Stench Price - Stench Price (2016)

Considered a “grind revolution” on their official Bandcamp page, this mostly Russian lineup contains several guests in order to make a sort of grind that is pretty much unparalleled to anything that I've ever heard in my life. Considering that I'm really picky with grind, that's a great thing. Featuring members of Escapethecult, Kamlath, Nebesbiesnami, Necrophagist and others, this three-piece is bound for some sort of unknown and bizarre glory that you'll never understand until you've gotten this record in your hands. It's quite short at just a litte under twenty minutes, but considering “The Vitality Slip” manages to play for an entire five minutes, that's a Nobel Prize moment for the genre. The best way to describe an album like this is to take it song by song, and we'll start out with “Living Fumes” which features Danny Lilker of Brutal Truth. The track starts out like black metal, before it teases us with hints of lounge music. Lilker's vocals sound absolutely scathing here and the track pummels before it goes right into elevator music. Guitars are played furiously, almost in a thrashy atmosphere which leads into machine-gun drum explosions, right before bringing us back to an elevator. It makes me think that there's a war inside of a shopping mall, and though people in the mall are fighting off and being devoured by ravenous monsters, there's still one group of people who are just patiently waiting to get to the floor where all the hell is taking place. Hints of solos appear, as well as one massive breakdown. Next we have “Furnaces Burn” which features “Revolting” Rogga Johansson of Paganizer (and several other bands, like the one in quotations.) This one is a little short, but it delivers a fast and heavy approach regardless of a hint of elevator music. They could have done a little better on this one I feel, Rogga deserved a much stronger track. I'm not really familiar with Karin Utomo of High Tension, but she appears on “Pressure” by which there's a video for. Being female, we actually get a little bit of a clean feminine vocal approach in sections, but when she's not doing that, she's tearing your fucking head off. This woman is simply ravenous, but at least she has the good nature to apologize for it. Next we have “4.27.15” which features Matt Phelps of Cynic who is proving his age here, unfortunately. It sounds like Phelps is trying his best Schuldiner impression, with the days of monumental debut Focus long behind him. It almost feels like a punk performance and more or less a common grind track. You wouldn't even know it was a member of Cynic if you hadn't looked on the Bandcamp page.

“The Genocide Machine” features Dave Ingram of Hail Of Bullets, and it more or less seems to back the death metal frontman rather well. His heavy growls give the drudging track just what it needs. There's some definite experimentation within the riffs, but then it flows right into blistering death metal where the performance just feels right. The album ends with what I think is it's best track, featuring an unexpected merit in Child Bite frontman Shawn Knight. I saw Child Bite back in '14 and they didn't really catch me, but I absolutely love this performance. I'm reminded of a cross between Mike Patton and Dave Brockie, which sounds as mind-blowing as you'd expect. The elevator music (ahem) bossa-nova that is featured here, actually works very well too. I'd love for project mastermind Peter Shallmin to make a bossa-nove album as well, as I quite like that kind of music and it's relaxing. I love the fact that he can create complete and total chaos, a veritable shitstorm of unruly fucking hell – but I can really get into these cheery tunes as well. Also, the ending of this one is pretty masterful. I almost feel like Brockie's there and it means a lot. Knight almost channels him right towards the end of this one, and I love it. I'm pretty sure that the former GWAR frontman would have given his blessed flatulence on this project and that makes it well worth checking out. Unless you've got a time machine, you'll have to wait until the end of November for this one. But don't fret folks, as it's definitely worth it for the most part. “The Vitality Slip” is worth the price of admission alone.

(6 Tracks, 18:00)

8/10

Traffic Death/Lurking Corpses - Split Personality (2016)

I don't review much punk here, because I frankly can't fucking stand most of it, or that scene for that matter. Especially now that social justice culture has worked it's way into the scene. That being said, this is a split between two bands from Des Moines and Ft. Wayne with both offering a different approach to punk than I've heard before. Traffic Death started out with a pretty common punk flair, right up there with the Ramones or Misfits, especially in the “whoa-oh” sections. Then they decided to turn a song about their frustration with remakes and new shit into a rather scathing punk cut. The riffs were pretty derivative of the punk genre, but the frontman offered an absurdly harsher vocal approach that I quite enjoyed.

