Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Honky Reduction

This has to be the benchmark to which all drum machine grindcore is judged. ANb's first full length record is far cry from anything that has followed it (even the lightening fast pharmaceutical headfuck of Frozen Corpse... is a million miles away from this); the production is bassy, fat and bludgeoning, the guitars almost sludgy, and the shrieked, yelped vocals are almost drowned out by the cacophony of the strings and machine. And that harsh noise at the end... Jesus fuck, that's some moody shit which truly encompasses the meaning of the words "power electronics".

Can't really say much more other than just point out a few of my favourite tracks, "Die And Get The Fuck Out Of The Way", "Vexed", "Hat Full Of Shit".... the list, she goes on! Essential! 

Corpse Eater - Unholy Massacre

Corpseater is a one man grindcore project from Germany, and Unholy Massacre is the second EP release, following 2015's Start To Mutilate. On first impressions I get a mix of Regurgitate meets the dirgy tones of Hymen Holocaust (without the pornogrind vibe, of course); Unholy Massacre is an undead-inspired, old school gory mess, with blasting drum machine work, filthy guitars and possibly pitchshifted, Mortician-style guttural vocals. 

Stand out tracks on this short EP include "Seven Million Slaughtered", which is the perfect balance of all of the above, but with a cheeky groove thrown in too, and the blastfest of "Slashing Throats In The Catacombs Of The Vatican". "Don't Settle For Mincecore" is probably my favourite; short, sharp and to the point! 

You can get this from the Corpse Eater Bandcamp page for a few Euros or check out the cassette release which is coming on Grindfather Productions. 

Anal Floss Is Boss - You Gott'a Grin To Get It In

Anal Floss Is Boss is an hilariously-titled goregrind project from Carmarthen of all places (although currently based in the crapital city of Wales, Cardiff), which has been sporadically active for over 9 years, originally starting as a side project. Despite this unusual life-span for a drum machine goregrind project, You Gott'a Grin... is the debut EP under the moniker, self-released by the band's mastermind Des (or is that mastergrind? I'll show myself out...) on a run of 100 copies. 

The sleeve art of Bonnie Rotten looking like she is embalmed in nuru gel should give you some idea of what to expect here. The whole thing opens with a porno sample before launching into "Analphilia", which I guess counts as the "lead single" here (see the video below). Thick, groovy guitars are held together by realistically programmed drums (got a really sludgy Hymen Holocaust kinda sound going on here). My favourite song though has to be the closing number, "Hacked, Spewed, Used For Food", and not only because it contains samples from Peep Show, but because it holds the perfect balance between riffing and chuggy, slower parts.

Production by Fan (Octohead / ex-Necrocest) gives the EP a meaty punch that a lot of DIY projects lack, and really is the icing on the shit / vomit / semen smeared cake. Bon apetite!

Butcher M.D. - Traces Of Blood

Considering how much I listen to goregrind I always seem to let to the big 'uns slide right on by....*sigh*. Anyway, this fucking amazing goregrind record was released last year by Bizarre Leprous and is a new project of Ex-LODH/SMES vokill puke bucket Erwin De Groot and one Kirill Maestro, who - according to Discogs - played guitars and programming in a band called Jaga-Jaga Massacre (who I'll definitely be keeping an eye open for after hearing Traces Of Blood). With song titles such as "Fake Tits Replaced With Two Severed Human Head" and "Devoured By Oozing Stomach Acids" you know we are back in business.

I guess I can liken the drum machine goregrind style to Torsofuck-meets-Regurgitate (minus three hundred truck loads of muddy production), even something a bit more early-days Splattered Entrails, and the vocals are sweet, sweet music to the ears of any fan of Last Days Of Humanity, SMES etc. etc. I wasn't too fussed on the vocal contributions to the Urine Cop project (just couldn't hear them, more than anything) but this shit is pure fucking filth; it's so goddamn amazing. 

Bleeeueueuegrgrgrhhhhhh

Phyllomedusa - Lunatic Girl And Her Frog

Phyllomedusa is a frog-based (yes!) goregrind band from, I believe, the US. It'd be easy to write this off as a gimmick but Phyllomedusa has a long-running, high quality output of over 50 albums of frog-based goregrind and gorenoise. Lunatic Girl And Her Frog is probably one of the more better known Phyllomedusa albums - I've seen it frequently in the past on forums / YouTube / Facebook groups etc. and I'm attributing this to to either A.) because there's a chick on the cover or B.) it features slightly slower, more death metal-style songwriting than one usually expects from purveyors of gurgling gorenoise.

