The latest album from Virginia's Drugs Of Faith, Corroded is their best stuff yet, and one the sickest hardcore albums of 2011. I'm way late on getting this thing on the shelf here at C-Blast, but better now than never as it's a goddamn monster, one of the best discs to come out on Selfmadegod in the past couple of years and very highly recommended to any of you into ferocious, dissonant hardcore and grind. These guys have continued to be one of the American undergrounds best-kept secrets ever since they got together. Even though the band features guitarist/lead singer Richard Johnson, a local DC/MD area figurehead in the underground extreme music scene and member of influential grind band Enemy Soil (as well as a current member of Agoraphobic Nosebleed) that a lot of folks affectionately call the "grindfather", Drugs Of Faith aren't as well known, probably due to rarely playing outside of the DC area. Their crushing metallic grindpunk is fucking devastating, however, taking the churning chaotic wall-of-sound violence of Napalm Death and further extracts the raw hardcore element, blending discordant noise-rock abrasion and quirky HC with flamethrower blastbeat attacks and massive sludgy grooves. I loved their early stuff, but this newer material really blows my hair back - I remember howling in Richard's face in a drunken euphoria after the last time I saw them play about how much I thought they reminded me of the mighty Die Kreuzen; my brain might be clearer at this moment, but their sound still channels that similar kind of hectic, dissonant hardcore vibe, one that few other bands have been able to access. Corroded's fourteen songs are served up in short, adrenalized chunks of aggression, the maniacal riffs and noisy guitars welded to smart, critical lyrics and the rhythm sections driving, propulsive attack. When the band does slow down, it's into these awesome moody rocking parts like on "Hidden Costs" where the sound gets almost shoegazey, and there are parts of this album where I'm even reminded of Jawbox and Killing Joke quite a bit, but the more melody-driven parts lose none of their dark, heavy vibe; the rock/blast equation is weighted toward the former, and that's a big part of why I love this album so much. Instead of a non-stop blastfest, Drugs of Faith offer an equally aggressive but much more varied sound with big noise-rock style hooks scattered all over. So much more memorable and infectious than most of the "grind" that hits my ears nowadays, but hardly accessible - there's even a cover of the His Hero Is Gone song "Hinges" that shows up towards the end that the band turns into a blast of massive sludgy destruction with J.R. Hayes (Pig Destroyer) lending vocals. Again, one of my favorite albums of 2011...