Sissy Spacek - Gate

Excellent noisecore-meets-harsh noise project (I'm sorry if you are unaware of these subgenres, that sentence must look ridiculous) from the USA. Definitely something that will push the boundaries of my listening patience if all mushed together into one big cube, simply due to the frequency of the distortions used, however once broken up into grinding chunks of noisecore I find it much more humanly consumable, which is just great, folks.

This is one of those things that makes 7 minutes feel almost like an hour. If you like the noise-equivalent of someone scratching their nails on a blackboard to a bunch of blastbeats, then I wholeheartedly recommend this 7" record. Imagine early Anal Cunt overlapped with cripplingly-loud layers of 90s-era Merzbow or Masonna. Your gran would love it, fam.

7 Minutes Of Nausea / PTAO - Split CD

Pár Teček A Otazník, almost always abbreviated to PTAO, were a noisecore band that were initially active through the nineties up to the early 2000s (although there has been a full length released last year, and a series of CDrs a few years back). On this release they mix bizarre classical background music with very high studio-quality noisecore blur attacks, topped with goregrind style pitched vocals, which is a nice change for this type of thing.

7 Minutes Of Nausea seem to sometimes just transcend noisecore into all out...... I'm not even sure. All constructs and designs of music are completely absent, resulting in complete and utter nonsense. I guess that is the point though and this is the next step forward. Nothing matches, not even in the style of noisecore, just pure non-music dissonance and chaos.

Released on Bizarre Leprous Productions

2 Minuta Dreka / Umigliazione - Split 7"

This is my first experience with Umigliazione - who play hardcore punk style stuff mashed up with super noisy freak-outs. They play 3 songs here, in 4 minutes or so, and it's definitely not what I expect to hear. I'll have to check these guys out more, as this is very brief.

On the flipside, 2 Minuta Dreka offer up a massive contrast. This is far from the band's later, groovy material. On this 7" we have nothing but pure 7MON-worship; offering up 70 (yes, that's right - 70) tracks in roughly 4 minutes. The "songs" are grinding blasts of scraping bass noise and guitar shreddery on top of the usual smattering of blast beats and distorted vocals.

2 Minuta Dreka self released this under the Grind Block label and it is limited to 1000 copies, so should be fairly easy to get a hold of if you are so inclined (copies are currently 2 Euros on Discogs).

Sedem Minut Strachu - Overmasonnizationated Twist (5")

I’ll admit to have never heard of Sedem Minut Strachu before they were recently announced for this year’s Obscene Extreme Festival but hey, as much as I like to pretend I’m the all-seeing eye of grindcore, there’s oceans of the stuff out there I’ve yet to hear. Overmasonnizationated Twist is a surprisingly coherent romp through a strange mixture of harsh noisecore and harmonica improvisation.

The drum sound is clear as fuck, which is refreshing compared to the muddy blur that envelopes the rest of the ‘music’, but I’m not complaining! All in all a brilliant start with this band and I’m gonna check out loads more of this stuff in preparation for the Noisecore night at OEF 2015. Blast it!

Death Toll 80k / Sete Star Sept - Split 7"

This is my first (and loooong overdue) experience with Death Toll 80k, the noisy grindcore machine that has eluded my ears for so long! What an unstoppable mess! This is the grindcore that I fell in love with; dingy, flat-out, unstoppable blastbeat carnage with a cheeky smattering of riffs thrown in for good measure. The order of the day though is mind-boggling grinding carnage. Get it down your Gregory Peck, son!

Sete Star Sept have a surprisingly consistent output of awful noise (lol) considering they are on so many splits these days. They’ve always been prolific, don’t get me wrong, but we are reaching Agathocles / Unholy Grave levels of splitting. Sete Star Sept have been shitting out splits faster than a Valleys girl shitting out babies. Noisecore? Noisegrind? Who knows, who cares? 777 blast and rattle through some abysmal grindcore and that’s all you need to know.

Unholy Grave - Angry Raw Grinder

You simply can’t beat Unholy Grave at their game. Okay, so they kinda fall into the same trap as Agathocles with releasing billions of EPs every week (slight overstatement maybe) but at least with Unholy Grave they have much a higher ratio of original-to-rehashed material than Agathocles. But if it’s raw, uncompromising grindcore that you are looking for then you don’t have to go much further than Unholy Grave.

 

This 2007 release doesn’t exactly break new ground but then again it doesn’t really need to; it’s Unholy Grave through and through and doesn’t necessarily need to be too forward thinking. We all know what they do and they do it very, very well. This type of attitude would kill other bands (or genres – just look at the underground black metal scene) but somehow, and I don’t know how, Unholy Grave keep managing to spew out endless reams of chaotic noisy grindcore.

