Archive for 2024

If this doesn’t make you want to move then I don’t know what will. Incredible crust punk music, with the right sprinkling of grindcore elements to keep things interesting. Production is a bit grim, as to be expected from a 1990 DIY release, but everything hangs in a nice balance and can be heard in the mix. The songs are fucking killer, and this EP makes me want to drink cider and run around in…

On Donec Mors Nos Separaverit, Hymen Holocaust further hone and perfect their snail-pace goregrind. The vibe in general just feels a bit more mature than the previous records and the crawling pace gives me a Mortician meets Satan’s Revenge On Mankind vibe, which is just absolutely beautiful in every single possible way. The production is organic and clear, and the buzzing guitars stand apart from the sewer monster vocals. The only (small) downside is that…

The single version of “Suffer The Children” contains the incredible track itself (obviously) but also “Siege Of Power” redone from Scum instead with Barney on vocals, in the band’s death metal style, which is much more in line with how you will experience the song live. I’m not sure what’s going with the final track, “Harmony Corruption”, which sounds like something I’d hear whilst playing the N64 version of Doom or some shit.

A bit more interesting than the Gethsemane Dubplate purely because it really feels like a set of brand new songs have been created from the original work, rather than just being a remix EP. Alpha and Omega transforms “Addis” from Advaitic Songs into a whole entire new entity.

You’d think this thing would show it’s age with the Bush references but it doesn’t really matter. We have two fucking killer grindcore bands head to head on one split. I’ve had this fucking 7″ for years, I keep losing it (lol) amongst the pile, but every time I break it out every few years, damn I enjoy it so much. Phobia are stalwarts of the scene, blasting away here with laser sharp precision and…

Absurd’s fairly recent reincarnation has been something of a return to form. What we have here is seemingly a completely different line-up from the “Wolf”-led era, and it shows. The core of the band’s sound remains true, but the execution is different. The band have always had a punk edge to their music, and I always just assumed that this was due to the closeness of their / their audience’s proximity to RAC music. Whether…

1184 was the first Windir record I ever heard, and I have to say it was a very beautiful experience. It’s black metal, but it’s the kind that seems to draw you in via its cover painting; majestic, sprawling tracks with a far more positive vibe than you’d initially expect. Highlights for me include the opening track “Todeswalzer”, “The Spiritlord” and closer “Journey To The End” which really blew my wig off when the metal…

If the stankin’ mush of the first Pharmacist full length is akin to Symphonies of Sickness, then this perplexing follow up is akin to Necroticism. It sounds trite to compare this entire band’s work to that of Carcass, but if you are even remotely familiar with Pharmacist then you’ll know why I’ve done this LOL Real talk though, I did not expect this record to be the way it is. Pharmacist are one of the…

The Wormrot stuff sounds very similar to their Dead EP, with a lot of the same tracks (is it even the same session?), but there’s the added bonus of the Diseptic stuff here. I don’t really know shit about Diseptic, they seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth, but they play raw, aggressive, noisy grind led with a deep, growling vocal attack.

The Dead EP, another very early release from grindcore stalwarts Wormrot, has marginally better “production” than the group’s initial 2007 promo demo release, but is still a harsh and inconsistent listen. For a band that would become so tight and “on the money” with their delivery, Dead has some interesting riffs / detours which seem to distract from the overall greatness. Nevertheless, the talent is clearly here, even from right at the beginning.

Wormrot’s very first demo from 2007. The quality is dog shit, as to be expected, and the tracks seem to be culled from various recording / rehearsal sessions but even here we can appreciate the talent on display. A lot of these tunes would go on to be rerecorded for the Dead EP in 2008 so this release is for the true grind historians and completionist freax only (unless you prefer terrible production then by…

One of the downsides of being in the UK is the slight difficulty of getting a hold of these flexi releases from Decibel magazine. On the other hand, do I really want a shelf full of these fucking things that are nearly as thin as paper? Anyway… Here we have three tracks which sound like they are from the Dirge sessions, so we’re talking peak “grind” Wormrot (not that I have a problem at all…

