Sakatat are a relentless old-school grindcore band from Turkey (yes!). I first heard them on a split 7" with Agathocles, which fucking ruled, so I eventually got around to checking them out again properly. Bir Devrin Sonu is a 2012 EP consisting of 8 minutes of flat-out blasting goodness. The resemblance to some of Insect Warfare's shit is uncanny, but perhaps Sakatat pull it off with a bit more of a hardcore punk edge.
Regardless, this is some mosh-pit inducing ferocity that cannot be ignored. This type of sound is like the perfect grindcore for me; no fucking around, rough around the edges but still clear enough to get a good feel for everything that's going in. The vocals are nauseating, the guitarwork akin to Minor Threat on bath salts and the drums sound like heavy duty machine guns.
How does one approach a review of a revered classic that
spawned a genre? There are various debates about whether Scum was the first
grindcore record, but there can be no argument that it was the first one that
blew up on any particular scale. It was the album that cemented this weird
sounding “grindcore” as a real thing. It also put Earache on the map, and
seeded the entire worldwide scene that would follow. That’s a pretty big
achievement if you ask me.
The most hilarious thing about Scum is Napalm Death’s
ridiculously OTT revolving door line up, with the only thing Sides A and B both
have in common is drummer Mick Harris. I think personally I prefer Side A as it
has a much better sound, but in reality the real grindy stuff happens on Side
B, with track after track after track of pummelling punk goodness. Obviously
Side A has “The Kill”, “Scum”, “Siege Of Power” and the classic “You Suffer”
but Side B just churns out a gauntlet of really similar sounding tracks – not
that there isn’t any decent tunage here too (“Life?”, “Deceiver”, “Conservative
Shithead”, “Divine Death” and “Dragnet” to name a few).
It’s because of the disjoined “is it a record / isn’t it a
record?” argument that I think most people prefer the follow up, From
Enslavement To Obliteration, which is a lot more solid and expands upon the
sounds on Side B of Scum (with the same line up, no less) and also comes across
as more of a full album rather than two separate studio sessions crammed together
on one disc. Scum is, in all honesty, a bit shakey, and isn’t something that I
listen to on a regular basis. But you gotta know your roots. I spend most of my
time in grind and its freakish subgenres, so it’s only right that now and then the granddaddy of grindcore albums gets a spin.
Hey, I own it three times, so it can’t be that bad!
