Rotten Sound are no stranger to the grindcore scene, blasting away a furious breed of scandigrind in a fast paced blast beat blitzkrieg of calculated riffs and drum bashing. Their recent instalment and choice of armament for the 2011 simply titled Cursed, has finally hit the world in a storm.
For all of metals technical and precise nature, it often fails to bring the raw depravity of punk fuelled rage and intensity, but no longer is that so. Cursed bridges this gap, through thick doses of intense metal madness warped around a apparition of dirty crust punk manifestation, bringing forth a beast of metal with the throbbing heart of a militant punk.
It is equally complex and rhythmically structured as deep it gets the grindcore gears in motion, pouring down on the listener a triumphant bellow of sheer musical intensity, comparable only to the Nasum effect. This is the Cycles we are all acquainted with and love, pushed through the Hadron Collider, and the results recorded. Once again Rotten Sound, lay waste to the argument that grind should have the traditional dirty abrasive production (a feat only a few bands have successfully countered), and offer a fantastically fashioned recording quality, and precision mastering skills, to offer Cursed in all its blazing glory.This is a behemoth of an album, hell you feel like your drowning in the expanse of riffs and percussive hounding, with an ever present rasping screams indicating signs of life amongst the wasteland it leaves in its wake. This is without a doubt the best Rotten Sound to date, their playing has become airtight, there is not one fraction of a moment that is not filled with their instrumental barrage, your hearing is bound to suffer!
They make incredibly good use of juxtaposing the dynamics of their "slow" moments, before unleashing a quick paced sonic slaying, on occasion sporting the short lived traditional metal solo interjection. Layering their guitar work, they take you to and fro various dark corners of the grindcore spectrum, with Keijo's vocals acting as a screeching doppelganger to your inner voice describing your journey through their single word titled tracks of mayhem.
I must stress again in all honesty that this release is one of deception, you feel throughout a crushing rawness and explosive anger always attributed to punk, but somehow they accomplish this through a surgically precise metal approach of complex rhythmic structures and layered progressions.
Rotten Sound have really raised the bar this time, they offer a fantastically well executed album, which will fully immerse the listener for the entire duration of its paradoxical sensory onslaught, but why take my word for it, listen to it down below courtesy of lambgoat.
What Rough Beast Slouches Towards