Urine Festival bring that bubbling vats of boiling piss vibe to the party that girls really like. If you wanna holler at a shawty and you want to show her that you’re freaky, play her this 7”. Guaranteed success! CID bring that same piss vats vibe to extra-tone / splittercore drum speeds mixed with oddly coherent riffs. Legit though, when I first heard this 7” back in I wanna say 2010 (I bought it from…

Infester, not to be confused with the older band of the same name, is one of the several hundred thousand Bobby Maggard goregrind projects. A split with NxVx was no doubt inevitable, considering how prolific both bands are. Infester is surprisingly coherent and switched on, with very busy and involved drum programming and excellent riff writing. Top it off with some goregrind vokill sickness and you’re onto a winner. NxVx session is a bit more…

Another one of my absolute favourite songs of all time. I am, at heart, an album guy, but when it comes to strong singles there are a core few which have been with me for my whole life. “True Faith”, not so much it’s b-side “1963”, is one of these incredible songs. The cold, mechanical drum machines and synthesisers mesh with soft vocals and odd bass leads, making a concoction which shouldn’t really work but…

One of the greatest singles of all time, which probably needs little to no introduction, let alone a review from me. I remember falling in love with this song as a kid, hearing it on the radio but having no idea who sang it. I loved the drum machines, the synths, the vocal delivery. It all felt so futuristic, so new, so fresh, yet also rather dark at the same time. Just absolutely brilliant.

Absolute goregrind perfection. Some of the best LDOH material ever. Relentless drums. Subterranean guitar and bass. Vocals like a volcano erupting through a sewage treatment plant. Almost unbeatable. Stoma are one of the most underrated goregrind bands ever. I say goregrind, even though they style themselves more as “pornogrind”, this is in aesthetic only and the music is 100% fucking savage blasting, buzzsaw strings and pitchshifter vokill annihilation. Seriously, both of these bands go so…

Holy shit this fucking split absolutely kills. I’ve not been all that hot on the most recent reformation of Last Days but this is an actual decent live recording, even if the snare is too low, it fucking seriously kicks ass. The session is from the Putrefaction In Progress era so we have absurd drumming and SMES-Erwin vocals which were so absolutely disgusting. SROM are great here too, with a snare sound that is one…

Intestinal Disgorge side sounds huge, I think this was Sociopath era so the band had really hit their stride at this point, churning out endless disgusting screaming goregrind. 4 minutes or so of really cool shit. I wish I could say the same for Lincoln Love Log, which is far messier / harsher in the production as well as delivery. Sounds live to me, or just shitty rehearsal room recording. Nonsensical noisecore seems to be…

Like Gut’s Odour Of Torture on bath salts, if I could be so bold. Whore Splattered Walls is 50 minutes solid of frankly quite sordid and terrifying, grinding mush, perpetuated by the group’s trademark “bitch squeals” and interrupted only by brief samples that further devolve the tone. Sick shit.

When I was younger I’ll admit that I perhaps did not “get” Consumer Electronics. Truthfully, I don’t really know if I “get” Consumer Electronics now but I find the “music” infinitely fascinating if nothing else. Are there just rambling diatribes of fever and madness? Or is it more than that? Can sense be made from all of this? I’m not entirely sure. Unsettling.

I am undecided on whether the art is fantastic or downright awful. Either way, it was the bold cover that drew me in to the world of Baby Woodrose. I came expecting Harsh Toke – style obnoxious stoner metal but instead found something a bit more nuanced. This debut is a record based primarily in fuzzed out garage rock, but the songs are delivered with a variety of vibes, styles and paces to call Baby…

Keys To The Astral Gates are one of my favourite black metal discoveries as of late. Quickly following up on their excellent debut release, this second EP gives us another short blast of stale, dead air; another crypt is opened and the stench of old bones and death escapes for the first time in centuries. Keys… play obscured black metal caked in layers of dust and analogue cassette noise, something which silly fucking idiots like…

Triptykon, whilst perhaps the logical continuation of Tom G Warrior’s sonic journey after the dissolution of Celtic Frost, was a band that I found difficult to get into. Even seeing them live around the release of this record didn’t manage to sell it to me. “Goetia” was massive (especially live), but that was as far as I went with Triptykon until recently. I’m not sure what happened, exactly. All I know now is that Eparistera…

Early Kreator is such a treat. It’s not totally dissimilar to early Sodom, but nowhere near as messy. Endless Pain is a fucking wild dose of thrash, however. Production is a bit thin (it probably sounds better on vinyl) but it’s not unworkable and the songs are just absolute classics.

