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.

 

Unholy Grave / Rotten Sound - Split CD

Two grind legends head to head on one split - that's all it takes for me! I'm sold!

Rotten Sound's polished uber-super-grind has gotten more and more streamlined and refined as albums have come and gone, so it's refreshing to hear some old stuff from them now and then and remember what sounds they used to make 'back in the day'. Mixing Napalm Death-brand grindcore ferocity with tinges of death metal, Rotten Sound plough through two originals and a Unholy Grave cover with "Nanking Atrocity", which is actually really cool.

Unholy Grave on the other hand play their usual mash up of noisecore and old school grindcore, only with a better quality production sound than most splits. My favourite tracks here are opener "Horror" and "Social Rinse", which is also the longest track from UG. The "Outro" track is frankly, pointless as fuck, but this is some great shit from Unholy Grave, as per. Grindbastards unite!

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.

 

Unholy Grave / Nak'ay - Split 5"

It's been absolutely yonks since I last reviewed a 5" and upon receiving this I was horrified to find that my current record player doesn't player the little fuckers because of the auto-return function. Now, my old deck is a mixing deck and plays them fine, but it doesn't have a pre-amp, and therefore lacks volume when connected to my current, all-digital stereo set up. I wasn't exactly in the position to rush out and buy pointless pieces of electronic equipment, so there was only one thing to do; rip the bottom off my deck and have at the return mechanism. Die bitches! Two pieces of plastic and a spring later, the auto-return function is no more! Success! The only side affect to the surgery is that the platter now spins continuously when the deck is plugged in. Oh well. More incentive to turn the thing off at the mains when I'm not using it.

 

On to the music then! Unholy Grave unleash another distorted, grinding number upon us. I am almost convinced to switch my "rediculous collectability" obsession from Agathocles to this band, as Unholy Grave's stuff on splits is always nasty and as far as I have seen, mostly original tracks. Maybe I am wrong in my newbie-ness (is that even a word?) but collecting all their stuff instead seems a lot smarter and less-difficult a move (apart from those lathes you put out, you bastards). One thing I don't get with Unholy Grave however is the "singing" that is employed alongside the harsher vocals, I personally don't think it fits but I guess it makes Unholy Grave.

 

On the flip-side I can't be so enthusiastic about Nak'ay; not that there is anything wrong here - the band are a great example of no-nonsense grindcore - it's just that Unholy Grave tend to overshadow them a bit. A seriously good discovery however, and I will be checking them out in the future (or so I intend to; I seem to be very "scatterfuck" when it comes to music, especially genres). We can thank a large collaboration effort of excellent grind labels for bringing this 5" into the world, and I implore you to check them all out because they all have an excellent array of releases. Limited to 1000 copies, all of which seem to be black.

 Labels:
Haunted Hotel Records, Crucificados Pelo Sistema, Insurgency Records, Everydayhate, To Live A Lie, Drop Out Records

Unholy Grave / Total Fucking Destruction - Split 7"

 

 

Alas Babylon! What we get here from the forever excellent and fantastico! crazy grinders TFD are demo versions / different recordings of songs that appear on the Hater record, mixed with a few others for good measure. The sound is big and biting as usual, the clusterfuck drums ahead of the winding guitars. It is a condensed version of some of their excellent tracks and a great place to start if you've never heard their mental-as-fuck grindcore but don't want to commit to a full length record. 

You've also got the excellent and ever-prolific Unholy Grave on side B like a Japanese Agathocles. Suprisingly catchy for noisier-than-thee grind. One complaint is that the drums drown out everything else, but hey, it is still pretty awesome. The vocals are rabid as feck. Limited to 200 copies on black and 200 copies on white, this pressing by Bones Brigade is almost certainly out of print! It also comes with a limited mega handy dandy TFD patch.

V/A - Unlawful Grindcore Assembly - Split 7"

Unlawful Grindcore Assembly Compilation 7" featuring Pestilent Decay, Gate, Watch Me Burn, Bloodred Bacteria, Mierda Para Todos, Cara De Mil Putazos, Fetus Eaters, Deadfood, The Kill, Tu Carne, Wasteoid, Embalming Theare, Sayyadina, Pinata Lazer, Unholy Grave, Gored Face, Godstomper, Kerum, Nukum, Unholy Semen, 2 Minuta Dreka & Coprophagigs. Unknown amount pressing on transparent blue, released in 2005 by Nuclear BBQ Party Records.

I got this free when I bought the Agathocles / Embalming Theatre split 7" off Ebay; I guess the guy I bought it off ran the label. It's a bit hit and miss, but it's definitely a great cross section of grindcore music, from gore and porn through to noisecore and straight up traditional grind. An interesting listen when you feel you can look past the distortion barrier.