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Ferocious grindpunk action from Germany that delivers the goods: 11 songs of nihilistic worldview communicated through blastbeat strewn graveyards, Scandinavian style crustcore and gutteral/sick screaming tradeoffs, tightly played but fucking raw metallic grind thats as hooky as crust faves like Disassociate and Phobia. These cretins have been kicking it since 1995, and their steady output of 7"s and Euro touring has made them a well-oiled blast machine rooted in classic grindcore that's not afraid to throw in some apocalyptic atonal slow doom parts, awesome post-hardcore elements, hard rock riffs, old school hardcore sprints, and cool/grim melodic riffs, like all the best parts of Assuck and Nasum and His Hero Is Gone together in a vicious grind stew. Recommended to all grind bastards.

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Most brutal grindcore album of 2005? To our ears, hell yes! This thirteen song disc, the second full length from Polish grinders THIRD DEGREE, delivers awesome blasting (and ultraheavy) crusty grindcore with huge grooving metalcore breakdowns, supertight blastbeats and awesome maniacal blasts that sounds like the CD is skipping, and deep,monstrous vocals. But then the band breaks into these massive crushing sludge dirges with clean group chanting and growly singing (reminiscent of Justin Broadrick), huge epic droning metal powerchug sort of like Isis' or Neurosis, with gigantic, locked groove atonal earthquake riffs a la Godflesh, that fucking CRUSHES us. Plus there's weird guitar harmonics, punky brutal crustcore D-Beat assaults that remind us of Disassociate....this album is so brutal, and economical (at just over 35 minutes long), it hammers you with devestating riff after devestating riff, no filler. An awesome combination of brutal Napalm Death/Disassociate/Misery Index style grindcore and dirgy,punishing Isis/Godflesh/Neurosis-esque post-metal.

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A triple-header of Polish grindcore, blasting yer cranium at mindbending speed! And what has us extremely stoked on this 3-way split CD is the fact that it opens with six, count 'em, six exclusive tracks from the unstoppable ANTIGAMA! Hell yes, we've been waxing fanatic about these futuristic blast merchants since we first heard their amazing Zeroland album, and we're always needing more Antigama! So yeah, this killer split, covered in nihilistic anti-war imagery, opens with six Antigama tracks, all of which are exclusive to this disc. The songs are pretty much in the same vein as their Zeroland material, jagged, tightly controlled blasts of technical grindcore that seem to move in odd time signatures, with a feel similiar to that of Napalm Death's experimental mid-90's stuff (think Diatribes) and Brutal Truth, but with an otherworldy patina of alien discordance on their avant-grind attacks. Some of the truly mind melting moments can be found in "Questions" when Antigama's drummer suddenly launches into a series of fucking insane percussion freakouts closer to out-jazz than anything else, and the mindmelting guitar noise employed on "Repeatedness" that sounds like one of the guitarists suddenly decided to dismantle his instrument mid-song. Amazing. This album would be totally worth it just for the Antigama tracks, but luckily Selfmadegod saw fit to match them up with two totally worthy partners. Third Degree deliver three tracks of raw, violent grindcore with a singer named Czarny who manages to leap from deep gutteral monster growls to horrific, slit-throat cackling vocals over a speedy apocalyptic grindpunk assault. Their four songs here seem to be less percussive than their awesome full length on SMG, which we remember sounding something like a mix of Godflesh and Napalm Death. This is brutal, unrelenting grind though, no doubt, layering discordant guitars and catchy hooks a la recent Napalm Death. And who best to wrap up this grind feast than a band that features members of both Antigama AND Third Degree, the strangely named Herman Rarebell! We presume that the band is named after the drummer from the Scorpions, but who knows. These guys blaze through seven tracks of speedy grindcore that's even rougher and more raw than Third Degree, but just as crushing. Blistering barbaric grindmetal with fucked up gargling screams, weird rhythmic changes, and ending with a ripping cover of "Mutual Trust" by Defecation. Awesome. Love the layout for this too, using lots of high contrast, politically charged imagery and metallic silver printing.
Track Samples:
Sample : questions
Sample : repeatedness
Sample : awareness
Sample : iron snake

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This Polish grindcore band has been getting a lot of attention lately, after releasing the excellent Zeroland album last year and the recent announcement of their signing with Relapse Records for their next full length. As far as I'm concerned, all of the hype surrounding ANTIGAMA is justified, 'cuz Zeroland was one of the most ferocious, forward-thinking grind blasts of 2005, a heavy as hell mutation of precision grindpunk and mechanized metal fused to a thoroughly creepy mixture of futuristic sound collage and dark ambience. While we're anxiously waiting for their follow-up to Zeroland, Selfmadegod Records has stepped in with this new re-issue of the debut album from ANTIGAMA, Intellect Made Us Blind, originally released back in 2001. This album is, as one would expect, a slightly rawer incarnation of the band's mechanoid grind sound, but these songs are just as fucked up and bizarre as anything the band is doing now, making this pretty essential for anyone who fell under the spell of Zeroland. The band unleashes an avalanche of relentless blastbeats and burly grindpunk riffage that tap into the same rabid bloodstream as late-era BRUTAL TRUTH, majorly heavy shit, but Intellect Made Us Blind really messes with your neurons when the band makes their sudden left turns into punishing GODFLESH-esque dirge, freeform tribal-industrial trance, and transmissions of steel sheets of electronic ambience. With their more recent, goth-mecha-avant-grind material being my introduction to ANTIGAMA, I really wasn't expecting their early material to be this terminally badass and weird, but it is. Sometimes the massive percussive riffage and industrial metal rhythms remind me of a crustier version of what FEAR FACTORY was doing on their first album, but this is way more fucked, a schizoid dystopian urban grind nightmare illustrated with bizarre, seemingly stream-of-consciousness lyrics. An awesome debut, highly recommended, especially if you were as big a fan of ANTIGAMA's Zeroland album as we are!