I hate to break it to you, chief, but the vocals on this one, they are uhhh, not good. That aside, I feel like I’m listening to my mate’s band rehearse in one of their parent’s garages. I get it, it’s a vibe.

I got this off the back of Too Short To Handle #3, which I got through a trade many moons ago (and is also a 12″ rather than a 7″ like this). Real talk here – what happened to TSTH vol. 2? Was it ever released? Does it skip straight from 1 (this) to 3 as some sort of joke? How bizarre. Anyways, this little piece of white wax varies from the brutal to the…

Is this Pantera’s heaviest album? It certainly goes pretty fuggin’ hard at points. A clean as fuck production job by Terry Date and the lads allows for these heavy hitters (and the softer ones too) to really land. Bonus points for Seth Putnam guesties on track 1, although some of the later lyrics / themes are a bit cringe. Oh, and, the line “Lesbian love is accepted and right” in “Underground In America” is just…

More upbeat and driving than the first in the series. Proper get shit done kinda music, but with the usual unsettling underbelly that lurks beneath the surface of most of Mick’s music, like a great big fat fucker of a fish lurking barely visible beneath the surface of muddy, algae-filled pond water. Grimy!

Slow, paranoid, sinister beats from the absolute master of the style. Not too dissimilar to certain eras of Scorn, this first “Hednod Session” is well worth your time, just maybe not after you’ve smoked too much of the devil’s lettuce.

Mick gives Aaron Funk a run for his money here in this sophomore record under the Quoit moniker (how even the fuck do you say that name anyways? hah). With tracks averaging around the 7 minute mark, Properties can be a punishing listen, but rewarding in its own way for disciples of the fractured, scattered beats in the drum and bass / breakbeat worlds.

A stunning arrangement of two tracks from Davis’ “electric” era. There’s a lot of funk and rock elements in the mix here, and the opening minutes of the first track, “Right Off”, are gloriously cacophonous. Davis’ horn lurks throughout the soundscapes, sometimes coming to the foregroudn to shine, but often skulking in the back as the others in the ensemble do their thing. A fantastic, busy record, meaning that it’s 50+ minute run time absolutely…

Great little early demo from Covenant and really interesting to look back on now, knowing the direction that the band went in. Things are a bit rawer here than on the 1997 debut full-length, but not to the point where things become unlistenable. In isolation, it’s a fun 15 minute demo well worth checking out for those who are fans of 90s black metal, and it would no doubt be considered a forgotten classic had…

There’s a lot going on here, including a lot of electronic synthesizer elements to go alongside the more traditional madman-plays-a-piano-wickedly kind of instrumentation that would accompany black metal of this era. In that regard also, Covenant do excel with their sophamore record. Hearing Sarah Jezebel Deva here is a welcome “easter egg” for fans of early CoF. Between her main band, this and Mortiis’ Stargate she was doing very well for herself at this period…

A cold, dark and grimm early EP from the legendary Immortal, showcasing a transitional phase for the group as they, like basically everyone else in Norway at the time (yay, go hive mind!) moved from playing death metal to this new fangled “black metal” style. Production-wise, this obviously leaves a lot to be desired, but if you like to be nuts deep in reverb-drenched drums, then look no further, this is the release for you.

War Against All is not a bad album by any stretch of the imagination, but it does come across as a little uninspired. At this point it does feel like an Immortal album for the sake of being an Immortal album, which is a huge contrast to Northern Chaos Gods, which burst back onto the scene with a vital and renewed life force. Personally, I think War Against All would have worked better as a…

Blasting goregrind with a fat and chunky sound. Really great guitar work and vocals, which are – of course – of the disgusting pitchshifted variety. Reading the song titles makes me feel a little bit ill, if I’m honest, but I don’t really know what I expected there. The one down side is that the blastbeats are a little uninspired, its the same beat mostly every track, slightly off with a… uhhhh how can I…

Ahhhhhhhhh fucking hell lads Demonaz is back! Can you feel the shred!!!!! Northern Chaos Gods bolts out the gate with the title track, swarming at you like some bastard lovechild of both 90s Immortal and 2000s Immortal. At first I was unsure how I felt about Abbath’s exclusion from this release, but Demonaz and Horgh (and Mr. Tagtgren of course) have really pulled out the stops here. There are some cool callbacks here like “Gates…

A decent set of songs with a strong, clear production. Unfortunately, there is nothing super memorable here. Your mileage may vary, and whilst I found no real fault with the material on display, I could not draw anything from it that I found to be truly inspiring, which is a shame.

