Burek Death Squat were a new one to me, and actually appear to be a side-project from all of the guys in Patareni if I'm reading the liner notes correctly, but the real star of this 7" is the aforementioned Patareni. This Croatian band was a staple of noisecore 7� lists back in the early 90s and is considered to be one of the earliest noisecore bands, even counting Seth Putnam from Anal Cunt as one of their diehard fans.

The thing about Patareni, though, is that they were never purely a noisecore band, and were just as likely to break out some fast paced melodic punk or brutal grind. Which is why I�m not surprised that there's no real noisecore to be found on their side of this split. Patareni's side serves up a couple of tracks of burly, metallic hardcore laced with anthemic hooky riffs, brief bursts of blasting grind, and gruff death metal-esque bellowing on "Beat The Bastard", which turns into weirdly poppy thrash at one point, then abruptly shifts into a bizarre bit of lopsided ska before blasting off into grindcore again before ending; the other song is a cover of "Live To Die" by 80's Canadian hardcore band Death Sentence's, beefed up with an additional dose of metallic crunch.

Patareni side-project Burek Death Squat takes over the b-side with their homage to blazing 80's Japanese hardcore, blasting through a medley of covers from notorious psychopunks G.I.S.M. ("Endless Blockades Of The Pussyfooters"), Lip Cream and more, as well as some boisterous ska-core action of their own that combines raging anthemic ska-punk a la Mighty Mighty Bosstones with monstrous gutteral vocals and a heavy layer of crust.

It's a couple of leaps away from what I remember Patareni sounding like back in their noisecore heyday, but this new genrefucking grindpunk stuff is pretty cool too, and it'll be of particular interest to fans of the weirdo ska-lovin' grindcore bands that came out of Eastern Europe in the 90's like Massick and Le Scrawl. On colored vinyl.