Next we have the equally scathing Lurking Corpses, which aren't strangers to me as I've reviewed them before – but this time around they're experimenting with thick, heavy bouts of doom as well as some death metal growls on “Human Scar.” It's also the longest cut on the disc. Considering the length of this thing, that's not long. After that, they just go into fast numbers that come in and out and don't really leave a mark. It's like when an artist just kind of says, “Eh, fuck it – we'll just write two quick tracks and clal it a day.” But that's what they did. It's a decent disc with slight bits of promise and even though I don't really like a lot of punk, I'll accept this as a relatively decent disc.

(5 Tracks, 8:00)

6/10

Sunlight's Bane/Geist - Split (2016)

This split features two tracks each from Michigan based Sunlight's Bane, as well as Englanders Geist. The difference is that both bands are a bit different than each other, with the guest being a little more intriguing to me than the mainstay act.

Sunlight's Bane starts out the disc with what is an absolutely grueling round of pure musical chaos. It's pretty damn rambunctious folks, with influences ranging from brutal death to black metal and even some core semblances. I'd definitely consider it a flavor of extreme grind, with two vocalists ready to tear your ears off and throw them in a waste receptacle. There IS a little bit of a punk influence here, but only if that punk was fiercely injected with the very blood of a living inferno. Sunlight's Bane is what happens when you mix punk in with hellfire and makes for something that I'd consider leagues better than ninety percent of the punk music I've heard recently. We at The Grim Tower hope that they'll make plenty more of this, as I am all ears.

As for Geist, I'm not going to sit here and trash them. Let's give these hardcore punks a respectable observation. While not as extreme as Sunlight's Bane, they still manage to kick up enough piss n' vinegar to make a mark. The drums frantically pound throughout the release, fronted by a man who reminds me of Jamey Jasta at his angriest. I mean, it's not as preferable to the inhuman approach of the other act, but I think it has just enough firepower going for it to a make a statement. It does sound a little bit more realistic though and may bring listeners back down to earth after surviving the horrifying abyss that was Sunlight's Bane. The drums I feel are the best part of the performance, but at times they are also the only thing that I can hear on the record and even work to drown out the guitars (and vocals even.)

Obviously, I'm going to praise the hell out of Sunlight's Bane as far as this split is considered. But both bands are definitely worth checking out and I'd recommend this split to anyone looking for a short and raucous shot of pure fucking adrenaline.

(4 Tracks, 10:34)

8/10

Konflict/Reek Of The Unzen Gas Fumes - Split (2016)

I've been waiting a long time to review this split, which actually came out sometime last year. The first act is a black/death/grind/noise/industrial act called Konflict from Sri Lanka. We know there are three members in the act, but have no idea as to who does what, or what bands they've been in prior to the act – nothing. Yet when you hear a band like this that mixes industrialism with fiery black metal riffs, thick drum abrasions and a sort of gurgling that sounds like they've captured a beast from the Necronomicon and gave it the fucking microphone (seriously, this thing sounds inhuman as hell, what are they up to in Sri Lanka?) you start to get a bit curious. The sound is obviously raw, but it seems to fit the absolutely heinous nature of the material, which is by far unlike anything I've ever heard. I'm telling you folks, if you put the fucking Cloverfield monster on the vocals, this is what it would sound like. This is beyond the normal gurgle... this is something, I just can't even fucking describe. Summon a literal demon from the abyss, give him a microphone and this is what you get. This is the kind of sound that would preachers shit their pants (Not sure if that includes Jesse Custer though) and convince religious congregations that the devil is real. The interesting thing about these demonic pieces is that they all have relatively intelligent titles. For instance, we've got “To Erase The Eelam Parasite” , “Decoding The Aryan Survival Cipher”, “Epignetic Hate Transmission” and others. Sometimes throughout the twenty-four minute EP we'll even get utterances that sound like they're on two different dimensional planes. What in the hell is going on over there? Sometimes we're even barreled over with torrents of noise. Huge mounds of atmospheric noise such as the album's opener “Aryan Cytoarchitecture and The Handle Of A Weapon Or Tool” or the aforementioned “Decoding The Aryan Survival Cipher.” I'm not sure if these guys play live, but they're definitely not the kind of act you hear everyday. I'm rather quite impressed and I hope that we'll get to hear more from this awesome trio in the future. Maybe somewhere deep within this thick monstrosity lies the future of grind itself. That remains to be seen.