I’m no expert on the intricate discography of Satanic Warmaster but this compilation brings together the Revelation EP and the …Of The Night EP / single, and expands on them with a couple of extra tracks: one it seems, for each session / era. I have this record to thank for introducing me to the stunning …Of The Night release, which is one of my favourite things from the project, but the other tracks are…

Probably up there with the best Satanic Warmaster material. There’s a coldness, and a rawness to this that is missing from a lot of the later recordings (if you would allow me the use of these massively overused terms) that permeates every second of this fantastic record.

PHD (lol) is, if my memory serves me, a fantastic side project / off shoot of Chainsaw Dissection. It’s a little rough around the edges production wise, but other than that this thing fucking slays when it comes to bringing shovelfuls of brutality. For those in search of truly disgusting brutal drum machine goregrind and / or death metal, please look no further than this. Your prayers have been answered!

How this was released the same year as the cumbersome Conqueror is anyone’s guess; this EP brings out the absolute best in Jesu. Broadrick’s hazy, dream-like songwriting can unfurl in its full glory and really soar. I had this on vinyl for many years, I must have sold it because I can’t find it anywhere, which is a shame as it’s really grown on me in my old age (ha).

Grausamkeit has this uncanny ability of making some of the most beautiful black metal out the shittiest sounds. This demo contains some of the most lo-fi, decrepit black metal you will find, but played in such a way that mesmerises you and draws you in, wanting more. It’s like Mozart got given a £5 Casio keyboard off of eBay.

I checked this album out due to pure morbid curiosity rather than anything else, and I’ve got to say, it’s not as bad as it’s made out to be. Is it the kind of hip hop that I like to listen to? Absolutely not. The production is hideous, IMO. Well crafted, but hideous. That being said, I’m more impressed by 69’s verses than I ever expected to be, and some of the guest spots (including…

Like latter era Death on intramuscular steroids, getting into a fight with Nocturnus at a Voivod gig. Voivod have stopped their show to watch the fight unfold in as near silence as a fight can happen. The Voivod guys are having brewskies and a sneaky joint. “It’s not bad, eyy?” Asks Snake from Voivod to nobody in particular, but his colleagues and audience are too enthralled by the chaotic mess unfolding before them.

Drudkh’s first album is magical. I was not expecting such a gentle, atmospheric creation. “Sunwheel” (yikes) is gorgeous, as is closing track “The First Snow”, but in all honestly the whole album is just fantastic. The production is minimal but not grim enough to put a dampener on any of the performers, and everything is audible and balanced well. If I had one thing to note that could be seen as a negative it would…

The final album with Abbath on guitars and vocals. I saw the band live around this time and I must admit that they were fantastic. Anyway, All Shall Fall doesn’t shine as bright as the main Abbath-written period of Heart Of Winter through to Northern Darkness, but is a welcome bonus that came several years after the main streak ended.

Everything is kinda buried beneath a layer of mud but once your ears adjust to the lo-fi production you can appreciate this release a bit more. It almost feels like you’re listening in on something that you’re not supposed to be hearing. What Existence In The Age Of Decay lacks in clarity and melody it makes up for in brute force and atmosphere. A strange concoction, for sure.

