Great Expectations (Dawn of Chaos, Promo 2010)

Death Metal on live recordings and lo fi quality is something I tend to be quite apprehensive about, technical moments and finer interjections can sometimes be lost and masked amongst the static low end flurry of buzzing, and thus not giving an accurate depiction as to what the band has to offer. However in Dawn of Chaos' promo they have just enough clarity in the promo to highlight effectively their considerable skills, and quite considerable they are.
That is not to suggest that they offer anything ground breaking or genre shattering, they merely play a myriad of death metal styles in a very professional execution; one could suggest they play it as an umbrella term, furthermore they somehow manage to smash together these various styles in manner that offers considerable integrity and a nice superflous flow from one style to the next. Some moments feel like a frantic axe wielding zombie survival horror, with others seeming more demonic and blasphemic, to an occasional old school Swedish Death Metal prangs. The release although short (what do you expect from a Promo, hell at least its longer than 90% of those grindcore releases you listen to! silly boy) really offers quite a lot, and I can honestly say hand on heart that they really do employ plenty of varying techniques to make for the most part non of the passages sound the same or similar. The only thing left to be desired is a decent audio quality recording quality, which I am sure will come in time. I certainly will be keeping an eye on this band.

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Without the Extreme, Humanity Would Decay. (Regurgitate Life, Condemned From The Beginning, 2010)

One of the great pleasures of having a fascination for extreme music is that there is always more to explore. I have found that even though the fan bases of Death Metal and Grindcore may be limited in numbers, the dedication of most fans and bands reaches far beyond that of the more (Pop)ular of the music genres. Through the exploration of many different sub-genres of these extreme music’s it is to be seen that some of the most chilling brutal experiences that can affect the human mind are found within the underground. I also have seen that within these extreme communities many strong bonds can be found. Alex Layzell has given me the opportunity to come across and review some fantastic bands on a fanfuckingtastic site now for a bit, and for that I thank him. I also send cheers to him for showing me the band Regurgitate Life and If my sources serve me pertinent the band forming in the U.K. (of course) and including Sammy Urwin (Decrepit Womb, Defective Brain) and Sam Yates (Ingested, Decrepit Womb) personifies the meanings behind the words “Brutal” and “Epic”. Not sure exactly when the band has played with a full lineup live, but I do know that for right now it is a one man band for shows. This review is on the bands 2010 EP: Condemned from the Beginning.

The first track Unprovoked Violence/Decaying Humanity opens the album with a mystical sounding intro and moves into some of the heaviest slams that the Brutal Death world has seen to date. The vocals are percussive, clean, and help assist in the super-groove of the guitar’s excellence. Track two Hear You No More begins with a clean guitar chord progression that causes my dark heart to melt. It’s chilling yet beautiful and accomplishes an astonishingly melodic mood. The song transitions with a blisteringly fast explosion into an epic riff that causes the teeth to grind. This song especially reminds me of an early Cattle Decapitation sound with the mix of guttural vocals, grindy guitar riffs, and speedy drums. This Deathgrind sound seems to continue throughout the remainder of the violently excellent piece of art. Test your ears capacity to withhold its blood by finding and listening to this album of epic proportions.

I would highly suggest checking this band out and if you live in the U.K. area go see them destroy with Putrid Pile and many others at the London Death Fest 12.

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Zombies of Brutal Death. (Unfathomable Ruination, Self-titled EP, 2010)

The minute that fellow Grind to Death contributor Josh McMorran pointed me towards the band into which this post regards; I knew that I would become hooked. With a name like Unfathomable Ruination there is not much room for error. The first thing I noticed about the band from researching the miniscule amount of info on the web about them is that for one they come from the London area (which makes sense why Josh would point them out to me) and also that they have members from some of the U.K. and London’s best death metal bands. These bands include Bloodshot Dawn, Embryonic Depravity, Fleshrot (fuck yeah), and Trifixion. So it’s safe to say that I was pretty much pitchin’ a tent even before I listened to this Death Metal supergroup. The listening experience as I expected was vibrant and eye opening. Although there are only three tracks on the self titled EP that the band has so eloquently provided the world, they do not disappoint the starving Brutal Death zombies among us.