The next act we have on the split is Reek Of The Unzen Gas Fumes, which is a blackened grindcore act of complete insanity whose lyrics seem to be based on anti-Buddhism, sadism and radical Japanese nationalism according to Metal Archives. That third one's a real whammy, especially if you're a US citizen because of rather obvious reasons. From what I've researched, some of these right-wing (yes, they have right and left winged political movements in Japan as well) movements are tied directly to the yakuza, which doesn't surprise me. In any case, the approach the listener is getting here is one of force, fire and absolute insanity. It's not always as crazy as “Dehumanizing Cesspool For Future of Humanity” as “Doku” displays with it's weirdness and much slower tempo, but for the most part these guys feature an extremely raspy vocalist that melds with static in a way that he sounds like an angered television set. We do know that INHKR is behind the guitar, bass and drum programming and that 9300FGB is the vocalist, but no one knows what Warcrime Rapist does. At any rate, this an entirely interesting grindcore act with enough depth and originality to stand out among their peers. I realize that while I've mentioned it already, I need to reiterate that these guys are completely fucking insane as far as the performance is concerned and the complete polar opposite of what we're seeing portrayed as Japanese heavy music as far as the media is concerned.

This is the extremely heavy underground shit that you were looking for and you'll be extremely happy to have one of only 66 copies in print of this cassette only release. You'd also be extremely lucky. I'm going to give this the highest possible score I can give as I've heard nothing quite like it in the grindcore scene, but it was released quite a while ago and I can't spotlight it as I normally would have. Just take it as a sign that you need to find a way to get a hold of this split somehow. Some of the material from both of these bands is surprisingly available on Bandcamp, but this split cassette is limited and not even I have a copy of it, just a digital promo with a low bit-rate quality. Even so, that's enough for me to prove to you that these bands are fucking phenomenal in the grind scene and you've really got to hear them both for yourself. I tend to like Konflict more, but wouldn't turn down either act. The Grim Tower highly recommends this split EP, so definitely give it a listen. You'll find a way.

(18 Tracks, 46:00)

10/10

Rotten Sound - Abuse To Suffer (2016)

The new album from Finland's Rotting Sound is just as we'd expect, an absolute molten mass of hatred and monstrosity and hatred with a socially charged rhetoric that boils down to “this corrupt world sucks, but we put up with it.” Even if these guys do indeed, “put up with it” they certainly make their grievances known with this jaw-dropping monster of an album. This isn't just grindcore, it actually has a sense or purpose and makes for an approach that comes of as in-your-face as is humanly possible. These gentlemen are clearly pissed about several things and they more or less want you to know it. The drums pound, the guitars rage, the vocalist screams and growls and grunts and groans and everything in between. This record seeks to rearrange your face with a soldering iron and that's just what it's going to do. Sometimes that approach is speedy, while other times it carries a bit of doom. These guys aren't glued to one style, which makes this record so damn memorable. There aren't any clean vocals, black metal tremolos or even hints of clean melody. The whole damn record sounds like a whirling tornado or piss and vinegar that is headed straight to your town in a violent fury of fists and feet. It is by far the literal action of violence as put into practice by sound. If you want to know what the equivalent of getting your ass beaten sounds like in the form of music, than simply put on this record and revel in the fact that you won't be able to sit down for a few days afterwords. Rotten Sound fans know what to expect, and I can assure you that you'll not be disappointed with this offering. Abuse To Suffer is literally some of the best grindcore I've heard all year, and that's coming from a person that doesn't really care for grindcore all that much. Definitely pick up this record, as it's worth it not just in terms of brutality or violence, but in terms of ingenuity. I'm very pleased with the performance here and certainly recommend it to all those unhappy with life and their current predicaments.