If I had to describe this album in as few words as possible I would say: it’s fucking class. Traditional black metal riffery underpins a punky (dare I say) black’n’roll-infused set of songs. I don’t mean BnR as in, endless boring ass d-beats, I mean genuinely sleazy, head-nodding tunes that invoke hazy memories of the exploitation world of the 1970s, helped along of course by the amazing artwork and that inherit Finnish sense of melody…

The first few tracks here originally appeared one year earlier on the split with Eluvium, only here they come with a few additional alternate takes to fill out the run time. I can’t help but notice the original split art was a photograph of either the Menkaure pyramid at Giza or perhaps one of the smaller satellite pyramids, yet this EP release has a photograph of the much larger and imposing Khafre pyramid. As someone…

Y’know, it’s real sad boy hours when one of the lads throws on Conqueror. That’s the end of the party vibes, my friend. But that’s okay, because generally, Jesu is a very good project. Conqueror, despite hailed as Jesu’s masterpiece in some circles, is a transitional record for the band, as Broadrick led the project from the super-heavy style of the debut through to the lighter, more synth-reliant gazey songwriting that would come. This transition…

I was recommended this as “one of the best video game soundtracks of all time”. Oh boy, can you imagine my disappointment. This is not a bad soundtrack by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m failing to see why anyone would put on any kind of pedastal. There are some interesting moments, for sure, but that’s about it.

In all seriousness, Hybrid Nosebloom is one of the more listenable slices of electronic tomfoolery from everyone’s favourite bird-loving noise maniac, Merzbow. To say that this is not as “harsh” as other releases of his is perhaps incorrect, as if you turn this thing up loud enough it’s gonna excoriate the inside of your skull and it’s gonna do a damn fine job at exactly just that LOL – but Hybrid Noisebloom is perhaps not…

Chunky, blasting grindcore from one of the modern fatherland’s for the genre, that being of course, Czechia. Production is fatty like butter being mixed into mashed potatoes, and the music sounds like you are gargling rich gravy with meaty chunks floating about inside it. LOL. All of the track names are dumpling-related and are pretty hilarious once translated. If you don’t take your grind too seriously this is well worth a listen.

This is like the Muslimgauze version of Scorn’s Deliverance. The whole thing is just folded over on itself over and over and over and reworked into different sounds (at least, that’s how it feels). It’s easy to lose yourself in this half hour of sheer atmosphere, which is really quite sinister.

Beautifully composed but somewhat typical sounding black metal from the brilliant mind of both Mrtva Vod and Këkht Aräkh coming together to create a fragile cacophony of weeping riffs, blast beats and screeching vokills from deep within forests unknown. Slava Ukraine!

This has gotta be up there with the greatest death metal records of all time. I wouldn’t neccessarily call Autopsy, or even Mental Funeral in particular, “slept on”. But when people talk about the greats, early Cannibal Corpse, Death or Morbid Angel gets brought up in most common conversations. Where is the motherfucking love for Mental Funeral, I ask? This shit is truly in a league of its own. And whilst I don’t think Autopsy…

I’m over here in my rainy, shithole part of the world, wondering how the fuck Re-Animated Dead Flesh gets such a bad rap compared to the other Mortician records? I do understand that folks might have been sick to the back teeth of Mortician by the time a 5th full length came out, but damn this shit fucking rules so hard. Dead Flesh easily has the best production of any Mortician full-length, with a much…

Got this thing turned all the way up on my stereo to hear that gut-rattling meatgrinder bass beneath the drums and riffs, but every time the vocals come in, they fart out of the speakers at such a low frequency that it nearly rattles the poor speakers onto the floor! Why the vocals are mixed so incredibly high in the bass range I am not sure, but one assumes it must have something to do…

The first Mortician release I ever bought, think I paid £13 for this from HMV in like 2006 or whatever, felt really expensive at the time. Even though this was one disc, it felt like it went on FOREVER. Hacked Up For BBQ can be a brutal listen in of itself, but with Zombie Apocalypse tacked on the end the journey is a long one! I remember thinking the sampling in Zombie Apocalypse was just…

It is unlikely that DIS will ever top Hatred For Mankind. That album was, as people like to say about these kinds of things, like lightning in a bottle. After the somewhat mixed reception of Widowmaker, DIS’ third “full length”, in this case a collaberation with the excellent Gnaw Their Tongues, is I think as close as we are ever going to get to that intense sonic explosion that was their debut. The production is…

ugggghhhhhhhhhhh! For when you need a shot of Autopsy real quick, real fast, nothing will slake your thirst quite like Fiend For Blood. Forewarning listeners at the time of the inclusion of short, grindy songs on Acts Of The Unspeakable (an album that drags along with the pace of a corpse otherwise), Fiend For Blood is a slight change of direction from the beautiful intricacy of Mental Funeral (especially in regards to the drumming), heading…