The first track Echoes of Universal Futility comes at the listener with some guttural lows that would make the great Odin cringe. The soloing on this track reminds me of some of Suffocation’s great guitar work, as I assume is intended due to the fact that the band uses them as a large influence. In the end of this fantastic track there is a break in the song where the guitar starts to play a quite catchy and beautiful bit of tapping, that sends chills down my arms due to its ambient aura. Definitely something to remember the track by. The second track Inundation of Elemental Indifference explodes with some blast beats and slams that make my fist punch the closest solid surface around me every time. All around solid track, although could use a louder vocal track on the mix to create more of a full sound (the most minor of flaws that plagues most Brutal Death Metal bands). Track three Suspended in Entropic Dissipation has an elegantly brutal title and equally as wicked lyrics that accompany this song fantastically. The opening riff to this track reminds me of an older styled Sepultura intro which definitely adds to the power of the song.

I highly suggest checking out the tracks for your listening comprehension at the below links, and if you see fit throw the band some of dat’ green in your pocket. Cheers to Josh McMorran for showing me these Death Metal Connoisseurs and may UKDM live on.

-Jordan Barsamian

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Strained Grinding (Unnatural Selection, En Theos, 2010)

One of the perks and burdens of being a musical review blogger is that sometimes people treat you as a deity: all knowing and a source of divine musical authority, with artists bringing forth gifts of releases before me, wishing for me to approve of their gospel and spread the word to all others that lay homage to the place of worship that is Grind to Death. Now before you say to yourselves fuck this guy Alex, he thinks he is a God of Grind, what a arrogant mindless twat, although chances are I am arrogant and mindless and maybe a twat, I certainly don't feel God like, and sometimes now amount verbal magic (or lack of) that I can conjure can save bands that are quite terrible to say the least.

It's a shame that on occasion peoples passion and enthusiasm for a type of music, never translates well when they actually start playing the music. 

Sadly one such band is British Drum Machine duo Unnatural Selection, there are quite a few things lacking greatly, and although by no means a drastically terrible release, a general lack of feeling and oomph fail to hold the listeners attention for any period of time, degrading the music to an irritable background noise of grunts and blasts, that often results in a quick turn over to something more interesting, in my case usually Assuck or Gridlink (seriously I listen to these guys several times a day)

Now I can't deduct marks for the generally poor recording quality, I have listened to enough Agathocles, and cassette rips to actually enjoy the degenerative slurs and static discharge in their own right. But as an observation recording quality sounds like it was recorded through a guitar hero microphone in the living room, with the volume not too loud in case it wakes up their parents in the floor above.

Some of you other readers may know well the curse of the last song, well I propose that there also exists a curse of the first song, Unnatural Selection are not the only ones guilty of this and by no means a scape goat, but in all honesty no grinder in their right mind wants to sit through a minute and a half of abstract white noise, with layered echoes, we are impatient, we want things done quickly, we want to hear them now, and hear them loud, delaying us does not intensify the experience when it arrives, it just puts us in a sour mood before we have even heard one note of what you plan to put out! Also such expressions of artistic abstraction of noise are shit. End of. So I beg you bands refrain from putting garbage in your music, If you feel you must, preferably not at the beginning or else you really are doing it for the purposes of decreasing my already dwindling life expectancy.