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Looking at the packaging on this CD, it would be easy to assume that this might contain some sort of psychedelic techno if it weren't for the Selfmadegod Records logo on the back of the case. What this is, is one of the best grindcore releases of 2005, a superb new blast of futurist grind violence from Poland that sounds to my ears like a modern day VOIVOD gone grind, or maybe Diatribes-era NAPALM DEATH meets NASUM meets SKINNY PUPPY...spewing out streams of speed of light blastbeats, disharmonic ultra-polyrhythmic deathcore, psychedelic electronic noise and chilling industrial loops...skull cracking and fucking machine-tight grind in the vein of NASUM combined with cleverly assembled avant/cyber/electronic sections and that ANTIGAMA style of massive dissonant guitars. Zeroland, despite its experimental leanings and odd time signatures flirting with the boundries of free jazz and extreme noise, is surprisingly accessible and catchy, and I love it. The vocals here are an effective mixture of clean, heavily processed and spacey clean vocals and brootal deathgrunt, coming off as a weird SKINNY PUPPY/NASUM electro-goth-sickness n' gorilla tantrum tradeoff...the singer's morbid moan is truly weird and awesome, unlike anything I've ever heard from a band that spits out this much blastbeat. And,When the band isn't blasting through their insane cyber/DISCORDANCE AXIS/GODFLESH/VOIVOD mashup, their melting brainpaste with stuff like "Starshit" (a harrowing piece of extreme psychedelic vocal noise) and the massive closer "Zeroland", with it's 9 minutes of sinister fuzzed-out sample collage spoolling off into an ambient blackness while subtle clicks and cuts dance around far-off feedback screams. Fuck yeah. Seriously, this is HIGHLY recommended to fans of primo adventure grind (i.e., BRUTAL TRUTH, GORGUTS, PIG DESTROYER) and all forms of avant-blast.

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Previously self-released by the band in 2005, Myopia's Enter Insectmasterplan has been resurrected by the frequently adventurous Selfmadegod imprint, who have been exploring similiar fringes of Polish avant-metal with the band Antigama in recent times. But where Antigama have forged a bizarre, industrialized strain of spacey grindcore, their countrymen in Myopia go for a slightly less turbocharged assault, instead exploring the nuances of deep-space sci-fi thrash metal. Yep, these guys aren't one bit shy about proclaiming their adoration of the first five Voivod albums, and dedicate the entire album to the memory of Denis 'Piggy' D'amour. But Myopia are also one of the few bands that has taken cues from Voivod and actually come up with something that is as progressive as their forebears. Myopia's guitarist Kamil Smala in particular unleashes a radically twisted approach to inverted riffage that really does feel like it's channeling Piggy's godlike fretwork. And carrying on in the spirit of Voivod's Nothingface, Enter Insectmasterplan is a strange concept album that chronicles the colonization of a distant planet called Groth, and the cloning, mutant insect attacks, and interstellar conspiracies that ensue. Sort of a combination of Blade Runner themes with something out of a René Laloux film, narrated over 9 tracks with titles like 'Planet Groth', 'The Colony', 'Project Insect', etc., each one an intricately assembled mid-tempo blast of deformed math-thrash that's loaded with seriously dizzying dissonant riffing and some awesome mind bending drumming patterns that glide through deep space ether on a mechanical mid-tempo thrust that takes the band's Voivod influence and fuses it to a tech assault straight out of the early 90's progressive death/thrash scene (think Pestilence, Athiest, and Cynic). Singer and bassist Robert Kocon emits a gruff, almost monotone bellow that sounds eerily similiar to Max Cavalera stuck in an echo chamber, and indeed there are several parts of Enter Insectmasterplan that sound like a collision between early Sepultura and pre-Nothingface Voivod, fused to ultra complex prog-thrash a la Behold...The Arctopus or some similiar neo-shred egghead outfit. It's kind of a tough album to wrap your skull around the first time out, but Enter Insectmasterplan is a wild avant-thrash opus that reveals it's genius over the course of repeated listens. Highly recommended.

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While Third Degree haven't reached quite as many ears outside of Poland as their pals in Antigama and Nyia, they play a killer brand of textured grindcore that further points to the presence of a small but potent Polish grind scene with it's own unique regional sound. Along with Antigama, Nyia, and Myopia, these bands all share a tendency towards intricate, cold and dissonant riffing, warped song structures, inventive and inverted chords, and irregular time signatures that seems to collectively influenced by a combination of Voivod's early psych-thrash albums (Dimension Hatross and Nothingface, specifically), Godflesh, and the late 90's "experimental" period of Napalm Death. Part of this burgeoning Polish grind sound can probably be attributed to Third Degree's guitarist Szymon Czech, who is also responsible for recording pretty much all of the bands involved in this scene. Compared to their Polish peers, Third Degree are most straightforward "grind" band, and their fierce thrashy tempos, jackhammer blastbeats and punky apocalyptic sneer are rooted in the early Earache crust/grind sound. But they've got that weird, industrial sheen to their music, that now-noticeable "Polish grind" sound, marked by Szymon's heavily-layered clean, dissonant guitars and his atonal chords and arpeggios, and the rollicking grindpunk that breaks down into jagged, Godflesh-like dirges.
Not the most prolific of bands, Punk Sugar is only Third Degree's second album even though they have been around for over a decade now. Armed with ridiculous/unnerving album artwork that revolves around pictures of a little girl holding a mountain of cotton candy as she proceeds to go Deadite on us, her eyes rolled back into her skull, blood streaming down her face in Satanic script as her mouth is frozen in a hideous shriek, this twelve-song disc serves up a crushing assault of their dissonant speedy grindpunk and grooving atonal dirge. The gruff vocals and weird lyrics are bathed in delay and other spacey effects, and furious blastbeat tempos and cool, inventive riffing permeates every song. You know what this sounds like? Imagine a cross between Extreme Noise Terror, Voivod's Nothingface and early-90's Godflesh. Crusty and spacey, cold and grooving, a crushing fusion of textural metal, punishing grindcore and grinding gloomy industrial rock. And stick around for the final, "hidden" track, a short but very weird thrash number with strange electronic FX, goofy vocals, and a braindamaged hardcore punk vibe. All hail Poland.
Track Samples:
Sample : Pathic
Sample : Punk Sugar
Sample : Thoughts