Fractured, bizarre, overtly sexual and kinda like a bad acid trip taking place in a seedy Village nightclub. I’m sure there’s a higher purpose to all of this that’s going right over my head but the songs were entertaining despite what can only be a deliberately nonchalant vocal delivery. The electronics are the highlight here, scattered all over the place with little thought or care to continuinity, smoothness or the desire to relisten after surviving…

I was three years old when this came out so I won’t pretend to understand the cultural impact that The Prodigy Experience had upon its release. I do however, remember just how much of an institution The Prodigy were by the latter end of the 90s, I vividly remember “Firestarter” coming out and being on the TV and so on, but Prodigy’s deeper electronic roots always interested me more, even as a kid. Experience is…

Acts Of The Unspeakable feels slower and more torturous in its pace than its predecessors, but it still has its moments of speedy goodness or unhinged manic shredding. In fact, “Ugliness And Secretions” back to back with “Orgy In Excrements” would have you thinking that I was telling porkies about the aforementioned slower pace but alas Acts does feel slightly more of a lurcher than before, and in more ways than one. That cryptic mention…

Muddy, messy, noisy black metal. Nada Brahma has the thrashy, raw elements that compromise 1st wave BM or to a degree war metal, but also converge here to create a chaotic, hellish listen.

A surprisingly solid and consistent collection of remixes, from a time period where remix albums are usually a death knell for creativity and are not exactly conducive to a good time during playback either (lol). Remanufacture however, genuinely does rework the original songs into something completely and utterly new. Its well worth giving it a go, unless you have some sort of allergy to 90s electronics. This thing is so 90s that wearing one of…

Madness, sheer madness I tells ya! Another band from the “Czech school” of goregrind and brutal death, with spastic drumming and lightening fast riffs. I usually use the term “farmyard vocals” as a cover all for the kind of stuff that Mincing Fury have going for them, but truly the vocal efforts here are more like “freakshow vocals” than any equestrian or bovine equivalent. Lovely production too, which makes this thing kick like a mule,…

Ah, Gallhammer. Bass, guitar noise, and loose drumming. Truly, a band after mine own heart. This shit doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it’s pretty damn obtuse and in your face. Ill Innocence is an interesting blend of styles and has a surprisingly sinister streak running through it. Very cool.

On paper this is stronger and more promising than both of the previous albums, but also devoid of any stand out tracks and, let’s be honest, it doesn’t really contain much in the way of “black metal”. Whatever “black metal” means to you, and how long Dimmu Borgir have not been “true” to the style is debatable, but Eonian is almost completely devoid of the genre in its entirety. Despite the huge sound and excellent production, I…

Gut’s first – and by far their best – full length record, where the band mastered their microblasts of fractured filth. The groove level is off the charts here, something which countless copycat bands have attempts to seize and have failed. Expect long, intrusive samples of various strains of perversity from the vaults, up against silly vocal explosions and some of my favourite production ever for a gore/porn grind album. The drums are crystal clear,…

I’ll take jazz records that look like rock and / or metal records please, chief! The veritable concoction of sounds on display here were far from what I expected from such a shitty album cover (which looks like something you’d see on the side of a truck towing a rusty fairground ride). Using my limited palette of descriptive language, in a short sentence I could sum this up as being fairly similar to the “electric”…

Strong EP from an interesting band. It’s rare that the “sketchy” side of black metal meets the more uhhh, Deafheaven side of the coin (at least to my knowledge) but alas here we are. There is a morose quality to the riffs, and I’m not talking in a DSBM kind of way, I’m talking in a emo / post-(whatever) kind of way. Oddly enough, this works quite well, I must admit. Production is clear enough…

Genuinely sounds more like something that you would hear at a renaissance fair than as the soundtrack to someone’s D&D campaign. The instrumentation is so beautiful and varied it would perhaps be too reductive to label this music solely as dungeon synth.

