Back in stock. The latest from one of my favorite Japanese grindcore bands going right now; from the all-girl lineup they've had for most of their career, to the reckless off-kilter grindcore they've belted out across their two albums, to the absurd word-salad of their name, Flagitious Idiosyncrasy In The Dilapidation are one of the wildest grindcore bands to come out of Japan in the past decade. After a five year wait, this Tokyo-based outfit finally returned with the follow-up to their eponymous debut, and the sixteen songs gathered here suggest the band's crazed grind has gotten even more twisted, if that was even possible.

With its strange cover art depicting a feminine kimono-clad figure transformed into a wormy chaos, Wallow quivers with demented energy before you even slap this down on your turntable. The band detonates short ninety second blasts of frenzied grindcore that are jam-packed with odd time signature changes and violently awkward arrangements, shifting between chugging mid-tempo grooves and superfast blasting speed, with singer Makiko alternating between guttural death metal-style slobber and some seriously insane high-pitched shrieks that almost totally abandon the human realm. This stuff can get pretty wonky, like the weird fractured grind of "Ignorance" with its skronked-out bass and spiky, discordant riffs and arrhythmic drumming, while other songs like "What You" and "Obstacles" break out of the whirlwind blast attack into bursts of rampaging, anthemic hardcore punk, and others slip into brief bursts of lumbering doom-laden sludge. Something that sticks out on Wallow is the bass sound; bassist Kanako is way out in front, her bone-rattling low-end chords bludgeoning the listener like a spiked club, adding an additional layer of abrasion to Flagitious's already brutal assault. And as freaked-out as their songs get, these ladies keep it together with a high degree of precision, whipping through tightly coiled stop-n'-go tempo changes in a manner that sometimes reminds me of later-era Brutal Truth, but with much more maniacal, screeching delivery. Limited to five hundred copies.