Basement Torture Killings - There's Something About Beryl

Yesss here we fucking go; the long-awaited third album from gore/death metal maniacs Basement Torture Killings has finally dropped on Grindscene Records, and fuck me it's a corker! I can honestly say, this has to be my favourite BTK album so far, I'm just sorry that the LIW downtime got in the way of me telling you all, not that my opinion really matters or anything. The production here is on point, literally. Everything is balanced perfectly, and those fucking drums sound absolutely amazing. 

This is the first record with new(ish) vocalist Beryl. She brings a nightmarish dynamic to the razor-sharp death metal sound; her lows are incredibly punishing, and act as the perfect foil to Tarquin's Walker-esque growls. 

Check out the video for "Rat Catcher" below. Any death metal band that sings about Wensleydale is 10/10 in my books. 

Repulsive Vision - Look Past The Gore And See The Art

Look Past The Gore... is the long awaiting debut album from Barrow-based death metallers Repulsive Vision. It is to my knowledge that RV have been around for quite some time in various different line ups, with the most recent incarnation of the band solidifying suitably enough for a much-overdue full length to finally gestate. I am pleased to say that it has been well worth the wait, as this is a serious slab of death metal we are dealing with here.

Man, this is fucking good (once you look past (see what I did there?) the cringey rock 'n' roll intro to track 2); the drumming is tight as fuck and the guitars are literally weeping Carcass blood. To say Repulsive Vision is melodic would be a lie, but there is definitely a progressive edge to this record; the band are not afraid to stray from the gurgle'n'blast death metal template, there is definitely a heavy punk and thrash influence here, and this only adds to the overall nuance and dexterity of the album (the production too, helps immensely with making this stand out from the bogs of typical death metal).

My favourite track has to be the closer, "Credophilic", although through the rasp of the vocals it kinda sounds like something far less savoury is being shouted about...

Burial - Unholy Sedition

(Revievv Invokked by Griefmonger)

Polish Darkthrone if they were from Manchester. It's good; there’s a nice mix of heavy and tremolo riffs with a production that you can hear, both without sounding polished or like it was recorded in your Nan’s shed. I like it. It’s not afraid to go slow and the vocals are just crossing the line of black from death. There's a fine line. The UK black metal club scene sports a lot of bands who want to be Behemoth, but there is a lot of Darkthrone channeled here, as well as the death metal influence. Track five, "Nothing Awaits", sums it up for me. There be a little bit of Carpathian Forest as well as the influences I aforementioned. 

All in all, a great album. Great band. I have seen them live (and under very difficult circumstances) deep in the valleys of South Wales and they nailed their set. CD is a nice cardboard gatefold; cool grey and black (fuck you Xerox), with cryptic artwork. I would have liked a lyric sheet, but that is always my bugbear.  Go listen to the music, buy the t-shirt, fuck the girlfriends. Cool band.

Released by UKEM Records.

Pyophagia - Ολικόν φαούσσιασμαν της εντερικής κοιλότητας / Μια μάτσα που όργανα τζιαι κκελλάες / Έφυεν η φάτσα του (που μιάν σσιπεθκιά)

Pyophagia is a Red Stripe fueled goregrind project that is based out of both Nicosia in Cypress and Bristol in the UK. The title is a combination of the names of the three quick tracks; the run time on this thing being less than 2 minutes (that's what I'm talking about!). Expect pummeling, sloppy old school goregrind with distorted, frantic blasts, downtuned guitars and vomit inducing shifted vocals.

All in all, a vile concoction that I can only say so much about due to its short run time. The band have also recently worked on a split with the band Tolerance, which is also well worth checking out. I will do a separate post for this in due time. Grind!

Sathamel - Sathamel

(Words by Griefmonger, archivist of blackened aural misanthropies) 

A brutal black metal record? "What?" I hear you exclaim! "Warm bass and deep vocals?" Shock horror! What would seem at first as your average death metal chunk-and-stop evolves into a black death slugger quicker than water into good red wine. We have the drill of the tremolo layering the typical bellow and breakdown-friendly nod that what would normally be a staple of a death metal band. Sathamel build a song, but very quickly the meat of the mainstay is brought to bear. If you're into frostbitten kingdoms, you're not going to get it here; instead of hyperthermia, you're going to get a baton of freshly smithed nails smashed into your head. 

Its more on the melodic side of British black metal, but its heavy as fuck. If these guys were born in Poland then they would be held aloft. (Early) Decapitated and Behemoth seem to be the influence. It would probably be a crime not to mention that there is a bit of Belphegor here too but without a lyric sheet I might be wrong……

Tracks that stand out are "Wingless", "Abbadon" ( c’mon, a song about a deity that brings three versions of the bible into question can’t be bad) and "Eternal Hunters". It is not to put into question the other three tracks, but like the songs themselves, these tracks are the ones that build the album into a crescendo. Just listen to it, okay!

Witnessing them live also I can attribute the blood drenched image they use suites better than the crisp corpse paint. these guys will make you bang your head and none of that is lost on the recorded version. Also, the release is in a nice double cardboard sleeve (wish there was a lyric sheet though), and it has a chained up fat bird with her intestines and serpents bursting out of her so its fucking cool, alright? 

Look, listen and learn - there is a brutal black metal band (dare I say blackened death metal?) scene in the UK.