Solid but puzzling compilation of “early” Edelweiss stuff, including the White Flower Power / Yeast Of The Mind single, as well as the self titled LP and a few tracks off of the following record, Behind Our Masks. I say it’s “puzzling” because 4 tracks into the run of self-titled tracks, we get the two tracks from Behind Our Masks, before the record closes out with the finale from the self-titled, which makes the track…

Side A is a bit kooky, with delivery not quite living up to the imagery and clever name (check out the original tape art for “White Flower Power”), but the B-side “Yeast Of The Mind” is absolutely brilliant. It is a really cool occult rock song, and genuinely sounds like it is from another era. Comparisons to BMSS are perhaps too easy, but I’ll throw it in just incase the sleeve of this EP doesn’t…

Interesting vibes, deeply entrenched in the BMSS / Assassination school of “Nazi hippy” occult rock stuff. On this debut full-length, there are some very strong moments for sure, but it feels like things could fall apart at any moment. Any sense of timekeeping or togetherness as a band “unit” feels very fragile indeed, but oddly that’s almost part of the charm.

It is truly difficult for me to comprehend how much of a failure Compton was. I mean, I’m not alone in this line of thinking but it is not a universally held opinion. In fact, I should instead be writing about my surprise at how well this record has been received over the years. With both The Chronic and Chronic 2001 being up there in my favourite rap albums of all time, upon release I…

I feel like I’ve heard a thousand records like this yet John Maus truly still stands alone. Such a minimal, nonchalant approach to electronic pop is delivered with a shrug and a post-punk indifferent style of vocal, but it is a delivery that Maus well and truly makes his own with this record. This things is backloaded in my opinion, with the best tracks coming in the final third, rounding out with one of my…

It’s hard to shake the feeling that over the last few years Goatmoon has more or less completely lost their original identity. Yes, obviously bands and artists change with time, but recent offerings such as this or Stella Polaris could literally be ANY dime a dozen black metal band but with BG’s vocals over the top of it. We’ve seen Goatmoon come a long way since Death Before Dishonour, but evolving into a homogeneous pulp…

A collection of various early Earth recordings, including the entirety of the Extra-Capsular Extraction EP, as well as I believe the first demo from 1990. As the compilation goes on, into the earliest songs composed under the Earth moniker, there are parallels that can be drawn not only from riffmasters like Iommi but also with early Swans and other such noisesome ilk. An interesting look at this group’s primitive beginnings.

Hard to beat in my eyes, especially because of side B’s monolithic “Ouroboros is Broken”, one of the most powerful, hypnotising and mesmerizing drone tracks of all time IMO. Yes, it has drums, but if I need a “drone” “hit” then nothing really satisfies as much as the repetitive dirge of side B of this EP. One of the first Earth records I ever got on vinyl and it’s remained one of my favourites ever…

“Sacrilegious Scorn” and possibly “Serpentine Offering” aside, this album is awash in a sea of mediocrity. Every single track blurs together into one segment, and I feel like I’m listening to the same thing over and over. The lack of textural variety is dumbfounding for a band of such immense musical talent. Production wise, things are fantastic. Boasting a big budget sound, and for this record the addition of the absurdly brilliant Hellhammer on drums,…

I’m a simple man: I see nylons on a harsh noise record, I press play. I’m not really sure why but the two things just seem to go hand-in-hand aesthetically. I’m not about to deep dive into the pleasing subconscious link between the two things, but I will say that this randomly-found compilation is a highly enjoyable listen, combing efforts from more well-known names of the scene with more obscure artists. At around 80 minutes…

Another fantastic piece of work by Cat System Corp. Perhaps not as iconic as News At 11, but no less enjoyable or brilliant for it, Palm Mall Mars is a solid hour of the chillest of the chill vaporwave, at least in the original form and aesthetic of vaporwave. I’m no expert, but other artists have taken the genre in far more ambient and space-out directions. Palm Mall Mars is similar, but retains the dream-like,…

Cool hardcore punk with jacked riffs and with a super organic feel to the production. Nice bit of d-beat, shouty screamy madness and whatever those kinda back and forth two part riffs are called where you bounce around like fuck in the pit. I dunno what the fuck I’m talking about. This is great, though.

Unfortunately nowhere near as suave or sophisticated as the album sleeve promises. I have heard a Slayyyter release in the past so I should have know what to expect here, alas I let the Roxy Music lookin ass cover lead me in under a false sense of security. Granted, she has matured musically from dreck such as a “Daddy AF” but this is still vapid nonsense. Cool if you’re into that. I’m not lol.

