One of the craziest grindcore albums ever, !T.O.O.H.!'s third album �d A Trest received the vinyl treatment last year courtesy of American avant-garde label Cylindrical Habitat Modules. We've finally gotten this cult classic in stock, on black vinyl limited to five hundred copies, with completely different (and much more appropriate, in my opinion) album artwork. Here's my original review of the CD version of the album that was released by the now-defunct avant-metal label Elitist (which we still have in stock, as well)...
Of all of the Czech grindcore bands that I've been listening to over the past decade, the most well known would probably be !T.O.O.H.! , also known as Total Obliteration Of Humanity. These weirdos released an album years ago called Pod Vladou Bice that was an instant hit around here, a brutally heavy, seriously tweaked grindcore album that stood out from the rest of the Czech grind scene with their skilled chops, complex songwriting and a tendency to throw a bunch of different styles (psych, jazz, pop punk, etc) into their vicious techgrind blender. That album (released on the obscure but very cool mutoid-grind label Plazzma) managed to reach a decent amount of ears outside of the Czech underground, and in 2005 the band reached a wider audience with the release of their album Order And Punishment on the short-lived Earache subsidiary Elitist, where they were labelmates with fellow metal mutants Ephel Duath. Heavier and less zany than their previous disc, this album nevertheless pushed T.O.O.H.'s zonked deathgrind into further realms of progginess, infusing the chunky, complex heaviness with trace elements of jazz fusion and neo-classical melody, and topping it all off with their nutty shrieking vocals that have always kind of reminded me of Macabre. The songs on this album are subversively catchy for a deathgrind band, and by all rights this should have been a huge hit in the extreme metal scene. Which it probably would have become, if it hadn't been for the acrimonious split between Elitist and Earache a mere few months after it was released, which effectively buried the album. This definitely needs to be heard by anyone into wonky, tech-head deathgrind though. Imagine early Athiest on whippits and a serious Zappa obsession, and loaded with insane fusiony soloing, jazzy basslines, n' spastic crunchy death metal riffage. I love Czech grind almost across the board - anytime I hear a death/grind band from this corner of Europe, it sounds like they are out of their minds - but T.O.O.H. were probably the most coherent and skilled band to come out of this scene so far. Recommended!