Phobia / Suffering Mind - Split 5"

Two grindcore titans going head to head on a ridiculously novelty-sized record? What more do you fucking want from this genre, I ask? Phobia rip into something very fucking impressive, which is great news for me as I've not been too impressed with their output as of late (it's not bad, it's just they used to be so good!). "Grind Bleed Your Soul", the only song here, is fast and tight as fuck, and the drums are absolutely mind blowing. Brilliant stuff.

 

Poland's Suffering Mind have been ones to watch for a good while now, churning out crazy-sized wreckords and splitting like it was nobody's business. This is my first purchase by them though, as I've been putting it off because I know I'll want to fucking buy all their shit, some of which is impossible to find! Nevertheless, when I saw this 5" at Obscene Extreme I couldn't resist it. Suffering Mind sound a lot like Insect Warfare to me, and this can only be a good thing.

This fucker is limited to 666 copies on Behind The Mountain. I have number 406, which is like a piss yellow. You can also get this on black vinyl, which is much rarer and comes with two patches. Hardcore!

Lycanthrophy / Nesoucast Stroje - Split 7"

NxSx play sprightly, punky grindcore with a crazed vocal attack. The songs are short blasts that resemble something between the lines of the fastest garage grindcore and the heaviest powerviolence. A recurring theme is that between songs, the humming of bees, or swarms of insects, fades in and out. This ties in with the cover art, which has a whole bunch of wasps and bees and shit swarming all over the place. If you're wondering about the band's funky name (which I believe is Czech language?), it is explained inside the cover that "the name means that we don't feel to stay and rotate in the only one and right circle". So there you have it.

 

 

This Lycanthrophy stuff here is interesting for me, as it doesn't possess the hellish female vocal barrage that the group is known so well for. I have learned from this 7" that Lycanthrophy once had a dual vocalist set up of two guys, one with a shouty, punky approach and the other with a lower US-style powerviolence roar. There may be different vocalists to what I was expecting when I bought this, but it doesn't really matter; the grind is fast, heavy and fucking bonkers. Just what the doctor ordered!

 

This 7" was brought into existence by a crazy collaboration of 15 record labels (a fair amount of which are from the Czech Republic), I will list them all below for you. All of them are well worth a look in for underground grindcore type stuff. All in all, this is a well rounded 7" split that would go well in any grinder's collection. 

Towerviolence Records, Out Of Control Records, Insane Society Records, Slow Motion Enslavement, Phobia Records, Rage Dis Records, Impregnate Noise Laboratories, Killing Art Records, Bizarre Leprous Production, Human Meat For Sale Records, Exit Production, Antigravitation Records, Dead Cirkus Records and A.M.A. Records.