 

With the recent passing of their drummer not tripping up the band at all- despite the magnitude of the loss - we can see the conviction and dedication of Unholy Grave to their brand of music is as hard as concrete and as strong as it was in 1993.

 

Crowbar Abortion - MK Ultra

This is a classic of the Myspace days, recently revisited by myself as it's now been uploaded to Torn Flesh Records' first Bandcamp page (they have four Bandcamps (is that a word? lol) loaded to the gills with all sorts of crazy shit). The world of Crowbar Abortion is a strange one: dancable beats and random electronics mash somewhat excellently with flat-out drum machine grindcore, raspy, distorted vocals and shredding guitar solos (yes!). 

Don't let the shitty cover artwork put you off, this is one hell of a record. It kinda reminds me of The Kovenant, if you crossed them with Enemy Soil and, I dunno...Invasion-era Gigantic Brain? It's all a bit mental and can be a lot to take in on the first listen. I don't really know how well this has aged seeing as I loved it when I was a young 'un and I might be a little bit biased, but if you like your music sporadic, challenging and quite simply dripping with insanity, then I'd look no further for the time being. 

Press play, I dare you.

Vulgar Disease - When You Get Drunk I'll Be The Wine

Ah...harsh noise; if there was ever a genre of 'music' where it is hard to remain original. I love watching noise artists perform live, but listening to harsh noise in the home (asides from the 'big' names) isn't something that I do very often. This is primarily because 1.) if you have a torrent for every single Merzbow release, you're pretty much set for life in the noise game and 2.) the internet has caused a massive saturation of the scene. You could look at it now as everybody having a fair chance of exposure, but to me the ease of which people can now make and distribute music also has a huge downside.

So yeah, I don't actually listen to that much harsh noise. But, there was something about Vulgar Disease's cover art for When You Get Drunk I'll Be The Wine that made me listen. Perhaps it was because it looks a bit like an old goregrind tape, or perhaps it was because it claimed to be inspired by Bon Jovi. Either way, I listened to it, and not only does it (thankfully) not sound anything like Bon Jovi, but it's actually fucking awesome. Sure, it's noisy as hell, but beneath those pummelling walls of distortion are haunting strains and creeping textures which mix together in frenetic unison, creating an unique sound that you want to explore further, but can't, because it'll melt your face off.

Some tracks incorporate barked, distorted and commanding vocals that again, don't really sound like Bon Jovi but sound to me like a cross between Swans' Michael Gira in his early days and J Randall from Agoraphobic Nosebleed. It works for me! The closing title track is much more brooding and atmospheric, building slowly and surely until....it just slowly drifts off into nothingness.

Check the entire release out below on Torn Flesh Records, you can also download the entire thing for free too.

Unholy Grave - Unholy Bastards EP

What we have here is a chunk of grinding wax from one of the scene's purest purveyors of mental blasting noise. Little to my previous knowledge, Unholy Bastards is a live EP (that ol' chestnut!) but this time, I haven't stumbled onto some sucky live recording that sounds like it was taken by a camera phone. Honestly, apart from the odd bass-rumbles that show it was recorded in a live environment, it doesn't sound too dissimilar to the type of noize that Unholy Grave spew out on a regular basis, so I'm down with this slab of living, grinding, festering mass.

 

What goes along with this 7" is a cool little tour diary by Takaho (the UG vocalist), which details the group's mini tour across Japan with the band Little Bastards. Not much else I can really say I'm afraid, but this is really cool. This EP was brought to you by Agromosh Records in the USA and is limited to 1000 copies, 300 being on red wax.

 

Impetigo - Giallo / Antefatto

I gotta come clean here…I know that Impetigo are regarded as legends in the grindcore/noisecore scenes, but I just cannot get into them! I’ve had this CD for yonks but I rarely, if ever, listen to it. Perhaps I need to investigate more of their material, but with the crazy scope of music out there, I always find myself forgetting to do so. Giallo / Antefatto is a collection of the bands first two demos with an extra unreleased track thrown in for good measure. This is my only experience with the sounds of Impetigo.

Half-Life Records (who I think have taken a trip to Belize, to paraphrase Saul Goodman) released this CD compilation all the way back in 2006. It must have been a big noise because it’s got incredibly extensive linear notes contributed by Impetigo's Stevo, who goes into the history of the band and each track on the CD with relentless detail. I think for die-hard Impetigo fans this CD is totally worth hunting down if just for the previously unreleased track and the endless info-spewing by Stevo. To round it off, this CD is a bit so/so for me, but it was a fairly enjoyable listen (and an informative read) nonetheless.

