The Berzerker - The Berzerker

Before The Berzerker became a fully-fledged band with Dissimulate and the tour that came before it, the project was - if footage from the Principles and Practices.. DVD is anything to go by - basically one very angry Australian man shouting at his friends until they made a death metal record with hardcore gabba drumming. I don't really know how or why Dig from Earache signed Luke Kenny on two mediocre, dancy Morbid Angel remixes, but I'm sure as shit glad that he did. How The Berzerker was born from that initial session, I'll never know.

You could argue The Berzerker's existence before the self-titled, but in my opinion, they/he didn't really come into their/his own until they/he started making albums for Earache. This first output, a ramshackle collection of unfinished tunes by Luke and several musician friends, left much more of a mark than I think anyone ever expected. It is now no secret that this album was released in an unfinished form, the band simply running out of time before the release date. Couple that with the group handling a lot more experimental and dirtier grindcore here than on any other of their albums, and you have a recipe for disaster. But, in the long run I think it is what made The Berzerker; that dirty sound with the awkward mix of gabba techno and death metal guitars; each genre lurching over the other uncomfortably in the unfinished mixing.

"Reality" and "Forever" are two of my all time favourite tunes, "Burnt" isn't far behind and "February" just seethes absolute fucking loathing for the human race, which is just gravy. Throw in a bunch of medical samples and the intro for Faces of Death and hey presto, you're onto a winner. Who needs mixing and mastering? Excluding the final two tracks, which are the shittiest excuses for harsh noise to ever be exported from Oz, The Berzerker is an absolute animal of a record, one that lays bare the disgusting reality of human existence, and emphasises the all too easily-forgotten looming presence of death. Grim stuff.

The Berzerker - Dissimulate

An absolute classic record in every shape and form and propelled me full on into the world of grindcore and death metal. Could easily be a contender for one of my favourite albums of all time, but I think in my mid-teens I played this record to death. Unfortunately it was never pressed on vinyl (fecking sort it out Earache!), but the CD version will suffice. It's simple, and digital as fuck (in both sound and artwork) and probably is better off on a digital format.

If you've never heard of them before, the first thing you will probably notice about The Berzerker is the drums, which pretty much render everything else irrelevant unless your listening on a good speaker system. Good luck listening to 35 minutes of bass drum. Able to appreciate the full mix (and not to mention the low end) one would be subjected to one of the heaviest sounds known to man. The guitars are nothing but exquisite Carcass puppetry, as are, to a degree, the vocals, but the drums are absolutely facking mental as fuck, to put it one way.

Why create lightening fast yet ultra heavy grinding death just to lay a whole bunch of gabba hardcore kick drums over the top of it? At the core it's a stupid fucking idea but man this is the only thing that has ever crossed these two genres and sounded great. Opener "Disregard" is an all time favourite song, as are "Principles and Practices of Embalming" and "Abandonment". "Pure Hatred" is simply fucking livid, the human drumming capability barrier is pushed to it's limit in "Death Reveals" and "Corporal Jigsore Quandary"  knocks the socks off the Carcass original for speed and heaviness.

What makes the listening all the more mind-blowing is that the band employ a REAL drummer on this record. Rick Thomas from down in Oz is an absolute fucking machine and I implore anyone into drumming performance (and not too iffy about the over-use of triggers) to listen to this damnable blast of grinding death metal.