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The mindmelting 2004 album from Polish avant-grinders Antigama that first caught the underground metal scene's attention with their intelligent, forward-thinking grindcore, mastery of electronics, and demented riffing. When this came out, I got that same feeling as when I first heard Brutal Truth or Discordance Axis, hearing the grindcore paradigm being reshaped into something new and exciting yet without losing any of the brutality or heaviness that true grindcore requires. Discomfort is filled with weird time changes, dissonant guitar chords formed into utterly alien sounding riffs, deep gutteral vocals that don't sound contrived, cleverly designed electronic textures, and bursts of rocking midtempo destruction that appear just when the band seem to be disappearing into another dimension. Some of the shit that they pull off on here is nuts...like the stuttering CD-skipping glitch blast of the intro to "This Structure Is Tight", or the insanely precise stop-start riffs of "President Say Yes", or the deep throat-chanting that opens "Flies". Every few seconds these guys throw something out that has you hitting rewind to figure out what the fuck it was that you just heard. Imagine Meshuggah meets Diatribes era Napalm Death meets Voivod meets Brutal Truth circa Sounds of The Animal Kingdom meets Megativa. Discomfort was originally released on the U.S. death metal label Extremist, but after that label went belly up, Selfmadegod reissued it with two bonus tracks: "Discomfort", a short electronic drone piece, and Fala (seed remix), which is almost complete silence for seven minutes before erupting into a brutal rhythmic noise piece that chops up parts of Antigama's brutal grind into an abstract gabber/breakcore beating. Intense, and highly recommended...this is one of the most amazing grind albums of the decade.
The disc also contains a DIVX file for an awesome music video for their song "Flies"!.

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Catheter's 2005 album Dimension 303 is an oddly overlooked entry into the grind field, but is actually one of the better hypergrind albums of the decade. The Denver trio had been kicking it for awhile before they released their debut Preamble For Oblivion, but it's Dimension 303 that saw the band in top form, mixing pulverizing Napalm Death inspired grind, raw crustcore, punishing sludge/doom metal riffage, and strange rhythmic samples. The production here is top notch, and the drumming is fucking astounding, with tons of hyperspeed fills and laser guided blastbeats. Catherter's lyrics tackle alot of the standard grindcore issues, i.e. socio-political issues, apocalyoptic imagery, and getting rowdy at shows, but it's all delivered with lots of high-energy spirit and savagery. Songs like "Waste Time" and the closer "Outro" dish out some supreme Cathedral worshipping doom metal, and some rad sampled breakbeats and industrial rhythms pop up out of left field at a couple points throughout the album. Like Disassociate's Symbols, Signals, And Noise, Catheter's Dimension 303 keeps their grind brutal, catchy and interesting without getting "experimental", and with just a hint of the weirdness of their buds in the West Bay Doomryderz (Deadbodieseverywhere, Utter Bastard, Kalmex). The album features killer acid-trip artwork from John Santos.

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Dutch blasters MY MINDS MINE unleashe 48 tracks taken from all of their vinyl output released through the years, delivering unbelieveably fast, devastating high octane grindcore reminiscent of old S.O.B., early Brutal Truth, early Napalm Death, and Heresy. Powerful production, blasting drums, growling/screamed vocals. The CD compiles three split seven inches, debut Unseen World 7", split 10" with Head Hits Concrete, two compilation tracks, unreleased + live set. A crucial collection of extreme thrashcore/grindcore from this cult Dutch band.

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As much as I love listening to hour-long tracks of druggy amp-drone jams and records from blotter-chewing black metal freaks, it can get a little intense sometimes. And one thing that I've discovered in my years of listening to metal, noise, hardcore, psychedelia and other weird musics for hours on end is that are few better palette cleansers for yer eardrums than a meaty serving of riff-heavy, rip-roaring death n' roll. Or rock and roll-juiced death metal. Or death metal-infested rock, or however you want to put it. All I know is that when a band manages to stumble across that perfect connection between balls-out rock and crushing death metal, it's a beautiful thing. Lots of bands make the attempt, but few are as effective as Daymares, a Polish band that has combined the brutal boogie of late-90's Entombed with ironclad riffage a la High On Fire, Motorhead's buzzsaw blues swagger, and a healthy helping of crusty hardcore. Gritty, raw, and fucking catchy, Daymares are that post-nuke bar band at the biker pub out on the edges of the wasteland - snarling, crushing groove death that lodges itself in yer cranium, tracks like "Falling Down" and "Almost There" demanding fist-pumping singalongs no matter where the hell yer at. "I Shit You Not" and it's cowbell and godly riffage make for one of the catchiest tunes on the disc, and "Contact" injects some spacey Monster Magnetism into a churning deathcore beating that recalls the cult DC band Damnation A.D before closing with a wall of tribal toms a la Neurosis. Sure, it's nothing groundbreaking, but I love a killer death n' roll album and Can't Get Us All is a pretty monstrous debut from this band - can't wait to hear more from them. If you're into the stuff that bands like Cursed and Doomriders have been doing recently, too, you should check Daymares out. The case has some neat monochrome artwork that stands out from Selfmadegod's usual computer generated layouts, and it comes in a O-card style sleeve.
Track Samples:
Sample : Almost There
Sample : As Bad as it Gets
Sample : Contact
Sample : I **** You Not

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Mega splatter grind from Bialystok, Poland. 22 brand new songs of hacksaw melodies. Brutal slasher tunes with perfect sound quality & technical skills. Features members of extreme grind masters SQUASH BOWELS. Lots of speed, ultra brutal growls mixed with higher screams and some unique midrange grunting/shouts, that really textured and thick guitar tone, a thrashy sort of vibe to the otherwise death/grind framework, etc. After two minutes of vinyl popping sounds there are five bonus tracks crammed into the 18th track marker on the CD, all of which are cover songs, and all of which are awesome. Agathocles' "Scorn of Humanity", a two-in-one shot of Dead Infection's "Maggots in Your Flesh" and "After Accident", "Malignant Defecation" by Carcass, "At Start at Least" , and then Napalm Death's "Deceiver".

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We can always rest assured that any band that features Richard Johnson in its ranks is gonna slay. This guy is a legend in the Washington DC area extreme music community; throughout the 1990's, his band Enemy Soil was one of the most devestating politically-tinged grindcore outfits on the East Coast, and over the past few years Richard has also worked with grind units Agoraphobic Nosebleed and The Index, as well as continuing to publish his long-running underground music zine Disposable Underground. Drugs Of Faith is his newish band, a kickass power trio that has been kicking around for a couple of years now but just recently released this debut EP through Polish death/grind imprint Selfmadegod (which is also home to futuristic grinders Antigama and the Godflesh-inspired blast/dirge monstrosity of Third Degree). Drugs Of Faith are totally rooted in brutal, downtuned ultra-heavy grindcore, but Richard's guitar playing adds alot in the way of weird, dissonant chords and off-kilter,textured guitar playing that sort of makes this sound like a spastic, grindy version of Die Kreuzen, or maybe Black Flag mixed up with the weird dissonant riffs from mid-period Voivod maybe, a jagged hardcore-inflected grind assault that breaks off into crushing, almost noise-rock style riffage, all fronted by Richard's ferocious barking vocals and his trademark brand of super pissed-off political/personal lyrics. Ferocious, progressive grindcore from one of the masters! Eight songs in just over 15 minutes.