(16 Tracks, 28:00)

9/10

Piss Vortex - Future Cancer (2016)

I find it funny that while looking up some information on this act, I see “for booking or complaints, contact us.” Complaints? What kind of complaints could possibly arise from the sound of what seems a war in the underworld? These Dutch grinders released their record on the first of April, but Future Cancer is absolutely no joke. Between the fierce barrages of drums and guitars as well as the positively unruly vocals, the listener will feel as if they are being flattened by an oversized vice. These eleven minutes of mayhem will sound a lot longer than it actually is, yet it will feel like your eardrums are splitting apart, along with the rest of your world. I don't know if it's death, thrash, black, punk or prog, but I know that it has a little bit of all those things and makes for a sound that will wake anyone up from a sound sleep when played loudly enough. Piss Vortex make the kind of music that you'd be able to scare the shit out of people with, it's the kind of stuff that would jolt people awake and make them fiercely aggravated with you upon such a rude awakening. That being said, the disc does observe some lighter sections during it's final track, “Patterns Of Repetition.”

As you know, I'm not the biggest fan of most grind and find it a tough genre to get into, but there's something about the grind that these guys make that allows such a performance to stand out. They still aren't recognized by Metal Archives and I've no sane idea why, as there's enough chaos and metallic sensibility here to classify as such, but those guys have some very weird guidelines as to what classifies and you'd be debating until the cows came home, left again and then decided to come back home for the second time, before the crew over there came to some kind of agreement. Perhaps it's not true metal, but it is raucous, insane and the equivalent of madness. It's very hard to describe what is a tornado in a box, a hurricane in a box, a storm of blood and hellfire stuffed into a little eleven-minute box... but that's indeed what it is and I'd definitely give it a listen.

(6 Tracks, 11:00)

8/10

Blood - O Agios Pethane (2016 Reissue)

More often than not, I review brand new releases. Yet every once in a while, I get something that many would consider a relic and this record from German death metal/grind legends Blood is exactly that. What we're getting stuffed down our gullet here is essentially a mix of death, thrash and grind that delivers exactly twenty songs at a little over half an hour. Though it isn't the kind of half an hour that you'll easily cast aside, especially if you love absolute carnage and chaos delivered in the same way that several similar acts in today's metal scene seem to think is something new. But these guys were playing this kind of shit since those guys were in diapers and a record like this one really shows where much of their style came from. Aside from the pounding drums and garbage-mouthed vocals, you're also getting some unexpected and rather necessary doom riffs, which tend to make the whole thing a little more foreboding. The very fact that this record doesn't stick to one damn tempo and only one damn tempo, makes it very interesting to me. These guys really could have gone out there in '93 and played the kind of record that many younger bands give us today, where every song goes a million miles an hour without any real thought to the performance other than to make it “brutal.” Although the disc is brutal and offers just as much speed I feel, but there's so much more to it than that. It's death with grooves, kind of like what you might find on the blunt object that these guys musically beat you to death with, yet it also has substance. You can actually discern the thick doom riffs, these terrifyingly evil leads that make such a classic performance work and sound anything but outdated even decades after it's release. The press release does mention solos, but there aren't so many of those as we might think and they're not the kind of really long solos that you might expect to hear with other bands. These guys prefered a more straight-forward to death, grind and groove, but there’s definitely some thrash and doom too. The press release tells me there’s some punk in here, but I’ve yet to hear it. Even though it sounds like a hodgepodge and most early grind was; it all manages to work well on this ancient release, which I'd definitely recommend. Maybe the production isn't amazing, but it was '93 and the technology wasn't quite like it is now. Even so, you'll still find it a real blast from the past in the form of death/grind's early years, which I still think were when it was at it's peak (at least compared to most of the stuff that I hear from the sub-genre today.)

