UNHOLY GRAVE "Grind Killers" Cd

(Self-Made God Records-SMG063)
Release date: 2010
Running time: 33:51

Review: It's been a while since I've reviewed an Unholy Grave release but really the band hasn't changed their sound one bit since their beginnings so what the hell can I come up with to describe them this time... Just killer thrashing grindcore, very straightforward and extremely catchy riffing (grind riffs with a thrashing bent, maybe what Agathocles would call mincing?), a wacky mix of gruffy grunting and extravagant screams. The band went with quite a raw sound production here, but the guitar tone is just perfect, quite distorted and thrashy with nicely prominent fuzzed out bass presence, drumming is quite bouncy, really tight, catchy stuff, a majority of d-beat stuff with some judicious blasts here and there ready to kick you in the groin... They went really rough on the vocals though, especially abrasive almost to the point of clipping sometimes. But personally I enjoy rough edged production much more than clean ones, and I say this is the ideal grindcore sound. And considering this complete album was reportedly recorded in only 2 hours, this is sounding very impressive! Lyrics are really fun to follow along with the songs... This band's opinions are often pretty surprising, sometimes very un-grindcore-like, so much positivity is refreshing, although the apparent naïvety or some of the very obvious statements can be pretty amusing at times... "Mistakes sometimes happen, coz we are human"! "Yes for vegan foods, yes for meat... Freedom to eat 'coz everybody has his own taste"!!! But I guess the simplest messages are the best ones. The band also managed to squeeze in a pretty unexpected and wacky Ramones cover in there... Well, I think you should know what to expect from this band, tons of wild raw, energy, they always provide quality grind that really grabs you by the throat, and with a better average musicianship than an equally (or surely alot more) prolific Agathocles... I think I might have slightly overdosed on the band's music after 15 years or so, and the lack of variety doesn't keep me coming. Still definitely a very solid album. The digipack packaging of this cd edition is very nifty-looking, with Unholy Grave's usual hand-written lyrics all over an awesome gatefold! This has also been released on Vinyl LP since.
Mp3 Sample: Unholy Grave - Buried Terror
Tracks: 1)Prologue (0:05) 2)Confession (2:16) 3)Buried Terror (0:51) 4)Pay The Price? (1:32) 5)Media's Story (1:45) 6)Death By Terror (2:01) 7)Free From Fear (1:50) 8)Murderer (1:59) 9)We Are Human (1:18) 10)Motorcharged (1:21) 11)Morbid Dark Angels (0:32) 12)Little Bastards (1:16) 13)Blind Barrier (1:42) 14)Missing Children (1:42) 15)Justice? (2:05) 16)Beat On The Brat (Ramones) (2:11) 17)No Racial Superiority (1:39) 18)Maniacal Discharge (1:53) 19)Deadly Error (1:43) 20)Terror After Terror (1:28) 21)Freedom To Eat (1:16) 22)Grind Faith (1:22) 23)Epilogue (0:04)

Label: http://selfmadegod.com

ANATOMIA/OFFAL Split 7" Ep

(No Posers Please - NPP008)
Release date: 2010

Anatomia Review: Anatomia is playing their usual brand of Doom-infused Death Metal... Their side of this Ep is only featuring one long song, it starts in a pretty upbeat and aggressive manner, riffing in the style of Autopsy's Mental Funeral opening song. Mid-way things get progressively slower establishing a really mesmerizing, creepy climate of pure doom. There's a very obsessive, almost acoustic-sounding guitar lick (or is it a bass line?) played over and over, which practically seems taken out of a horror movie soundtrack, it's probably my favorite part of this song. Vocals I'd say are more in Incantation's vein (which I'm sure is another influence), extremely deep guttural grunts from beyond the grave... These guys are absolute masters of the slow, atmospheric Death Metal genre and the material on this Ep doesn't disappoint. This Ep comes in a very tacky looking pink color which totally rules! The insert is also a cool-looking silver ink on black background of the best effect.
Tracks: 1)Merciless Torment (5:57)

Offal Review: Obviously not japanese, but brazilian death metal... It's difficult for me to review this since I'm responsible for the cover art on this side.. Anyway, I'll just deal with the music-side of this: the first song starts in a very doom-like way maybe to pay respect to Anatomia then turns into superb catchy old school Death Metal stuff that totally takes you back to the early 90's! It finishes on a quite atmospheric & melodic note fading out. The second song then cranks up the grinding tension with a Haemorrhage cover (which is an original choice, there aren't that many bands out there doing Haemorrhage covers it seems)... This is a very faithful rendition of Grume's "In Nephritic Blue". Vinyl fits Offal "Over There Guts Everywhere" turns out to be probably my favorite Offal song from their whole répertoire so far! Again apologies for the bad art, but this split Ep is really worth it for the music anyway really, check it out!
Tracks: 1)Over There Guts Everywhere (4:43) 2)In Nephritic Blue (Haemorrhage Cover) (1:26)

Anatomia: www.myspace.com/anatomia
Offal: www.offalgore.com - http://www.myspace.com/offalxxx
Label: http://noposersplease.com

