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ANTIGAMA / PSYCHOFAGIST  9 Psalms Of An Antimusic To Come  CD   (Subordinate)   11.98


I've been a fan of these two European grindcore bands for ages, both of 'em offering an edgier version of contemporary grind that each has carved into it's own unique image, from the churning jazz/noise infested grind of Psychofagist, to the cold, inhuman mechanical heaviness of Antigama. Their respective sounds are considerably different, but a split album that teams them up together makes perfect sense to me, so here you go...

Antigama's half of the split has four new songs of their industrialized deathgrind: the mechanical blast and lurch of the opening song "Missing The Past" taps into that mid-90's era Napalm Death sound like so much of Antigama's stuff, attacking the listener with controlled blasts of chunky staccato riffing, machine-like percussion and distorted megaphone vocal-hate. They unfurl long stretches of threatening dark ambience on "Paranoia Prima", where the brief eruptions of industrial grind are juxtaposed with distant metallic percussion, staticky radio voices, and Lustmordian drones. "For Just One Breath" is weirdly groovy grindmetal with jazzy walking bass lines and more of their trademark clattering drum patterns, and that's followed by the ethereal closing piece "Finito", a hazy wash of soft synths that resembles the newer Jesu stuff. A really interesting batch of new tunes from these guys.

But Psychofagist shatter that tranquility pronto with their own skronky avant-garde grindcore, beginning with the ear-wrecking angularity and dissonance of "Apophtegma Nonsense" that combines an almost no-wave style atonality with their shockblasts of jagged grind. "Carne Tremula Marcia" blends twangy guitar with a series of extreme noisy freak outs and bleating chords, digging in further to the bizarre jazz/no wave damaged metal, the frenzied percussive assault and bass mayhem resembling the Flying Luttenbachers more than anything, albeit mucho heavier. The band attacks all of their songs on this split with that sort of ferocious, jagged abandon, even when they lock into something that resembles more straightforward grindcore and the singer finally comes in bellowing in his crazed guttural roar, there's still all kinds of weird jazzy stuff going on around the periphery, jazz-style guitar licks, diminished chords, complex drum patterns, etc. The song "Initiation" features some intensely heavy slower parts, massive sludgy dissonant anti-grooves slithering through the wreckage of their blasting death-skronk, lurching Godflesh-esque dirges that pummel relentlessly at your skull as they fade into the distance, and "Aritmia" breaks out the slap-bass and confounding time signatures for one of their shorter jazzgrind assaults. Antigama finish with a cover of the Tom Waits song "Misery Is The River Of The World" that they transform into a harsh, blasting sonic assault that more closely resembles the likes of Gorguts, breaking into some smoky saxophone playing at the very end. 100% blazing anti-music indeed...


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