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11 fast blistering songs of unrelenting grind blastcore brutality from Poland. Includes Brujeria "La Migra" cover song and "Zrec" demo tape as a bonus. Comparisons? Think Assuck mixed with Fear Of God! Straight up machinegun blast with barbedwire production values. Most of the inlay and songs are screamed in Polish, there is a few in English though. A solid mix of vicious rhythms and blasting speed, low growls and sick midrange screams, short songs that cut to the chase without fucking around (most in less than a minute), etc.

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Where in the hell did this split come from? I didn't even know that it was in the works until Selfmadegod told us about it at the beginning of November, and there doesn't appear to be anything on the labels website about it's release. It seems that this hush-hush release was put together for the current Nyia/Antigama tour. A pleasant surprise to be sure, as I've already been gushing over Antigama and their progressive, futuristic-sounding grindcore for awhile now, and I can't get enough of their music. For this 9 song, 16 minute EP, Antigama are joined by their Polish tourmates Nyia, a band that I hadn't heard previous to this, but one that has totally kicked my ass with a mere three tracks on show here. Yeah, Nyia is awesome, a complex, convoluted kind of industrialized grindcore, with clean harmonized vocals alternating with fierce death metal screams; their riffs are impossibly spastic and angular, contorting into everchanging forms over rigidly calculated rhythmic pummel and explosive jazzy beats. As crazy as it sounds, they approximate some weird fusion of Gorguts' Obscura and Godflesh, and the result is a fucking mindblower than any fans of extreme experimental grindcore are going to blow a fuse over. It's hard to believe that this band is made up of members of Vader, Yattering, and Prophecy, as this is completely and wholly unlike anything that those bands ever did, but here we have it, an amazingly technical and brutal avant-grind assault, replete with guitars firing off alien dissonance, split second tempo changes, blazing blastbeats, clean jazz breaks, and Meshuggah-ish mathy pummel. This is a band that I guarentee we'll be keeping an eye on, and will be working hard to get everything else that they've released in stock here at C-Blast as soon as possible.
And having Antigama follow Nyia with six new tracks of their finely tuned avant-grind dissonance just makes this split an essential. The Polish killsquad has been blowing my mind since their Discomfort album, blending sharp, angular riffing and cold industrial textures with ferocious grindcore and detours into strange electronic soundscapes, and armed with the best grindcore drummer since David Witte. For real, Antigama's Krzysztof Bentkowski blows my mind on a constant basis with his endless flurries of hyperspeed rimshots, bizarre backwards blastbeating and general percussive weirdness that sets Antigama apart from every other grind outfit out there. Antigama open their half of this split with a sample from A Clockwork Orange and hurtle heafirst into the churning grind of "Beyond Me", the lightspeed atonality of "Nature", and "Only"'s sheer accusational savagery. But then they drift off into a terrifying electronic void in "Torture", a whirling nightmare of melted drones, klaxon blasts and tape-manipulated blastbats before coming back to the grind with the deceptively catchy "ADV". They finally end with "The Trio Infernal", awash in bleeping computer tones and sputtering video game noises over a walking jazz bassline and free jazz drumming floating in an echo chamber. If any band has channeled the experimental, adventurous spirit that Voivod demonstrated with their classic Nothingface album, it's Antigama.
Beyond recommended, one of the finest avant-grind releases of the year. And it comes in an equally awesome package, the album art and booklet featuring weird desert photos overlaid with metallic gold printing.
Track Samples:
Sample : nyia_ofthewill
Sample : nyia_ofthose
Sample : ANTIGAMA / NYIA-split
Sample : antigama_thetrioinfernal

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Two of grindcore's most forward-moving units come together on this blazing split 3" CD, packaged in a full-size jewel case decorated with awesome apocalyptic imagery of blood-spattered, twilight sunsets and comic book style zomboid legions - fuck, this looks killer! Antigama from Poland deliver three new songs that herald their upcoming Resonance album on Relapse, and they are all some of the raddest tunes these guys have put forth yet: "Herd" is a churning blast of vicious grindcore with stuttering, atonal breakdowns and monstrous roaring vocals, kinda like Napalm Death's mid-90's stuff but enhanced by electronic textures. "Gift" opens with some sickening polyrhythmic drumming and spastic guitar chug that reminds me of some of Candiria's whacked out tribal freakouts, but then shifts into a warped deathgrind dirge with processed vocals and fucked up electronic trickery. And "Zombi" is a cover of the classic Goblin theme from the original Dawn of The Dead...holy shit, does this rule, Antigama do a virtually picture-perfect rendition of Goblin's original funk/prog peice, the creepy choir vocals, spacey keyboards and jagged disco synths and rolling bass drumming is all there, but the guitars are beefed up and metallized. One of the best covers of a Goblin tune I've ever heard. If you're as big of a fan of Antigama's futuristic, digitally-mutated grindcore as we are, then you've gotta hear this.
And then comes Drugs Of Faith, the bonecrushing power trio fronted by Rich Johnson of DC grind legends Enemy Soil...their last CD on Selfmadegod was an awesome debut from the band, a politically-charged blast of vitriol fueled by a blenderized assault of atonal noise rock, hardcore punk, and straight-up grindcore. The three jams on this disc continue in that vein: "Churchianity" delivers one of the nastiest anti-organized religion rants ever over a ferocious attack of chest rattling buzzsaw bass guitar, catchy thrash riffage, and chaotic drumming. "Memoranda" is another brutalizing statement with veiled references to Tony Blair's involvement in US foreign policy, conveyed through a furious dissonant dirge that lumbers at a punishing mid-tempo pace before exploding into serrated guitar noise and blastbeats. And "Phantom" closes the disc with an apocalyptic blizzard of sludgy Am Rep noise rock sludge, visions of blackened skies, and frantic grinding blasts. It's like Drugs Of Faith somehow channeled Napalm Death and Unsane into a tightly focused eruption of dissonant crush. So awesome !!!
Instead of splitting each band's songs into two halves, this split CD alternates between the band's songs, which makes this an even more disorientating assault. An awesome matchup from two of my favorite grind bands around, and highly recommended !!!