Like I said earlier, its not drastically terrible that I feel I have to pull an Ichi the Killer and forcibly insert stilleto's in my ears, resulting in deafness (and in Kakihara's case hallucination), but generally we look to music to evoke emotion and feeling, not necessarily in a 80's Power Ballad Symphony that will force me to conquest Mount Everest to find my life love locked in a castle where I must smite a dragon to set her free into my arms, only to find the mountain, castle and dragon are all metaphors for my inherent character flaws namely attacking random people's houses with medieval siege equipment and fire. Back to the point, I can guarantee as a universal feeling, free of cultural, gender or any other separation physical or idealogical, when we hear a song we like we all get the voice, and it pretty much says the same core thing "This is pretty good" or if it is something really off the hook like the new Rotten Sound (wait how has he? is he bluffing? The European release date is not yet!) we all get the "THIS IS FUCKING AMAZING" voice in our head, usually in the imaginary voice of a young teenager who has just found the joys of alcohol for the first time. Well we get no such feeling, and sadly just get the sound of tumble weeds rolling in the wind, in anticipation of something that will break forth from its bleakness and issue something worthy of positive commentary. 

Now for all my slagging off and verbal abuse to the band, I now offer some consolation; its not that you have done something fundamentally wrong, hell I actually like your choice of song titles from those that satisfy my Latin taste buds "En Theos" (also the title of the EP) to the really humorous "Born from Porn" and "Violently Opposed to Violence", and I even like your choice of samples for the songs, but the most common flaw across the board is that you don't fully develop what you do, you need to give more body to what you initiate,  if Da Vinci had done the Mona Lisa equally as undeveloped as what you guys try to do, it will probably look more like my attempt at it(not really mine).

All in all you certainly have the foundations right, but drastic development is needed before people will even take the music seriously, but what the fuck do I know, I don't even play an instrument, nor am I in a band, what the fuck am I doing writing here anyway! I should be writing my dissertation! Argggggghhhhhhhhhh! 

 Oh yeah if this has at all taken your fancy feel free to listen to it for free over on their bandcamp.

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P.S. Abrasive DIY raw sound only works if you play punk styled grind not metal!

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Gathering of Cultures (The Atrocity Exhibit, Damned and Blasted 2010)

OK so right off the bat I'm going to admit that I know the guys in this band, and be assured that does indeed compromise whatever objectivity I may have had. To compensate for this egregious transgression I am only going to say that this band are awesome once: "This band are awesome once" (yeah you like what I did)

What I'm going to blather on about for the rest of this post are the myriad reasons WHY I would think such a thing, and those would also be reasons for anyone who is reading this to check them out.

Reasons to be Grindful are Three:

One: Their tunes are proper. You know, proper like when you listen to Insect Warfare and think "This is really great, and their songs are proper". Like that.

TAE have deemed that well-balanced song writing and nicely flowing tracks are, for them, more important than continually shredding you up with top-of-range tempi.

This is a good thing. Their recent CD (which I still haven't paid them for, fuck you the band) develops over the course of the album, offering up memorable tracks that have bits of Grind, Crust, Doom (and other tasty stuff) all over the place but are also consistent, it feels like the same band.

Two: Their drummer is proper: This happy chap can blast, but knows when it's time to just smash the crash and let the other instruments thunder. Do you see the theme developing here? A theme that not only has words like 'grind' 'blast' 'owns' but also 'taste' 'thought' and 'appropriate'. It works, supplies the modern-slick-double-kick whilst reminding us how good it was when some shitty punk bands decide they were just going to hit that junk as fast as they could loose teeth and cash giros.

ABOVE: They look like this, mind.

Three: The guitars SOUND proper (sick of this proper thing yet?). All the string takes on Damned and Blasted have real weight to them, like at a gig where valve amps are really shoving the air about. It's a great thing precisely because it ISN'T the usual hyper-gain Death Metal sound, it's dirty with heft and chunk. It means that when the band slow down a bit (which they do especially well on album closer track "The gathering of vultures") one gets to appreciate these choice riffs in all their meatsome countenance. Same goes for the Bass guitar; solid sounding. In these days of many bass-less grinders it's nice to hear a four-guy grind group in full grunt.

So there are my three reasons for my opinion that this band are awesome (once) and I encourage you all to INTERNETS THE HELL outta this.