A1 Yola starts strong, but I lose my way as the record goes on, which is a recurring theme with Esham records of this era. That being said, I feel like Esham is more confident on this record than his previous two, the whole vibe seems different and whilst the production is firmly in “later” territory, some of the songs are fucking great. We also get some dirty synths, bass lines and beats bubbling up…

Internally Mutilated play mama’s gooooood ol’ analogue gorenoise, drowned in a sea of tape hiss and bad samples from some Faces Of Death-sounding clips. The samples are like ligaments between muscle and bone (is that right? I’m not a medical expert lol) and make the bazillion songs on offer here flow together in one giant session, which is just lovely. Anal Birth being the same but more of the blown out speaker style variety, where…

Methadone Abortion Clinic are one of the more underrated goregrind projects out there, I think. I’m not sure if they are even still active, but this split is further evidence as to why I consider them so excellent. They seem to blend the slower groovy gore “bulldozer” stuff with more traditional forms of goregrind, and not to mention the sick, bubbling pitchshifter vokills. Biological Monstrosity are not too dissimilar, actually. For the sake of this…

A live session from shitfun is backed with a tinnitus-inducing selection of tracks from Industrial Holocaust. Somehow, the live part of this actually sounds chunkier and better produced (figure that out), but Industrial Holocaust bring the Assuck / early Nasum / early Brutal Truth vibes (can you tell by their name? Haha) which are an interesting foil to Shitfun’s more turgid affair.

Trachoma is a lesson in brutal gore done very, very well indeed but PNH, despite the thinner production, legitimately sounds like bloody shit flying from your broken ass at 197mph. Truly, utterly disgusting. If the cover picture hasn’t already indicated, this split is for perverted goregrind fiends only. A lovely little gem for those already down the rabbit hole!

Really cool groovy grind with a sick sound; clanking, horrible bass and heavy percussion. Only let down is the somewhat uninspiring vocal approach, but this guy is good at lows so I can’t throw any shade. Bands like this are a dime a dozen but this record was a lot of fun. I’d really like to see these guys play live. I can imagine a beach ball / various other inflatables kinda party at the…

To say that Sextrash fell off would probably be incorrect, because they were never “on” to begin with. The third record by this project however, apparently 14 years after the previous full length all the way forward in 2006, is a shadow of the former sounds of the band. It may be the “modern” production, it may be the shtick is wearing thin, or it (probably) is a combination of both these things. The hideously-titled…

Schnauzer is a trip, as always. Not sure what I can add here that I’ve not already said before, but solid, chugging Ohio “scrap metal” underpins the various outpourings of madness that Jim puts us through. Sloth is a bit more disjoined, with samples and dare I say “acoustic” passages meandering between blurs of manic noisecore and more uhh “traditionally” paced songs of varying styles and genres. All in all, a fun split that doesn’t…

Let’s be honest, the only reason I found this record was because of Sabbath’s cover of “Evil Woman”. Either way, I’m glad for that bridge for bringing me to the world of Crow’s Music (see what I did there?). Either way, this is a glorious time capsule to explore, taking you deep into the worlds of blues and hard rock, where the style was converging slowly to become something else entirely. Such a pleasant and…

I’ve become rather fond of this album over the last few months. I love the floaty, ethereal nature that’s pinned down by the warm 70s full band production. This limitation does stop the band drifting too far off into the ether, but at the same time they refuse to stay still. Across the multitude of songs and vibes on this thing, it’s difficult to pin down the performers to commit them to a groove or…

Excellent, classic dungeon synth release from a now legendary project. Mournful, evocative and beautifully composed. The right balance of active instrumentation and dreamy atmospherics.

As with, well, pretty much any The Day Everything Became Nothing release, expect a solid as fuck but somewhat no-frills approach to the “dry heave” school of chest-crushing goregrind. I guess some folk refer to it as “bulldozer” gore, and CBT and Guinea Pig are great examples of contemporaries that share this sound. TDEBN however, eschew the overtly sexual themes usually associated with such brutal forms of music, and instead apply a fairly cryptic, simplistic…