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As soon as this disc started up in the ol' C-Blast office stereo, I thought to myself, whoa, total Coalesce worship!. Not anything new, but there are much worse bands that you can model yourself after, especially if you have the muscle to back it up. After a few more minutes though, Mothra start to branch out from the chunky, angular riffage and bestial vocals that started things off, and reveal themselves as a more varied beast than I had initially suspected. That Coalesce influence remains just below the surface throughout the rest of the album, but Mothra (christ, I can't believe it took this long for someone to grab that as a band name!) bring in a bunch of other elements to their sound, infusing their mathy, sludgy metallic crunch and angular time signatures with blastbeats, frequent bursts of speedy hardcore that jack the energy level up exponentially whenever they occur, awesome melodic riffs that are more like super-tough, metallic indie rock, and jagged, Unsane-style riffage. It's a killer sound, and I really dig how this band is able to bring so many different sounds together into a sonic whole that ends up sounding totally cohesive. Mothra are able to go from Meshuggah-esque mathematical chug to skronky dissonant metalcore to "Octarine", the album's central track where the band slides into a slow, moody dirge that almost reminds me of a much more metallic Harvey Milk, and then right back into the ferocious hardcore seizure of "Grue", all without tripping up once. The guitarists also lace the album with some killer epic dual guitar harmonies, which isn't something that you hear that often with bands that are doing this sort of mathy, Coalesce/Botch/Burnt By The Sun metallic hardcore. While Dyes is the most overtly "hardcore" sounding album that I've ever heard from Selfmadegod, this is easily identifiable as coming from that amazing Polish metal scene, sharing the same sort of smart, quirky adventurousness that bands like Antigama and Nyia and Third Degree all have, but drawing more of their musical influence from the American metalcore/hardcore sound. Very cool!
Track Samples:
Sample : Bleen
Sample : Grue
Sample : Octarine
Sample : Squant

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We're finally getting around to stocking Hirax's reissued releases and new stuff here at C-Blast. In the pantheon of 80's speed metal, Hirax stood out from the pack, a quirky, raging speedbeast with an x-factor by the name of Katon W. DePena, and once you heard em, you sure didn't forget it. The charismatic Hirax frontman has been the one constant in the band's twenty-five year career, and his insane, idiosyncratic caterwaul hasn't changed a bit in all of this time. DePena has this weird delivery where his unique midrange yowl wobbles back and forth between wailing quasi-operatic screams and sneering vocals, and it's so quirky that people tend to either love the way his vocals sound, or they can't stand it. I fall in the former camp, and think that his wailing vocals fit perfectly with the ragtag punk-flavored speedcore of Hirax. These guys were one of the first bands to really bring together speed metal and hardcore, cramming primal thrash into compact two minute songs and playing a kind of proto-crossover that still shreds today. If you love thrash metal and haven't heard Hirax yet, man, you don't know what yer missing.
Hirax lit off a whirlwind year of touring and festival appearances in 2007 with this short but blazing EP that came out on Deep Six in the U.S. and Selfmadegod in Europe. Assassins Of War features an almost entirely new lineup and five brand new songs, "Lucifer's Inferno", "Summon The Death Dealers", "City Of The Dead", "Invasion", and the title track. Every single one of them fucking rips, as if there was any doubt. One noticeable thing with these newer Hirax jams is that the band is now writing much longer songs than what we were hearing back in the 80's, with songs like "Summon The Death Dealers" reaching up to an epic six-and-a-half minutes! By previous Hirax standards, that's, like, fucking Corrupted territory or something. This newer stuff is also noticeable tighter and not as unhinged as their classic Metal Blade output was, but what the fuck - it's twenty years later, you figure that the leather-clad horde that Katon is going to be playing with are going to be fairly proficient. Other than that, we get a full-on fistful of Hirax awesomeness, Katon's insane vocals delivering crazed tales of barbarian destroyers, cities of the dead, apocalyptic soldiers, and other radical Warhammer 48K hallucinations on wings of ripping speedmetal fury. Fuck yeah!
Track Samples:
Sample : Assassins of War
Sample : Invasion
Sample : Lucifer's Infierno

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We're finally getting around to stocking Hirax's reissued releases and new stuff here at C-Blast. In the pantheon of 80's speed metal, Hirax stood out from the pack, a quirky, raging speedbeast with an x-factor by the name of Katon W. DePena, and once you heard em, you sure didn't forget it. The charismatic Hirax frontman has been the one constant in the band's twenty-five year career, and his insane, idiosyncratic caterwaul hasn't changed a bit in all of this time. DePena has this weird delivery where his unique midrange yowl wobbles back and forth between wailing quasi-operatic screams and sneering vocals, and it's so quirky that people tend to either love the way his vocals sound, or they can't stand it. I fall in the former camp, and think that his wailing vocals fit perfectly with the ragtag punk-flavored speedcore of Hirax. These guys were one of the first bands to really bring together speed metal and hardcore, cramming primal thrash into compact two minute songs and playing a kind of proto-crossover that still shreds today. If you love thrash metal and haven't heard Hirax yet, man, you don't know what yer missing.
The more recent of Hirax's two EPs, Chaos And Brutality pretty much picks up right where Assassins Of War left off, complete with a continuation of the song "Lucifer's Infierno" from the previous disc. It's alot shorter too, with just four songs clocking in at right under ten minutes, so it's virtually a single, but fanatics who can't get enough Hirax insanity already know they need this. Like the other EP, Hirax has moved away from the unhinged crossover speedcore of their 80's output and is sounding much tighter these days, more like a "proper" thrash metal band as is evidenced by the new song "Chaos And Brutality", the new version of "Walk With Death" (which originally appeared on Barrage Of Noise), and the instrumental tracks "100,000 Strong" and "Lucifer's Infierno Reprise ", both of which are Hirax's trademark intro jams at their concerts. But as always, Katon steals the show with his awesome metal-god charisma and off-the-hook vocals. Goddammit, I love Hirax!
Track Samples:
Sample : Chaos and Brutality
Sample : Walk with Death