(20 Tracks, 33:00)

8/10

Department Of Correction/Agathocles Split EP (2016)

The following is a split between two extremely diverse acts from France and Belgium. The first one we have here is France's Department Of Correction (DOC for short) and five tracks of relatively decent grind with some segues into brutal death metal that come off without a hitch, but don't exactly leave a real mark on me. So I think about it for a second and wonder, “what was it about this split that fascinated me enough to want to promote it?” Then I was immediately answered with the only offering (unfortunately) from Belgium's Agathocles. They're described as a sludge act with grind elements or “grinding sludge” but that's actually a lie – I think it was made only to try to get the attention of grind fans, but there's absolutely no grind to be found within this masterpiece of sheer depravity. Grind comes and goes, but “Into My Crypts” is the kind of track that I'll remember for a long time to come. It sounds extremely thick and filthy, very raw and full of static. But they do it unlike anyone else I've ever heard. The vocals are just...unreal. I mean, it sounds like the man is lumbering towards death, especially close to the end of the song, where it begins to feel like he's hanging onto the last shard of his humanity. There's a creepy synth effect in the background, which is actually where the song first starts – and this is revisited several times throughout the madness. Described on the album cover as “slumbering sludge” I still feel there's a bit of psychotic madness not being properly echoed in this description. This is literally the sound that the undead would make if they could make music, and literally sounds like it's being played by actual zombies. Actual fucking undead. Everything from the way the track is made, to the inhuman sounds that bellow forth from their gaping holes makes me think of zombies that had regained some of their humanity overtime and remembered that they were metal musicians. Since their verbal skills had dwindled, all that comes out are horrendous noises by which no human could utter. Someone might actually want to fly out to Belgium to make sure these gentlemen are indeed still among the living. I'm serious. I've heard a lot of doom and sludge before, but this is new on me. Again, you'll get five songs of serious grind, but the sludge track is really where it's at. I've listened to the damn thing four or five times already because I seriously can't get enough of that song. This split is actually worth getting your hands on, at least until Agathocles release a full-length record with that track on it. Maybe I'm a bit biased here, but at least it's the truth. (The Grim Lord)

3/5

Morgue Supplier - Self-Titled (2016)

Chicago's Morgue Supplier features former members of Crematorium, but that's far in the past now. These guys have been together since '99 even though this is only their second album. You might be surprised to know that this is a side project of Drug Honkey, who band mastermind Paul Gillis also plays in. Along with World Of Sin's Eric Bauer and current bassist Steve Reichelt, these guys craft a mixture of death metal and grindcore that is the literal polar opposite of anything you'd find in the LSD trip gone wrong mixture of doom and death that is Drug Honkey. As a matter of fact, it more often than not feels like the auditory element of one getting beaten to a living pulp. The drums pound ferociously, even if the guitars have slowed down to an almost doom level and the vocals never seem to let up. There's definitely a bit of experimentation here and there as well, which keeps these fourteen pieces from becoming boring. Songs will range anywhere from a little over a minute to nearly five minutes in length, but the majority of the cuts here are close to a mere three minutes in length, which is pretty long for anything with the word “grindcore” in it's description box. This is the kind of grind that utilizes solos as well, but the record isn't really bombarded with any extra element other than the sheer brutality and vehemence that we might expect from such a punishing disc.

That being said, sometimes there's a lot of technicality, sometimes we get a few sections of doom atmosphere (like that of Drug Honkey, but not so psychedelic) and other times we just get unbridled mayhem. Morgue Supplier is the kind of record where riffs actually get the chance to stick out every now and again as well, so it doesn't always sound like a mass of monstrous mess. I can recall acts like Pig Destroyer when I hear this, and if you're a really big fan of those guys and similar, you're going to want to pick this one up. I'd definitely say that it's as good as Pig Destroyer record I've heard and like the aforementioned, it actually manages to do more with grind than just grind. Grind has always been a tough genre for me to get into, but certain bands manage to make it stand out, especially when they're adding new elements to the genre that make it worth listening to. That being said, there's really no black metal influence here (aside from some sections in the album closer) like you'll hear with another grind crossover act, Anaal Nathrakh. Though that's a good thing, as I wouldn't want a band like Morgue Supplier or even Pig Destroyer to traverse the same territory as their peers.

Morgue Supplier haven't released a full-length album since '04, which means that many have been waiting a long time for this one, but rest assured that your wait was worth it. I'm pretty sure that you'll end up playing this record more than just once and come back to it many times through, at least until they release another record. But let's give them some time, as this disc is more than good enough for me.

(14 Tracks, 40:00)

8/10