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FCUK (Sylvester Staline/Joe Pesci)

Historically the worst of foes, but now on good terms the cheese eating surrender monkeys (I kid, I love the French) and the Queens glorious subjects have come together to release an ultra fast baseball bat to the face Powerviolence & Noisygrind double act. Aside from the Hollywood namesakes, these guys have one other thing in common and that is to produce music that is fast, and I mean break neck, I wouldn't be in the least surprised if their hairtrigger supersonic drumming didn't breach the sound barrier..

Sylvester Staline bring to you some of the meanest powerviolence available on the street, listening to the music just wants you scream and to thrash about your room, throwing all manner of Ikea furniture out of the window hitting unsuspecting passer-bys.Lyrics are ultra-punk fast paced screams of rude, abusive and amusing subject matter, not that you can ever keep up, and kudos to Lord Crust described as the 6 string ayatollah for making sure the sleazy punk feel is not lost in the haywire of playing so fast.

As for fellow Kinsmen Joe Pesci, expect nothing but the best AxCx worship you have heard ever. The only subtracted element by  Joe Pesci is the blatant and sometimes comical; sexism, racism, and pro Nazi themes  which we are an unsure if Anal Cunt really advocate or just do so for laughs, however they do keep lyrics and song titles in line with more unprejudiced AxCx with song titles like Crouching Tiger, Biro in the Neck and Thats not a cat. Drumming has been raised from typical incoherent inaudible mess, to a level where one can actually hear and recognise it, but fear not vocals and guitar work are about as Noisecore one can get before merely becoming noise.

I am not even too big on Noisecore and Powerviolence, yet I still love this gem of an album, but

these guys don't care what you and I think, hell S.S myspace even tells you "if you want a good band listen to another one", both bands just play fast, loud and carefree, so if you still not interested, in the spirit of the bands I will politely say "Fuck Off!"

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Secondary Spewings of a Fukpig (Fukpig, Belief is the Death of Intelligence 2010)

Fukpigs debut album Spewings of a Selfish Nation discharged a foul and unique machination of noise, polluting  2009 with its crusty blackened grind and leaving the likes of me anxious for yet another instalment of this morbid and hateful music. To my joy and to the detest of those within 100 metres of me, I sit here blasting out Belief is the Death of Intelligence and am loving every moment of it.

These Brummie Grinders have kept religiously to the form of its predecessor to once again unleash a fistful of abhorrence and rage. In the year past we can see that Fukpig  have not sat by idyll, but have been hard at work refining their dirty ungodly sound.

All lyrics are saturated with profanity and other forms of vile language and this colourful language is coupled with a strong rhetoric which reflects a strong disgust to certain features of our socio-political westernised society, a commendable throwback to the glory days of pre 90's crust-grind.Thrice on the album you get the lyrical and titular punk overkill with the likes of All of you are cunts and I hope you fucking die being perhaps the best example, it pretty is much an example of a lack of creativity and intelligence in Punk, however I am certain Fukpig have done this to give it a more complete Punk feeling, which it does very well and reinforces the whole 100% hatred approach.

Fukpig have adopted more metal customs, not just those specific to black metal ,but those that belong to metal on the whole and not to any specific genre, I did notice a guitar solo on One Nation Under One Eye which heavily reminded me of one of my all time favourite bands Slayer and it is great to see Fukpig bring in more metal to the music without harming the overall ultra crusty as hell feel to it. The vocals are still raw beyond belief and to use a saying from E.N.T the vocals may be seen as "Punker than Punk", just visualise (can you visualise for sound?) the harshest punk vocals you can name, now lets add in the region of 1000 tonnes of Semtex, testosterone and steroids, and this should take us about half way to the crude bedlam of Drunks vocals, seriously his vocals alone are worth getting hold of this album let alone all the other amazing features.
True to Fukpigs infamous slogan "There's only two beats; the blast and the D" you can expect to hear exactly that as Miggs percussion onslaught batters you across all 4 walls of the room you occupy. I can't say that black metal has ever appealed to myself, but Misery and Miggs black metal riffage is a perfect compliment to the crust factor and creates a sound more harsh and brutish than each respective genre. An occasion operatic chime gives a sense of impending doom, only to have a foul mouthed scream to be spat out, with an disharmonious accompaniment  of gritty guitaring and dirty drumming, and this pretty much is how Fukpig execute their music throughout the entirety of the album.
Fukpig  have yet again shown to the world that their bastard breed of Crusty Black Grind is not only an amazing combination, but is greatly more filthy and vulgar than its non so angelic parents. Belief is the Death of Intelligence is ram packed with more hatred, more noise, more punk and more metal than its predecessor and is worthy of being its successor.

