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