Sete Star Sept / Violent Gorge - Split 5.5"

Holy Mother, now this is some abrasive shit! Sete Star Sept are currently my go-to band for extra-nasty noisecore skullduggery, and they do not disappoint with this particular slice of shitgrind vulgarity. Violent Gorge takes things a little bit further. Things start off in the noisecore ballpark, and then subtly migrate into harsh noise territory, as it appears the original "band" recordings are cut, spliced, diced and manipulated to create all manner of auditory discomfort. Imagine Suppression meets AxCx in King Tubby's studio. Ha ha!

 

Uber-DIY and well worth a look-in, you can get this unusually sized 5.5" slab of tinnitus from Grindfather Productions, Mass Deadening, Aggressive Valley, Death, Agony & Screams and Pan Del Muerte Records.

 

No Youtube links for this, sorry!

Joe Pesci - At Our Expense!

Joe Pesci play really blurry sounding fastcore, somewhere along the grind highway between sounding like Anal Cunt and (really) early Magrudergrind. At Our Expense! sounds like more of a demo than anything, but it is a great, yet sadly quite short, trip through a grinding world of total speed. Bones Brigade released this CD back in 2009 after some self-released splits/demos and a 12" four-way which the band appeared on around 2007. After the release of this album, 4 years ago now, Joe Pesci seems to have dissappeared into thin air. It might have something to do with The Afternoon Gentlemen being rather busy, but, hey, what do I know?

 

The first thing I notice about the sound here is that the drums are oddly panned to one side, with a slight echo of the track on the other side a split-second later. I'm not sure if the guitars and drums were recorded separately in a rehearsal environment and what I'm hearing is the drums bleeding through on the guitar track, but it takes a while to get my head around this confusing anomaly. Oddities aside, this CD is a fucking animal! The guitars are an endless blur, rarely stopping to break into the odd riff, and with the drums the standard speed is "blast, motherfuckers!", sometimes slowing down to a crust-punk kinda speed and sometimes even speeding up into gravity blasts. What is this, a death metal record? Ha! Check it out in the link belowwww.

Anal Cunt - Top 40 Hits

According to the ever-reliable source for information that is the internet, Top 40 Hits is considered a bit of a disappointment in the worldwide circles of AxCx fans (or at least it was upon it’s initial release date back in 1996). But, you know me, I don’t give a fuck about what the internet says (lawls, hardcore) because for me, Top 40 Hits shows AxCx at their messiest, blurriest best. Granted, this record is missing the offensive content that the band would become so well-known for (well, if you discount the fact that the band is called Anal Cunt, that is), but this is still a stone cold noisecore classic.

The first few times I heard this in my teens I wasn’t too sure what to make of the whole thing. Seth had it up for free download (possibly against Earache’s permission?) off his old website, back before AxCx reformed for a final time and Seth replaced his personal webpage with that of Wicked Sick Records. The first few songs are mixed so low that the first thing the record will have you doing is reaching for the volume control with a confused expression on your face. I have come to learn that these tracks were mixed this way in order to rumble the living fuck out of speaker cones, and maybe even damage them in the process. Cheers, Anal Cunt!

Despite the mushy, low-fi blur tracks that carried over from the previous LP (only on a much lower frequency, ha ha), we see the first budding AxCx jokey tracks. Tracks such as “Art Fag” and “Shut Up Mike” are a nod to what type of stuff was to dominate on future AxCx records. The best thing about Top 40 Hits however, is the full and amazing production that the band finally dedicated to their small selection of sludgey, doom-metal paced tracks. Some of the best Anal Cunt tracks are their slow, Eyehategod-esque sludge epics. Seth Putnam is a fantastic vocalist, and to confine listening of his talents to just Anal Cunt is definitely a waste; the guy was an absolute legend, there is no doubt.

So all in all, Top 40 Hits does seem like a bit of a jumbled up mix of styles that don’t really go together; it doesn’t help that it seems that the sludge songs, jokey songs and blurry, old school noisecore songs all seem to have come from different recording sessions, which totally annihilates any chance this album had at attaining a flow. I think maybe that this is what put a lot of people off when it first come out; that AxCx had literally just thrown out a whole bunch of shit on one CD and called it a new album. But once you get over the flow issues, you can appreciate each parts for what they really are; fucking amazing! Ha ha! This was released on Earache back in 1996. 