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Death Metal Master (Bolt Thrower, Warmaster, 1991)

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Amongst the idyllic and picturesque surroundings of Coventry, lurks a bellicose jingoistic machination, manned by a crew of 5 and  named after a table top game there is no escape from its mud/blood laden  rusted cogs of war when heaved into motion, beware the onslaught of Bolt Thrower.

The ancient Greeks who possessed a Bolt Thrower of their own, would often write songs  and construct structures glorifying warriors and victories long gone. Bolt Thrower drag out this Hellenic ethos and bring it forth to the modern age, however the modern age is a place of grim industrialised mass murder, the age of mind and muscle is long gone and we have entered the age of the megaton and what better sound track to reflect this than Old School British Death Metal.
With the guitars chugging frantically away, accompanied by artillery blasts from the drums and a bass line that will literally give you shell shock, Bolt Thrower perfect their unique and far too often overlooked creation of the fan assigned genre of "War Metal"(Trust me this is the real deal not your silly folky finnish battle metal), which no other band on this war ridden planet has been able to match.
The qualities that make this band and album unique or unconventional are numerous, however there are some which are of better note than others, one in particular from experience. Whenever I show my friends the music I love I always get the same generic answer "I like the guitars and drums, but I cant understand the vocals which ruins it for me", certainly a reasonable answer well finally I have ace card to throw their way, Bolt Thrower are completely comprehensible! And yet somehow they preserve that low bellowing inhumane vocals that I love, this achievement certainly is one which makes me idolise Bolt Thrower. In addition to a paradoxical result of comprehensible-death metal vocals we actually are assaulted with some great morbid poetic lyrics which would make the likes of Wilfred Owens consider a career shift, check it out.
Cenotaph
Alone you stand - The final parody
Destined to silence - A memorial to mortality
Carved in stone - A tribute to the dead
For nameless victims - Whose litany is unread
Never Forgotten - War's memory lingers on
A dark reminder - To mankind's oblivion
This solemn image - Constructed with resolution
A monument - To war's terminal conclusion
Cenotaph
Impressive qausi-nihilistic-patriotic lyrics, especially for death metal who nowadays focus to much on ridiculous sickening sexual and violent acts.  Another little known fact that the bassist Jo-Anne Bench is considered either the first or one of the first females to be in an extreme metal band, a title which holds a great amount of prestige to it. Her bass is fundamental to this album, although the guitars are highly down tuned and may be confused for bass, it is the bass that give it that dark and resonant articulation that completes the barbarity of war edge. As aforementioned the guitars are down tuned , but expect to hear technical moments that are graceful to the music, but sound like the agony and distress of the nameless dead soldiers dying in puddle of their own blood. The percussion varies from your doomy slow paced march, to a coordinated blitzkreig. The production value has a fuzzy tint which rounds off the war theme to a tee, I can think of only a handful of examples where instruments and production conjure up images synonymous with the lyrics.
Warmaster  is an album worthy of its name, and is a perfect musical expression of war: a collection of savagery and misery and somewhere deep amongst the piles of soldiers unknown lies a icon of glory and fame.