DISGUST "War Deterrent" Cd

(Grind Freaks, grave-002)
Release date: 2007
Running time: 29:38

Review: This is the japanese Disgust that did the split with Hemdale back in the day, not the early 90's UK one which weirdly also played in an almost exactly same d-beat heavy style (but not as gritty and cool in my mind)! This Disgust plays crust/hardcore with a bit of grind blended in. I usually favor grindcore with crust influences the most (and I hate technical grind with stupid complicated riffs), so this band is perfect to me, they really do kick ass. They're tight in every department. They have a huge, heavy sound in the vein of Realized, big fat crusty hardcore riffs, powerful drumming, with a predominance of ultra-catchy d-beats though it even goes into a couple of intense grind blasts at times or really awesomely rocking midpaced numbers. Unmistakably among the lines of Discharge, Disrupt, Extreme Noise Terror & Doom, but really well done and tightly executed, and I'd say it's even got some of old Napalm Death's impactful sound. The throat-splitting vocals sound furious, almost like a mad dog at times! The riffs are pretty frantic, purest of the pure crust, catchy as hell with explosive rhythms that always reel you in... Awesome sound production, clean but not too clean, not overproduced, heavy but with just enough roughness and the drums sound perfect. Definitely one of my favorite japanese bands, and one of the best in the crust/grind genre.
Mp3 Sample: Disgust - Falsehood
Tracks: 1)War deterrent (4:15) 2)Falsehood (1:54) 3)Tax evasion (2:33) 4)Under the debris (4:54) 5)Abductions (3:31) 6)Eyes of terror lose all hope (3:20) 7)An instignator from the dark (3:19) 8)The hanged man (2:37) 9)Endless torment (3:15)

Band: http://www.myspace.com/disgustmask - http://disgustmask.blog72.fc2.com/
Label: http://grindfreaks.seesaa.net/

FLAGITIOUS IDIOSYNCRASY IN THE DILAPIDATION Cd

(Bizarre Leprous Productions, BLP 086)
Release date: July 13 2008
Running time: 31:34

Review: Women playing grind is an almost a surreal happenstance but the japanese managed to engineer it with this band! I had reviewed their old demo cdr's but never this full length album... Musically I'd fit F.I.D. in the heavier grind/death category, fast, energetic stuff but with a very death metal styled riffing and some slow crushing doom and thrash parts from time to time. A pretty solid sound production and a terrific fuzzed out bass sound. I'm sure the band has a wide variety of the usual influences but one thing that pops in my mind right now is Hemdale again (part of the song "Under the Surface" seems to be based on Hemdale's "Delicious Gory Fun" for exemple), they're similar vocally, with manic screams and freaky low grunting present in equal parts. Actually the only thing that bothers me in female grind vocals is that the screaming can get screechingly shrill and quite distressing to listen to at times (and I start to feel nauseous like Jeffrey Comb's character in The Frighteners), but thankfully I can enjoy the more guttural brutal girlie growls just fine in this case. Guitarist Kyoko has left the band some times after the release of this band, which is a shame as I think she was the band's founding member and I'm guessing probably the one writing most of the riffs, I remember reviewing her previous death metal band Mortal Gaze demo too. The white guy replacing her also kind of ruined the whole concept of the band, but he was there just temporarily it seems and now the band is all japanese and all female again! Anyway this band is a real oddity but they also play damn good grinding death metal! I'm looking forward to hear what they will be doing next...
Mp3 Sample: Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation - Under the Surface
Tracks: 1)Visualized (1:16) 2)Smuge (1:47) 3)Finite Dark Water (2:44) 4)Studeny Klih (1:58) 5)Dusted Ratina (1:44) 6)In The Sluge (2:18) 7)In The Gray Room (1:53) 8)Tied up (1:20) 9)Unvoiced (3:10) 10)Lost (1:14) 11)Dizzy Confusion (1:21) 12)Elimination (1:54) 13)Evacuation (1:21) 14)Twine (1:57) 15)Euthanasia (0:56) 16)Under the Surface (2:45) 17)Felaceus Oedipus (1:56)

Band Links: www.myspace.com/fidgrind - http://www.geocities.jp/inthedilapidation/

SWARRRM/CROWPATH Split 7" Ep

(Crucificado Pelo Sistema)
Release date: 2006

Review - Swarrrm: This record seems to have got buried under a pile 5 years ago and it might seem extremely pointless to review it now but I thought maybe this was a good time to whip this out again anyway to round out this Japan special (even though the band on side B is swedish). Swarrrm is playing one single song of raw, bizarre hardcore, with delirious, almost incoherent screaming vocals, a rather repetitive but mean and incisive guitar riff with a pretty high tuning, very saturated sound covering up a percussive deluge. The band then breaks into sweeping arpeggios at one point too. Riffs are aggressively melodic, just blistering and kind of harmonious but still in a very harsh noisecore kind of way. This is pretty peculiar stuff. I know this band has been around for a long while but I'm still not too familiar with them, they're slightly too screamy and "avant-garde" for my taste. Still very talented and completely original.
http://www.myspace.com/swarrrmofficial
Tracks: 1)smallman have bigmouth (venom 2)

Crowpath: Swedish blistering metallic hardcore/grind stuff. Fast and blasting and seems to go in every direction at once, with a weird kind of really manic, staccacto technical riffing and again a screaming type of vocals. Well-executed and pretty insane sounding but not that memorable, I can't say this is my favorite type of grind. Just to busy sounding, I just can't grasp to anything... This band is split-up now but they have a bunch of well-regarded albums it seems... Maybe worth a listen if you're really out of bands to check out!
http://www.myspace.com/crowpath
Tracks:1)Cleansed in Chlorine

Label Contact: http://www.crucificados.de