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

Godflesh's return was one of the most exciting things ever. I traveled to France in 2010 to catch their first ever live appearance since splitting up years before, and then I fanged it over to Roadburn the following year in order to catch them slamming out Streetcleaner in it's entirety. I unfortunately missed the performance of Pure live at Roadburn two years later but after catching a few more live appearances around the UK I was like a baying hound for new Godflesh material.

The Decline & Fall EP appeared; a bizarre mix harking back to not only the glory days, but the Us and Them era, but this was only 4 tracks. So when A World Lit Only By Fire dropped, I wrapped my head around it the day it was released and listened to about nothing else for about a week straight. Unsurprisingly, I was quite burned out on Godflesh at this point so I shagged off writing a post about it for a while. That "while" became well over a year, so it's about time I finally face up to this.

What came with A World... was more of the dirgy 8-string compositions from Decline & Fall, but with less hip hop beat and more industrial devastation. It is a modern day, fine-tuned crushing machine in the form of industrialized drum machine metal. "New Dark Ages" features a riff that would cause the downfall of many a boring nu-metal act; chugga-chugga-chugga it goes, over and over and over, with an almost unhealthy disdain for every other string and note available from the guitar. But here, under the guidance of Godflesh's punishing simplicity, it works like a sledgehammer to the face.

"Shut Me Down" and the excellent "Life Giver, Life Taker" stand out to me from the digitized bog, as well as the sinister "Carrion", which boasts the rarely-used but pant-shittingly heavy pitchshifted vocal style that popped up now and then in the early days. Don't get me wrong, this ain't no Streetcleaner, no Pure or Slavestate - but it's pretty fucking heavy. It's a sad reality that when bands have such a titanic back-catalogue (I'm talking life-changing, genre-defining records), the "new shit" is always going to pale in comparison, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that this shits on most of the stuff that came out in 2014.

Shoot The Bastard - Demo 2012

This is one of my favourite grind-related things of 2012. Everything about this thing is just perfect; the production, the balance and the over-all vibe is amazing. Shoot The Bastard are a fast, punky grindcore act that features members of boozing grind unit The Afternoon Gentlemen. STB are most definitely more "to the point" though, with a stripped-down affair of super-fast hardcore goodness. Imagine Crass on amphetamines crossed with, I dunno...Unseen Terror or something. That's a pretty far-out comparison for such a simple, no-nonsense sound, but fuck it.

I caught these guys supporting Weekend Nachos at some crazy grind/hardcore all-dayer in the now sadly-defunct Croft venue in Bristol, and that's where I picked up this demo for £2. Best £2 I ever spent, I think (and that's coming from someone who's bought a lot of bottles of Estrella). I award Shoot The Bastard bonus points for the cover art. Whilst I don't think wetting up Cameron with hot lead would solve any of the country's problems it would be extremely funny to see, because obviously, he is just a dummy stuffed with used bank notes; a capitalist puppet on a series of invisible strings. Yes. Time to stop writing now. Enjoy the music!

By the way, I also made this whilst editing the photos for this post, although I have no idea why I did it. Looks cool though, I guess.

Lazarus Blackstar - Make Believe Master / The Anaesthetic Stopped Me Screaming

This is one of my favourite 7"s! Paul Catten fronted Lazarus Blackstar is a rare beastie, but a feckin' good 'un. In my opinion their existence can be summed up in this cracking little EP (not that the records aren't any good), which really acts as an an album sampler for Funeral Voyeur more than anything. Side A eclipses side B, "Make Believe Master" is enormously heavy and rediculously catchy for something of this slow and brutal nature. "Anaesthetic Stopped Me Screaming" is a lot more drawn out and doomy, opening with a hellish scream from Catten before plunging into the sludgiest, deepest pits of self loathing. Grim stuff!

Calculon Records put this out in 2006, and I picked it up cheap as chips from Bri Doom et al at the excellent Deathfest 2009 in Leeds. I am unsure of pressing quantity, but it seems that all of the numbers were pressed on pink vinyl with black splatter. Doomilicious. 

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Voodoo Chile

I always remember my father talking about this record. This was always one of those stories that would come up after a few whiskies. Long and short of the story was that my Dad had swapped this Jimi Hendrix record for something a long time ago, and that the record must have been worth a fortune now. He mentioned it once after my initiation into the awesome world of vinyl and I decided to look online for it. eBay was loaded up, and I quickly bought it for a quid or two. Nevermind. It might not have been rare as fook but at least it didn't exactly cost me the earth. And that was the end of that story. I considered selling this as I had no interest in Hendrix (the guitar nerds at school bumming fuck out of him really put me off), but I kept it and forgot about it for a few weeks. When I actually listened to it, I really liked it. 

 

I won't dwell too much on side A because, let's face it, every person in the world has heard Voodoo Chile. What fascinates me is side B, which stretches 8 minutes (on a 7" mind) at an astonishing 45rpm with no apparent deterioration or loss in volume. Holy mother, that isn't physically possible under the laws of vinyl pressing! I don't understand it at all. Anyway, two of my all time favourite songs on side B; "Watchtower" and "Hey Joe". I prefer "Watchtower", but listening to "Hey Joe" is what having a record player is all about. Shivers up the ol' spine, and all that. Makes me wanna go out to shitty boot sales and buy thousands of crackly old 45s!