“Contempt for Man. Now there’s an album name I can get behind. I drive down the road and pull my hair out at drivers for whom “turn signal” is a foreign concept. I go to Walmart and see writhing bits of humanity shuffling around, eyes glazed over and blood pumping furiously to their heads as they attempt to operate a self-checkout machine. I think to myself that these people are breeding. These people are voting. These people are sharing their opinions on the internet.” Hell is other people.
“As I’m writing this, the UK is surviving a heatwave of metal-melting proportions. Now, by most standards, our heatwave is puny and lightweight. But, for us pasty-faced pasty-eating tea-sipping fools this is hot. SWELTERING! I’m constantly sat in a state of stale perspiration, slowly drooping into a senseless stupor. My brain is constantly throbbing. My skin has turned a reddish-spotty-brown, the pale illness of winter skin a distant dream. I also commute to work, packed onto small yellow boxes that cart me to my pit of despair. Now, as my brain throbs, my teats leak, my skin melts and my eyes itch, I yearn for something brutal enough to give direction to my anger. Well, Secret Cutter has come at the right time.” Scar hopping.
“The question of why we listen to this stuff is asked so frequently as to become quite meaningless. Sam Dunn’s Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey documentary concluded that you either “get it” or you don’t, and that’s fine. Find a seventeen-year-old who’s just heard Nile or Behemoth and they’ll inform you that metal is for the musically elite, wrapping words about history and antitheism in swathes of dizzyingly technical instrumentation (especially the drums). I disagree with both to some degree, and the question being posed by a great friend I have tremendous respect for led me to think more about it than normal.” Why do we metal?
“The hallowed Angry Metal Spreadsheet Ov Promos was the first time I’d heard of Unborn, and thus I decided to leave my reservations at the door, enter the Vøid, and find out just what these Finns were all about. Does this sixth full-length grind n’ roll, bump n’ grind, or just stand around looking ominous in a hooded sweatshirt?” Roll out the grinder!
“I’m sure you’re wondering, dear reader, what happened to my face, hair, and clothes. No? Thank the technology of writing that you have been saved from witnessing the apotheosis of dishevelment which clacks away at this keyboard. But now, thanks again to the technology of writing, you are wondering just that. Funny how that works, isn’t it?” Grist for the grind.
“With the change of seasons, there comes the need to step outside of one’s comfort zones to explore what’s out there for new music. As the cat-guy who’s had more than his fair share of one-person black metal, weepy doom metal, and even metalcore, I’ve been craving something more… organic. Something a little more sludgy. More grimy. Thankfully, With Inexorable Suffering, the second full-length from California’s Our Place of Worship is Silence, fit the bill nicely.” Worship silence, worship noise.
“As the deranged voices of ‘Loathe Thyself’ jeer ‘you’re wasting time’ and ‘just stop,’ those glimpses of receding sanity mirror my own mental state. My fists clench. My teeth grind to the nerve. My notes devolve into an all-caps frothing that echoes those exact sentiments. If pressed for time, the finale of Losing the War Against the Sands of Time might be all you need to understand the debut of Illinois’ Synapse Misfire. Egregiously flawed and fundamentally half-baked, the black/thrash/grind record is a good idea in theory and a very poor one in execution.” PuppyMonkeyBaby has some competition.
“It was to be the heist of the century, my crowning achievement: sneaking a suspiciously un-hyped release by original grinders Repulsion out from under everyone else’s grubby eyes and watchful mitts. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for that pesky e. What a difference a letter makes. Enter Italian vets Repulsione. All the grind you wanted, now with twice the bass.” E-limination.
“Pop quiz: off the top of your head, name five Canadian bands. If you’re a geezer of some sort, Rush will take top billing, whereas the more brutal among us will have rattled off a litany of Quebecios tech death acts. Few metalheads will think to include a grind act in their list, let alone one from the flyover provinces. And yet, here Wake are, poised to release their fourth LP of brutal grindcore from their hideout in Calgary.” Wake off, you hoser!
“Just in time to ruin your holiday cheer, Belgian quintet Marginal come storming into the party like your drunk Uncle Randy after one too many glasses of rum and eggnog. Formed in 2013 by veterans of other Belgian acts Aguardente, Bark, and Aborted, this unkempt troupe seeks to combine grindcore and crust whilst paying homage to the early days of Napalm Death, Extreme Noise Terror, and Discharge.” Crust in the wind.
