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CHILDREN OF GOD  Victimized  7" FLEXI   (A389 Records)   6.50


��Thinking that they might have taken their band name from the Swans album, I initially expected the California band Children Of God to be a much slower, more doom-laden outfit, especially having first encountered the band on their massive split 12" with fellow SoCal crushers Seven Sisters Of Sleep a while back. Children Of God indeed demolished their side of that record, but the sound the these guys whipped up was actually something much faster and more frantic than I was expecting, the band unleashing a brutal chaotic hardcore assault that made for a jarring contrast with the sludgy heaviosity of the Sisters.

�� This limited flexidisc is in the same vein, featuring just one short unreleased song that was taken from the same recording session as the split, a blast of crushing apocalyptic hardcore infested with chunks of skull-crushing sludge and abrasive noise. I'm not really sure what the point behind this release is, as it only features the one song and the whole thing is over with in two minutes, but I'm sure fans of this California band's brand of brutal, bludgeoning hardcore will scramble for it nevertheless, being an unreleased track unavailable anywhere else and limited to two hundred pieces on white flexidisc. And the song does definitely crush, "Victimized" delivering a brutal blast of ultra-heavy hardcore via a wall of sludgy guitars, crushing D-beat drumming, and harsh howling vocals that sound like every tendon in the singer's head is about to burst. They've got this amazing, violent quality to their music that suggests a heavy powerviolence influence, and when the band drop into lower gear, they channel an ultra-hateful sludgy sound that's sort of along the same lines as UK tar-pit fiends Iron Monkey. Definitely an interesting mixture of discordant crustcore and powerviolence shot through with all-too-brief flashes of corrosive sludge-hate.

�� Limited to two hundred copies.