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We're finally getting around to stocking Hirax's reissued releases and new stuff here at C-Blast. In the pantheon of 80's speed metal, Hirax stood out from the pack, a quirky, raging speedbeast with an x-factor by the name of Katon W. DePena, and once you heard em, you sure didn't forget it. The charismatic Hirax frontman has been the one constant in the band's twenty-five year career, and his insane, idiosyncratic caterwaul hasn't changed a bit in all of this time. DePena has this weird delivery where his unique midrange yowl wobbles back and forth between wailing quasi-operatic screams and sneering vocals, and it's so quirky that people tend to either love the way his vocals sound, or they can't stand it. I fall in the former camp, and think that his wailing vocals fit perfectly with the ragtag punk-flavored speedcore of Hirax. These guys were one of the first bands to really bring together speed metal and hardcore, cramming primal thrash into compact two minute songs and playing a kind of proto-crossover that still shreds today. If you love thrash metal and haven't heard Hirax yet, man, you don't know what yer missing.
OK, the new Hirax stuff is good, really really good, definitely some of the best thrash being played right now by guys who were actually there when it was originall,y happening. The 21st century Hirax, while definitely a tighter, more proficient, less crumbling-at-the-seams outfit, is still unmistakeably a fuckin' thrash metal band, no "groove", no sad attempts at striving for some kind of "rock" credibility. If nothing else, you have to give Katon and crew their props for their purity of vision, and for delivering it with the kind of unbridled passion that you'd normally expect from a bunch of energetic 19 year old kids who just discovered the brilliance of Bonded By Blood, Hell Awaits and Extreme Aggression.
That said, I can't help but keep coming back to their 80's stuff. Obviously, a big part of it is that this is the stuff that I grew up with, so it's got all of that added emotional baggage that we attach to music from various points in our life; but there's also the sheer fucking insanity of 80's Hirax, a barely controlled mania that thrums beneath every song on Raging Violence and Hate, Fear And Power. The riffs are fast, fierce, but kind of sloppy, as are the blasting drums, psychotic soloing and go-for-broke performances that tend to keep all of these songs right around the two minute mark. Who the fuck was playing two minute long thrash songs in the 80's? This stuff is borderline blast at times, and along with Wehrmacht were one of the FASTEST thrash bands from this era. And of course, you have Katon De Pena and his outrageous pipes. His high pitched vibrato and midrange growl make Hirax the unique beast that they are, and Katon's triumphant yowl continues to make him one of my favorite thrash metal frontmen to this day. Originally released in the late 80's when Hirax was right on the edge of disbanding, Not Dead Yet collects the band's 1985 debut album raging Violence and its 1996 follow-up EP Hate, Fear, And Power, both of which were released on Metal Blade. This is the essential Hirax, nearly fifty minutes of hyperspeed speedcore/crossover frenzy. Crucial. The original release went AWOL for awhile, but Selfmadegod has reissued it complete with the awesome Pushead cover art and Mad Marc Rude's illustration on the back.
Track Samples:
Sample : Blitzkreig Air Attack
Sample : Bombs of Death
Sample : Hate, Fear and Power
Sample : The Gauntlet
Sample : Warlords Command

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Stanislaw Wolonciej is a Polish musician who has played in bands like Newbreed and Angerpath, two bands whose names I've seen floating around but neither of which I've actually heard. I seriously doubt that either one of his other bands is anywhere as fucked-up sounding as Egoist, though. With Egoist, Wolonciej strikes out on his own for a mostly-solo project that's abetted by Pestilence guitarist Patrick Mameli on two tracks. Aside from the solos that Mameli contributes, all of the instruments, drum programming and vocals are handled by Wolonciej, which is an impressive feat considering how complex this album is. On the other hand, it's doubtful that something this schizophrenic and obsessive could have been produced by any kind of democratic body. Egoist's music is extremely difficult, and often gratingly atonal, combining that distinctly Polish brand of angular death metal (see Nyia/Antigama) with over-the-top prog tendencies, ambient soundscapes, arrhythmic math metal, and, um, some rather Korn-like riffs that take a moment to get used to. Now, this is definitely not nu-metal, not a chance, it's just that that's the closest reference point I keep coming up with for the strange, ultra-downtuned guitar riffs that appear all over this album. Maybe Meshuggah is a better comparison, as the heavier riffing does sound like a chunkier, more percussive version of what their riffs are like. The songs are ridiculously complex and obtuse, deliberately going for a Zappa-like approach to composition that'll have the less prog/freakoid inclined to pull the plug on this album pretty quick. For those of you that are able to put the time and patience in, though, Egoist does take an interesting approach to his prog-metal visions, the songs lurching through those crushing, angular detuned riffs, weird funky slap-bass, mechanical drumming that moves in harsh, jagged time signatures, spacey electronic noises, and cleanly sung, mostly morose vocals. Occasionally in the middle of these schizoid wanderings, we come across lush vocal harmonies that are reminiscent of Radiohead or Catherine Wheel, all dreamy and pretty, and sometimes the music itself makes an unexpected turn into dreamy shoegazer pop, like on "Near Warm Fireplace", and there's also alot of amazing guitar ambience that Egoist positions in various places, shifting from crushing fragmented metal into shimmery chords and shoegazey melody. It's a cool contrast that only reveals itself oncve you've made your way fairly deep into the briarpatch of Egoist's chunky, maddening heaviness. The guest solos that former Pestilence guitarist Mameli contributes are really cool as well, injecting a jazzy ambience into the songs "(Not) The End" and "These Strange Things".
What to compare this to? Maybe the newer Manes stuff mixed in with some Meshuggah and Deftones? Fredrik Thorendahl's Special Defects fused with Ephel Duath and Mr Bungle, maybe? A bizarre, idiosyncratic mashup of math metal, heavy shoegazer, funk, jazz fusion and prog? It's jarring, that's for sure, and like I said, only the more adventurous of you will probably have the stones to stick with it.
Track Samples:
Sample : (Not) The End
Sample : Near Warm Fireplace
Sample : The Rest Will Follow
Sample : These Strange Things