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Bolt Thrower @ Metal Blade Records
Bolt Thrower @ Earache Records

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381 Reasons why ENT Rule! (Extreme Noise Terror, Damage 381, 1997)

Extreme Noise Terror are exactly what it says on the tin, they are a rampaging sound which is sure to upset many neighbors and possibly get you an ASBO. However despite this I am determined to keep my ENT playing at a volume which really creates some sort of sonic boom or wind, In fact my original statement is an exaggeration, my Neighbors are pretty cool and never complain about all manner of audio rape that emanates from 3/4 of the occupants of my household, and the council have never bothered us at all, only political activists posting all manner of shit through our letterbox, has pissed me off.

The 90's seems to be where it was as, at least I seem to suffer some sort of irritable Nostalgia which makes wish I was born about a 15 years earlier so as to appreciate and be present at the birth and growth of Grindcore. However the other half of me, which is probably more correct that the epitome of Grindcore lays in the future, not only do we have many of the early releases available to us legitimately or illegitimately, and in addition of being able to hear the historical archives of Grindcore, we have the new absolutely killer releases by bands such as Squash Bowels and Wormrot, and even the old bands are producing killer material.
1997 was a year similar to the present, relativley high unemployment, mass disillusionment with mainstream politics, a constant looming terrorist threat to name a few. However it was not all doom and gloom, for starters an amazing album was released called Damage 381 by Extreme Noise Terror.
For those of you who are not really familiar with ENT, they are basically one of the Founding Fathers of Grindcore and Crust-Grind, and a inspiration to a countless number of bands, both in the Punk and in the Grindcore genres. These old timers are veterans of the genre and have always maintained a high quality number of releases.

 This release has a number of interesting facts behind it, firstly the title of the release is called Damage 381 because the title track is 381 beats per minute, pretty damn fast if you think about it, thats just over 6 beats a second. Screw your crappy 220-320 bpm speed metal, this is what it is all about.  This is also the only release to feature the legendary Barney (Vox on Napalm Death) as the vocalist(The vocalist pictured is not Barney, but Phil Vayne I beleive). It is also their first release which was not Crust Punk, it is pretty Death Metal like, with no clear borrowings from Punk. In addition to this, to my knowledge I am the only person online to have reviewed this album.
All the tracks are the finest death metal, disregard whatever perceptions you have about early death metal, this band don't fit the general mold of death metal that existed at the time, they tear up their own brand of death metal that is invigorating and full of energy. The drumming is always top knotch, and plays the slower and fast pieces with a perfect precision, and occasionally releasing a furious bellow of heavy beats, that really immerses you into the tracks. The guitarist or plural I can't tell, also  ranges from standard riffs, solos and more complex rhythmic pieces, and pulls it off with a high level of professionalism, and refrains from doing what many technical death metal bands do and show off their musical talent at the cost of creating a good well grounded song. Barney's vocals shine through in this, very similar to what he uses in Napalm Death, but at times with that more coarse edge. When I say coarse edge it is that more fitting with the music and again adds another layer to the already smashing release.

Across the 10 tracks we have an half hour assault of some of the best British Death Metal on offer. The album features an instrumental which  is 45 minutes long and absolutely will tear up whatever room it is being vented into through your sound system. Although a fast and furious fury of an album there are time it slows down to prevent the release sound from a constant noise or drone. A track that definatley needs mention is Punishment Solitude, this is in fact my ring tone, and at 1 minute 15 seconds, with its speed and aggression I am convinced is more of a Grindcore song than a death metal song, but the rest of the release is without a doubt a fine Death Metal album. The following track is an absolute killer, Icon of Guilt and really is the elite of the album.
Damage 381 is UK death metal at it's finest, Extreme Noise Terror seem to be unhindered by their roots in Punk or early Grindcore, and have shaped a fine death metal album. The only element that is borrowed from Punk and Grind is the high level of Politisation and the poetic of sorts lyrics and song titles.I would hope given the political parallels with the situation in today and the 90's that this could be a catalyst for similar releases by other bands., but perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part. Get this release pronto, you are neglecting one of the greatest release from our small Island.
Rating 88/100

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