I dunno why this vid has the old artwork for the Fuckin' A album attached to it - perhaps the uploader is a cretinous swine ;)

Chloroformed Female Victim - Demo #1

There comes a time in every musician's life where they must stop and think "why do I do this? What is the point in my existence and in turn, my creative output?". I've definitely asked myself that question many, many times. I assume then, that gore-legend and general all-round good egg Bobby Maggard never has, what with his seemingly never-ending repertoire of projects, bands and label releases. The amount of stuff this guy (and his cohorts-in-gore) churn out never ceases to totally astound me...what we have here is a fellow totally dedicated to his scene, his sound, and his dodgy xeroxed gore artwork.

Chloroformed Female Victim is one of Bobby's many hundreds of thousands of goregrind-related projects (slight over-exaggeration), who recorded their first demo abouts a year ago. What we have here is a 2-person aural assault of drum-machine fuelled, unrelenting goregrind. Or is that gorenoise? I'm not sure really where the line between the two blurs, but this is pretty abrasive stuff! The "21 Untitled Trx" are over in just shy of 15 minutes, so it's a short journey of blasting hellnoise, complete with the odd creepy spoken sample to really set it off. Sexy!

If you're familiar with the works of Mr. Maggard (and Mr. Astor) then you will no doubt know what to expect from a release such as this, but if you're not sure about things then be prepared to have your head cut off, hollowed out and stuffed with faeces. You heard. Self-released on Regurgitated Stoma Stew Productions.

Check out the first track off the demo here:

Cuntpump - A Pleasing Clitorectomy

Jesus fuck, how my head hurts! Now this little bastard is a hard listen! Haha! File under un-easy listening, mos-def. Bobby Maggard is back (again) with more blurring of the lines between goregrind and gorenoise. The drum machine sounds like nothing more than a relentless series of distorted sound blips. The guitars (well, assuming they are guitars) are nothing more than sheer, ear-destroying sheets of white noise hell. The vocals...well I don't think I have enough adjectives to get through those.

Even by Gorelord Maggard standards, A Pleasing Clitorectomy is a challenging listen. Luckily for the few of us who are actually strangely into this type of thing, you can get this CDr from Ecclesia Inferi Records, but act fast as it's limited to 40 copies. I have number 10. I assure you that it is worth the tinnitus that follows. Alternatively, just hit up the Gorelord himself on Facebook and he'll mail you the longest list of goregrind releases you'll ever see in your life!

Some crazy individual has uploaded the full 28 minute recording to Youtube, so prepare yer lugholes and tuck in.

Necrocannibalistic Vomitorium / Nunslaughter - Split 5"

This little 5" is my first ever experience with the band Nunslaughter. Sure, I've seen the name around for years but it just ended up as one of those things that I never got around to checking out. So, when they split with one of my favourite noisy acts Necrocannibalistic Vomitorium, it was the perfect opportunity to check 'em out once and for all, and I gotta say, I like what I hear! The track doesn't really last that long but it's nice and heavy with a clear and pummeling production. One day soon I'll have to do a little online rootling through some Nunslaughter stuff.

 

Necrocannibalistic Vomitorium have come leaps and bounds since first appearing on the noisecore/porngrind scene a good few years back. The recording here is crystal clear compared to some of their earlier efforts and not only that the playing is tighter than a slaughtered nun's crotch (pun obviously intended). The problem with 5"s is that they look so cool but they (rather obviously) don't hold much music. This shit is over and done with before I can fucking blink.

 

NxVx released this themselves on their prolific and rather excellent label Horns & Hoofs, whom I would definitely recommend checking out if you fancy getting a pile of NxVx stuff in one go.

Sete Star Sept / Rotgut - Split 7"

I remember Rotgut from years ago (ah, the Myspace days!) and back then they played this really ugly, sludgy and noisy shit. Now, things are a bit more refined; Rotgut have become this absolute grinding Malaysian menace. The sound is fatter than the bloated corpse of a beached great white, and the vocals are totally insane; wicked rasps and shouts that hark back to something altogether more 38 Counts...era Pig Destroyer. Ones to watch, I would think!

Sete Star Sept are making a name for themselves. They've been going for a good few years now but 2013 seems to be the year of Sete Star Sept, what with a lot of worldwide touring and I keep seeing their name pop up absolutely fucking everywhere. Which is good news, of course. But Christ, what a mess this band is! Nasty, sloppy, horrendous noisecore is the order of the day. It's completely vicious as fuck and I absolutely love it.

 

This split of "turbo tornado power grindcore" (their words, not mine) was put out on December 25h 2012 by the great people at Dogma Artistic Guerrilla Records in Malaysia. I have number 152 out of 300 copies.