The music initially comes on sounding a bit like Torsofuck but after a few minutes you realise there is more going on here than the usual blasting mush of noisy goodness. Phyllomedusa is the thinking man's gorenoise; the sophisticated grind for the conscious and caring invidual; bubbling, throthing tracks about the welfare of frogs rather than the tired old hack / slash and porn (although hey, you can't really get enough porn haha).

Ribbit, motherfuckers.

Torsofuck / Lymphatic Phlegm - Split CD

Who would have thought that a split between two uncompromising legends of the goregrind genre could be so fuckin’ shite? Lymphatic Phlegm are not exactly my favourite band in the world; although I respect what they do I find a lot of their stuff kinda sounds like really crummy bedroom black metal. Once you’ve heard one Lymphatic Phlegm song you’ve heard them all, if I am to be brutally honest. That’s not meant as a diss, it is what it is. They are who they are, and they play what they play. They also carry this split. There’s a whole bunch of Lymphatic Phlegm madness here – if your into it, you will enjoy this split.

Torsofuck on the other hand, are lazy as fuck. All we got here is a couple of crappier versions of songs off the full length Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy, making only half of Torsofuck's material exclusive to this split. Seeing as the treble-heavy production on EDF already pushes the limits of half decent studio work, these extra-crappy demo versions are as worthless to me as a Thai hooker cut up into several pieces.

Astoundingly, this is available on Spotify, which isn’t exactly known for its reams of dodgy goregrind. The album art is heavily censored (read: completely different) though. If you’re into this shit, check out the Lymphatic Phlegm material, but don’t bother with the Torsofuck shit. This level of laziness is usually reserved for Agathocles 7”s. Disappointed.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed / Halo - Split 7"

I think this is probably the hardest thing in the ANb discography to get a hold of. Sure, the Insect Warfare split and the Converge split can fetch rather hefty prices, and Tentacles of Destruction is fairly limited, but for sheer difficulty in regards to unoptainability (is that even a word? *edit - no, it's not), the split EP with Halo currently holds the crown (seeing as I don't have all the ANb shit yet, I won't say for definite, but I'd be surprised if anything else is more difficult to obtain).

The three original ANb tunes are from the Altered States era (they have that sound/feel, at least), and they are the typical old-school ANb stock of uber-fast drum-machine grindcore punishment. What I didn't see coming however, was the Slayer cover that takes up most of their side. "The Antichrist" definitely sounds a lot better with Richard Johnson on vocals, but I was never the biggest fan of Slayer, so I could take or leave this cover version.

Halo are the polar-opposites to ANb, in the speed stakes, at least. Deathly slow drumming and horrendous guitar feedback and low-end vibes make up the main "songs", where sparse but abrasive vocals howl over the top of it all, creating a rather unsettling yet interesting listen. Despite it's snail-like pace, the track doesn't last that long and I am left contemplating whether to search for more Halo material or not...

This was released on Relapse Records a while ago now, and was part of some subscription series. That's probably why it is so bloody difficult to come by. I'm glad I've finally gotten a hold of it though, as it goes towards the inevitable completion of my ANb collection, and it also contains ANb material that isn't available anywhere else, as far as I can tell.

Trivia - did any of you eagle-eyed ANb fans notice that track one is titled "Street Magician" on the cover but the same track is named "Ghetto Wizard" on the inner sleeve? 

Throatplunger - Pummeled by Cocks

I don't know if I like Throatplunger because of their wigger-slam-cross-hypergrind nonsense, or because of their absolutely fucking excellent samples. Mingling both in disgusting pornographic unison, Throatplunger hit the fuckin' spot with their sounding-suspiciously-like-XXX-Maniak grindcore.

Pummeled by Cocks comes in DVD case with a photocopied cover featuring all the awful xeroxed porn you could ever want. What bugs me is that on the back, the tracklist is a couple of songs short! What's up with that? Confusing as fuck! There is even a rap track at the end of the record which is totally out of place but so goddamn funny.

I dunno how hard this is to get but it is obviously home-made so I'd imagine it's quite rare these days (think I can even find a copy of their second album as a download let alone a physical copy? Dim chance!). This little package was released on Sexual Battery Records, which I'm assuming is the band's own label. Whilst I recommend this to all open-minded grindcore fans I suggest that the uninitiated start with Throatplunger's material from their split 7" with XXX Maniak (Relapse's Slimewave 5 to be precise). You can find my post about it here for a glimpse of what this fucking mental band can do in just 5 minutes. 

Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Agoraphobic Nosebleed

 

Some of my most favourite ANb stuff ever! What a mess! There are like 28 songs on this 7", all of them micro-blasts of pure grinding hell. For those of you that have Bestial Machinery, these tracks are on disc 2, so you've probably heard them before. I can waffle on about like I can with any other ANb release but this really just has to be heard. It's been out since 1996 on Bovine Records and it's still essential today. If you're into grind you've more than likely heard this once but if not; get it down you, boyo!

 

There is no link to this on Youtube, however they do have disc 2 of Bestial Machinery uploaded. If you can figure out when track 25 starts (hahaha) then you can listen to the demo from there. It's worth a go? ;)

Agoraphobic Nosebleed - A Joyful Noise

Ho ho ho! Merry fucking Christmas! Hope your having a good one and that plenty of turkey and grog is consumed. In line with the festivities, I have planned a double post for today, showcasing both the Agoraphobic Nosebleed flexis put out by Decibel magazine. I'll start with my favorite - the former of the two; last year's A Joyful Noise on square transparent red. These flexis are an absolute bastard to get in the UK at a decent price, and I thank eternally my long-haul loving friend Gumpy for bringing me back a set from California. Your an absolute legend!

I always defend "new" Agoraphobic Nosebleed from the viscous attacks of old school grinders but then when ANb come out with something like this it does make me think; "shit, why can't we just go back to this all the time?". A Joyful Noise was an epic Christmas 2011 gift to the more demanding grind fans, with Scott Hull stripping ANb back to the microblast carnage of old; a simple recipe of harsh noise and fast as fuck drum machine grindcore, with longtime and not-currently-used-enough vocalist/mastermind J. Randall snarling all over the top of it like a deranged lunatic.

A treat for us fans of old ANb, but it really does make you think that it should be this way all of the time! Ha ha (No offence to the excellent Kat and Rich Johnson of course, I'm just pining for more fuckin' crazy digigrind)

Anyways, here is the whole thing streaming. Blast it and have a great day. Don't say I don't give you anything. 

XXX Maniak / I Shit On Your Face - Split 7"

The more I write about XXX Maniak the more I wish they would come back and make some more music, as a one piece or two piece; I'm easy. Just make more grind. Please! There are some XXX Maniak greats here, "I Must Fuck Everything" is just too catchy for it's own good, as is "Slutty Vag, Tiny Tits" and "Unbridled Sex with Dead Animals". It's not their best sound ever though, it feels like there is an abundance of fluff built up under the needle but it is just the sound of these sessions. Their split with Embalming Theatre holds a similar feel. This was (I think) the last stuff recorded with Anthony on vocals, and it was released after his departure from the group. On the back of the sleeve he is credited only for "Stealing money and fucking dudes".

I Shit On Your Face are absolutely fucking amazing for a band with such a dodgy name. The sound here almost makes me want to go out and kill some hookers. That's a socially acceptable reaction to death metal and grindcore, right? Holy fuck this is heavy! The bass proudly takes over much of the aural space, and the rest is hogged in equal parts by the piggy vocals and blasting drums. The guitars are almost an afterthought, but they are still full audible. The samples are fucking hilarious. I absolutely love the ridiculousness of goregrind, there simply isn't another genre like it. Reading the back just makes me laugh so much. Check out this line, I think it sums up goregrind nicely; "These 5 fuckholes were cum-posed by Bowels & IxSxOxYxFx". Epic! The band's own label is even called The Hole. Zoom in and have a look at the logo. Naughty buggers. Limited to 500 copies on "shit brown".

PS - the video below credits this track to XXX Maniak although it is actually the first song off the IxSxOxYxFx side.

Enemy Soil - Casualties of Progress

Sorry it's been a while since I've done a post, I've been working on other things including behind the scenes work for this blog (writing a lot of posts in advance is a new tactic I'm going for). Today we have a post for Enemy Soil's classic slice of drum machine grind; Casualties of Progress. The EP was put out on Relapse in April 1995 on a run of both black and grey marbled records. It has since been re-issed on CD, with a bunch of bonus tracks as per usual.

 

It's a excellent romp in the grindcore template; samples open songs before catchy riffs plunge headfirst into all out blastbeat carnage not dissimilar to Agoraphobic Nosebleed, who would go on to become rather popular (in more recent years). It was a logical progression then, I think, for Enemy Soil main man Richard Johnson to end up in Agoraphobic Nosebleed. 

 

I picked this up for dirt cheap off what looked like a private stall at Hellfest 2010. The guy only had a bunch of records for sale, and this was one of them; a steal at two Euros. It averages about a fiver on Discogs now so go for me bargain hunting. Ha ha