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We're finally getting around to stocking Hirax's reissued releases and new stuff here at C-Blast. In the pantheon of 80's speed metal, Hirax stood out from the pack, a quirky, raging speedbeast with an x-factor by the name of Katon W. DePena, and once you heard em, you sure didn't forget it. The charismatic Hirax frontman has been the one constant in the band's twenty-five year career, and his insane, idiosyncratic caterwaul hasn't changed a bit in all of this time. DePena has this weird delivery where his unique midrange yowl wobbles back and forth between wailing quasi-operatic screams and sneering vocals, and it's so quirky that people tend to either love the way his vocals sound, or they can't stand it. I fall in the former camp, and think that his wailing vocals fit perfectly with the ragtag punk-flavored speedcore of Hirax. These guys were one of the first bands to really bring together speed metal and hardcore, cramming primal thrash into compact two minute songs and playing a kind of proto-crossover that still shreds today. If you love thrash metal and haven't heard Hirax yet, man, you don't know what yer missing.
A couple of months ago, we listed a double LP live album called Thrash And Destroy that documented a ferocious Hirax concert from Germany - it's a positively skullshredding peformance that captures the band in full battle mode. Well, that concert was also professionally filmed, and now we have a DVD/CD set from the Polish label Selfmadegod that not only has the full concert on DVD and CD, but also adds on an additional bonus concert from Lorrach, Germany from (I'm assuming) the same European tour in 2007. The live album is ripping as it is, but actually seeing Hirax in action here at the Keep It True Festival...whew! This set KILLS. It's pro shot, multiple camera angles, awesome sound quality - absolutely essential for any hardcore Hirax fan, and it'll close the deal on anyone new to these speed/thrash legends.
Here's what we said about the original live album for this concert: This live document captures the band's energized 75-minute set at the Keep It true XI metal festival in Germany from 2007 with eighteen songs of 80's setlist staples and newer Hirax material. Of course you get stuff like "Hate, Fear, And Power" and "Bombs Of Death", played at breakneck fucking speed, and the recording quality is what I would consider high quality - a clear, heavy soundboard mix gives all of the instruments the proper amount of space, and Katon's vocals are nice and loud. You can hear the inebriated audience going absolutely apeshit too, especially when Katon revs them up into a headbanging furor with his over-the-top heavy metal stage banter in between songs. If yer a Hirax fan, this is an awesome live album that captures the band in their fully explosive thrash fury.
Full color snapcase package also includes a full color insert/booklet with photos and liner notes. The DVD is region free too, so it'll play in any DVD player.
Track Samples:
Sample : Bombs Of Death [Live]
Sample : Lucifer's Infierno [Live]
Sample : The New Age Of Terror [Live]

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Now available on cd from the Polish metal label Selfmadegod!
Out of the bazillion neo-thrash bands that have sprout up like weeds in recent years, only a handful really stand out; it's easy enough to strap on the white Nike high-tops, pull out the sleeveless denim vest and rip off every Exodus and Vio-lence riff that you can find the tabs for, but back during the heyday of thrash metal in the 80's, my favorite bands were the ones who didn't sound like every other Bay Area speed unit; the ones who, through their own unique quirks or warped vision, sounded pretty unique. The operatic histrionics of Hirax, Voivod's otherwordly sci-fi thrash, the brutal industrial-tinged crossover of early Prong, Mordred's wonky funkiness, and the crazy prog-thrash of bands like Mekong Delta, Blind Illusion, Coroner, Sadus, and the fusion-y insanity of late-era Defiance all rocked my world, and still do. It's a bummer that I'm not hearing more bands from the recent thrash resurgence taking a more idiosyncratic approach, which is why I've been digging Voetsek so much lately. It took me fucking forever to finally hear these co-ed thrashers, but I instantly fell in love with Voetsek's insane chipmunk thrash after picking up their latest album Infernal Command. Holy shit, does this band smoke! Basically, Voetsek play a combination of crossover thrash and classic Cali thrash metal that they dismantle into it's core components and compress into ultra-short blasts that usually top out at about a minute. The riffs go from ripping speedpunk to chunky palm-muted thrash in the blink of an eye, and everything sounds like it's been sped up double-time. What propels Voetsek's ultrathrash into new realms of insanity is singer Ami Lawless, whose impossibly high-pitched scream makes her sound like a cartoon animal getting its trachea ripped out; her screeching delivery will no doubt turn off thrash purists, but I think it's an integral part of what makes these cats sound so nuts. Plus, the band has an undeniable feminist streak that totally sets 'em apart from the rest of the thrash scene, just look at their album titles (The Castrator Album? Yikes!) and silly song titles ("Tampons Should Be Free", "Ode To Porno Grind Boys", and a tribute to the early 20th century womens rights activist Alice Paul - hardly your typical thrash topics), but it's all filtered through their goofy sense of humor, no heavy handed social commentary here. Voetsek are definitely doing something different.
2008's Infernal Command is Voetsek's most vicious record so far, and it has not only the best production of any of their releases, but also the tightest performance, with the rapid-fire thrash metal riffing and brain-melting virtuoso shredding now at the fore of their blistering, punky thrash. There are only seventeen songs this time, and they're a little longer too, with some reaching two minutes or more, making them epics by Voetsek standards. As before, their sound is equal parts Bay Area thrash metal (think Exodus, Death Angel, Vio-lence) and Cali powerviolence (Capitalist Casualties), but the they're now letting the riffs breathe more, launching into longer jams with more mid-paced thrash heaviness without sacrificing any of their insane energy, and it just makes these songs that much catchier. The sound is clearly much more metal with crazy Yngwie-style shred splattered all over the place, and there's even some very subtle black metal stylings that creep through on a couple of tracks, but their cutting humor hasn't been diluted a bit, as seen in songs like "Mucho Macho", "Self-Righteous Fuckdom", and "W.W.L.D. (What Would Lemmy Do?)"). And again, the chipmunk-on-meth chattering vocals of frontlady Ami Lawless hold court over Veotsek's maniacal thrash, going from deep death metal grunts and racing upwards to those batshit-crazy high-pitched cartoon screams. Awesome. Couple of odd moments too, like the robotic vocoder vocals that show briefly early in the album, and the inexplicable cover of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" reworked into a furious speed-metal anthem that closes the album. Like I've mentioned in my overviews of the earlier Voetsek albums, Ami's vocals and irreverent approach to 80's thrash will probably turn off some of the stauncher purists, but for the rest of you who dig your thrash fast and freaked-out, you must hear this! Awesome album art from Andrei Bouzikov (Municipal Waste, Cannabis Corpse) too, who does an eerie Repka-like piece for the cover.
Track Samples:
Sample : Blueprint for the Perfect Circle Pit
Sample : Dismember Mama
Sample : Family Ties
Sample : Strange Fruit

