Another feature is a icon in the far left of the address bar, although this will also require a fair amount of thought. A Button to show that this blog now produces RSS feeds and Atom feeds. A search bar also. Well for now I leave you readers as I plan my Uni work and next album review which if you are lucky may be tonight.

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Melody + Brutality + Perfection = Banquet in the Darkness

Band Info

Intestine Baalism are one of those bands who never ever fail at producing the best material around. They are my number one favourite band for the past 4ish years now, and they have held on to that spot extremely well, even through my alternating musical phases, this artist has still trumped all the best other subgenres and genres can offer. they play nothing unique , but what they do play is perfection itself. The artist has only released 3 albums and one demo across the span of 13 years, however a master piece is not written in a short period of time, it must be slowly crafted and perfected before it can be unleashed on humanity. Unfortunately I can't find too much about the band, alot of the info on them is repeated on other sites, and original information is hard to come by, and the language barrier doesnt help, although my use of google translate keeps bringing me across Japanese medical archives/info pages.  Although this page here seems to be the most informal and useful.(Note the link uses Google translate)

The Review

As I mentioned earlier, Intestine Baalism are my all time favourite band, and this is my favourite release by them, being the "enlightened" person I am, I intend to write this review in a truthful manner so well that you will be automatised to get this album, and set up your own blog to write a review of how good this album is.

Well firstly this album has the ability to cure world hunger, nah just kidding, not even sure why I came up with this example, but If albums could solve world hunger, I'm sure this would be the one which could do it single handedly. I have not even begun to touch on the sheer brilliance of this album...

 Intestine Baalism literally take the best of NWOBHM, Death Metal and Melodic music of some sort and craft these phenomenal sounds, it alternates between serene and harshness perfectly with logistical flow, and creating this intense atmosphere. Although the sentence above may sound very eloquent and nice, those of you who have not heard it before will be none the wiser as to it, in my kind hearted mood I have decided to break Intestine Baalism down piece by piece.

Where best to start than the very first song? No use answering it in your head for it is a question which has answered itself. The beginning of Flesh for the Omnipotent is your average typcial death metal of sorts, a nice set of heavy riffs interlaced with well structured drumming, then the vocals cut in after about 50 seconds, your sort of husky smoker death metal voice, this is then mirrored with the second vocalist acting as a delayed higher pitched echo, after a bit of that it slows down to a single riff and drum beat and then just kicks into a tantrum of fast drumming with rapid riffing and more defined vocals. So far so good this is pretty good death metal you are thinking, then it happens.....
It instantly flows into an amazing melody, I mean the shift is near instantaneous,but not irksome it is like one continuous flow, the melody isn't any of that super fast crazy guitar playing, It sounds like something straight out of a classical piece tinted with a tad of metal to give it that edge. As well as the melody came in, it exits with equal grace as the death metal takes hold and carries on, and then song ends, but with one of those endings that is clear cut and definitive and not one of the ones where a lot of bands just sandwich in another solo to show off their guitar skills.

I would love to describe every single last song to the last detail, whilst having it playing, however there are just not enough hours in a day, and I'm sure most of you could probably appropriate and listen to the content faster than reading the whole description of every song. So to keep up pace, I will carry on with a generalised review of the album.

I need not elaborate on the traits, strengths and weakness' which the musicians possess, all I need to say is imagine any sort of death metal and any sort of melodic song, in their purest and most perfect form and that pretty much sums up how well the musicians play.  A nice feature which I think is starting to become more common place, even in Grindcore ,but still quite on periphery is to include an instrumental track, and this is true with Intestine Baalism. The title of the track is called "A Keen", and features just plain acoustic guitar, there is nothing brutal about it, it is just a peaceful music, even us grinders need to relax every so often. Listening to the song literally makes you feel like you are floating away, but not because it sounds trippy it is just so peaceful I'm convinced the track secretly unlocks serotonin stored in your brain and makes you just feel happy. Now before I start to sound too much like a hippy, back to the metal!!!!!!!!

The title track Banquet in the Darkness, is yet another masterpiece, this is the 2nd track of the album, and already you can tell Intestine Baalism is one of these bands that doesn't follow a formula, they vary the ratio of brutality to melody with every individual song and do it in such a way that it fits the song best.  I do hate using the word brutal to try and describe the more darker side to their music, the word has been tainted by the posters of youtube for countless ridiculous deathcore and lower end brutal death metal, but I can't find any word that brings justice to describe it (the untainted implementation of the word brutal that is). This particular song focuses more on the melodical side of their, and shows they can do both melody and death equally well.

Sadly it is time to conclude, I hope I have been able to live up to my ambition: so those of you who don't have it get it, If you are still unconvinced then really and truly this is your loss, and will be probably be the greatest musical orientated mistake you ever make, by not checking out these guys. These people are like the Galileo's and Da Vinci's of our time, the material they are producing is just unquestionably the best in the world, like too many bands, this band has had no success in making it big, and are still very underground even among big melodic death metal fans.
Grind Out

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Yet Another Tribute to Nasum

Currently I am going through a Nasumesque phase in my musical diet, now when I say Nasumesque I mean I am listening to everything similair to Nasum but Nasum: Is it a sad thing that I listen to the copycats and tribute acts more than the original? Well whatever your opinion, it is of little Importance since this tribute album makes up for any bad press about tributes.
Released by Power-It-Up, who I am guilty of not realising existed until today, and what a mistake that was the Grindcore artists on the label are all top rate and some of the releases I seem to have in my collection, but in my blissful ignorance did not pay attention to what label released the material. I will certainly be paying more attention from now on as to who releases what.
This grindcore masterpiece features 53 tracks by 53 artists, with no artist playing the same track as another artist. The artist list is pretty much of who's who in the top 100 grindcore artists, even the artists who I have not heard of play with such great ability that I am determined to research them some more and hear more music. This is one of the few albums where you can listen to every single track, and you honestly cant fault any single of the tracks with the possible exception with the final song, given that it is not a song  but merely a 4 second grind bullet. The thing that makes this album amazing is the way everyone has a unique take on playing their songs, although the common factor is that the songs are Nasum based, they manage to warp the songs into their own playing style thus producing Nasum songs but which are goregrind, death metal and powerviolence, yet the Nasum factor is always present and never seems to be compromised. The album art is itself a more perverse and evil take on the legendary Grind Finale album pictured above to the left. Unlike my other reviews I can not review the musicianship of the album, as literally with every track there is a massive shift in stylistic and manner of play. Of the bands I have never heard of  which deserve mention are Keitzer, it may be that they got the luck of the draw for having to play one of Nasum's better songs , but in any case they pull it off perfectly, I prefer it to the  original which says alot since the original is one of my favourite songs.  At a personal level, it was heart warming to hear creative waste again, it must of been 5 years since I heard them and I loved it then, but never acquired any of their material but hearing them on here in full force is enough for me to get some of their material.
To conclude this album is a must have for any grindcore fan it is just sheer talent and everything good in grindcore compressed into 68 minutes. All the artists are top knotch and succeed at moulding great tracks into their own projects without sacrificing any of the quality of the original.
Grind Out!
Label's Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/poweritupofficial
Discogs entry: http://www.discogs.com/Various-A-Tribute-To-Nasum/release/2042541

Purchase 

C.D               L.P

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