Dead Infection / CSSO – Split 7″ (1998)

May 12, 2012

This here post is about the fantastic Morbid Records classic split between goregrind legends Dead Infection and prolific noise/rock/goregrind/strange Japanese mentalists, CSSO. It was only ever pressed once in 1998 on black and is therefore obviously very much out of print.

When I discovered the wonders of the Discogs website this was one of the very first things I bought, being big into goregrind as a teenager I dreamt one day of owning all the original Dead Infection, Last Days of Humanity and GUT 7″ EPs and splits. So you can imagine it didn’t take much for me to part ways with hard earned cash to splash out on this underground gem. The early days of Discogs was unhealthy for my wallet, to say the least. I paid over the odds for this, being new to the “game” at the time, and even though I gotta say my copy is absolutely pristine in every single way imaginable, you can get this online now for little to no more than your average price for a 7″ split, so get out there and fecking buy it!

Dead Infection’s earlier work was a lot muddier and “dark” compared to their later, mile-a-minute blastfests. The production isn’t ever going to win any awards for clearest sound in this lifetime, but that doesn’t detract from the excellent grind that is up on offer here. People familiar with later Dead Infection I suggest you start with The Singles Collection or The Lethal Collection, both of which are a nice cross section of old shit and probably contain the material on this 7″ anyway. Or, if you fancying treating yourself, a lot of their early shit has finally been pressed on wax in the last few years. Tuck in, gore hounds.

CSSO on the other hand are a veritable mixed bag of craziness. Having being very eager to dig up underground gems back in the day I spent a lot of time on various music forums liaising with teh interwebz key opinionators, and on more than one occasion was I highly recommended CSSO / chastised for my n00bishness of not ever hearing CSSO. I never got around to checking out CSSO until I bought this, and I was surprised by their sound. It’s almost punky, and a million miles away from Dead Infection’s dirge-like maelstrom of death.