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With one of the most distinctive and unique voices in thrash metal, Hirax frontman Katon De Pena is a real lifer, an elder statesman of underground metal, the sole founding member of this long-running California speed/thrash outfit who first emerged in the early 80’s with a blistering combo of rapid fire hardcore punk and leather-clad speed metal. There was a hiatus there in the 90’s when Hirax went into an extended hibernation, but they returned in full force at the dawn of the new millenium to carry the torche for true blazing thrash long before the whole thrash revival thing hit full swing. As far as I’m concerned, the new Hirax new material continues to outdo most of the younger neo-thrash bands that have arisen in recent years; the last album the band released, 2004’s The New Age Of Terror was one of the best thrash albums of the past decade, and El Rostro De La Muerte, the band's first in six years continues in the same blazing high-speed. Pure, ferocious thrash metal with killer riffs that clocks at top speed for the majority of the album, delivering a non stop volley of furious drumming and chunky riffs save for save for the melancholy piano/organ instrumental "Cuando Cae la Oscuridad" that appears later in the album. Katon’s uniquely hysteric air-raid vocals are still there, giving Hirax their trademark manic sound, although it sounds as if his vocals are getting rougher and raspier with age, which is fine; the added grit just adds to his fierce operatic screaming. Few bands thrash as viciously and as sincerely as these vets do almost twenty years on, and El Rostro is a kickass thrash album that Hirax fans are going to love. The album features some great evil genie cover artwork from the legendary Ed Repka as well! Crucial thrash...
Track Samples:
Sample : Baptized by Fire
Sample : Broken Neck
Sample : Cuando Cae la Oscuridad [When Darkness Falls][Instrumental]
Sample : Death Militia

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I've made numerous mentions of my love for the old Ax/ction Records and Fudgeworthy catalogs around here, both of which were pretty influential on the formation of Crucial Blast. Much of the insane noise that came out on Ax/ction has been out of print and hard to find, including the many releases of the band Psycho, the Boston grind/punk band that featured Ax/ction owner Charlie Infection on drums. Psycho were virtually the Ax/ction house band, releasing a bunch of 7"s and 12"s on the label throughout the 80's and 90's; the earlier stuff was straightforward fast hardcore punk, a variant of the speedy, frenzied thrash that the Boston area was producing in the early 80's, but somewhere along the line later in the decade, the lineup went through a couple of changes and the new version of Psycho emerged as a death metal and grindcore obsessed outfit that was way faster and more brutal and metallic than before. Psycho were incapable of completely shaking their hardcore roots though, and what they evolved into was a messed-up mash up of hardcore punk, primitive death metal, and early grindcore that never quite settles into any one sound. Which I always enjoyed about these guys; the fifty-two songs that collected on this new semi-discography Cd released by Polish grindcore label Selfmadegod hurtle through several manic manifestations of grindpunk, a raw, atavistic assault that mixes together lots of wonky, almost Black Flag-esque riffs and wailing , batshit guitar solos, occasional sloppy noisecore freakouts, parts where the band will be blasting at full grinding strength and then suddenly switch direction and tear into some super catchy, anthemic punk rock. There's a lot of early death metal influence in here, but it's played with raw punk abandon, the blastbeats are sloppy and frantic, the songs mostly clocking in at about a minute. As you go through the tracks, you can hear Psycho's sound becoming more and more metal, but they also got weirder, increasingly using weird pitch shifter effects on the vocals to get this bizarre processed devil-growl sound on many of the songs. There's also a lot of humor here, with goofy song titles that take jabs at the absurdity of death metal, and silly noisecore digs at classic rock dinosaurs like Led Zep. These guys ripped though, and Psycho's "grind era" produced some wickedly vicious grindpunk that'll appeal to fans of everything from Repulsion to early Napalm Death to Unholy Grave, sounding sort of like a cross between Siege and Black Flag at times, a lunatic blast-speed hardcore outfit tearing through sixty-second eruptions of total death. This disc collects all of the Psycho tracks from their splits with Anal Cunt, Nasum, Blood, Meatshits, Agathocles, Rot, and Satan's Warriors, as well as their tracks from the Mass Consumption 7" Ep, the Apocalyptic Convulsions compilation 10", the Audio Espionage compilation, and the Shrunken 7" Ep. There's also five video tracks taken from a live performances in Australia from 1992 included on the disc, and it comes with a thick twelve-page full color booklet with liner notes, all of the covers from their assorted 7"s and comps, and photos and artwork.
Track Samples:
Sample : Disturbed Revenge
Sample : Fish
Sample : Second Death
Sample : Stupid People 2

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Another new arrivals list rolls in, and as usual there's some new racket from Unholy Grave hammering away, this time on a new full length album that came out on Selfmadegod, the Polish label that's brought us some fantastic grindcore recently from Psycho and Nyia. Grind Killers was recorded back in 2008 while Unholy Grave was on tour in Europe, and it's got everything that you've come to expect from 'em: twenty three tracks of brutal, low-fi grindcore, mostly older songs that have appeared on previous splits and Eps, recorded red-hot and live, the production raw and blown-out all to hell, and with those bizarre yowling, garbled vocals from front man Takaho Komatsu. Furious primitive grindcore with ferocious tribal drums, chaotic blastbeats, the occasional poppy hook, blown-out guttural vokills and weird high pitched howling and babbling, as always sounding to my ears like early Napalm Death with Eye from Boredoms on the mic, a comparison that never ceases to sum up the mangled grindpunk ferocity that these guys have mastered. You get song titles like "Maniacal Discharge", "Morbid Dark Angels", "Motorcharged", "Little Bastards", "Freedom To Eat", lyrics dealing with songs about starvation, terrorism, corporate control, warfare, their own rabid grindlust, all served up in haiku-like blasts of minimalist lyrical outrage. And they throw in a warped cover of the Ramones chestnut "Beat on the Brat" that totally blazes. Does this stand out from the gazillion other albums, Eps, and live discs that these maniacs have gushed out over the past two decades? Nope, but if you're a junky for their noisy, filth-encrusted grind, it'll sate your hunger. The disc looks fantastic, presented in a six panel digipack with complete lyrics and artwork presented in their trademark high-contrast collage style.
Track Samples:
Sample : Beat On The Brat [Ramones]
Sample : Confession
Sample : Death By Terror
Sample : Maniacal Discharge

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