There have been a few surprise releases over the last fortnight, including a few featured below. I’m not entitled enough to complain about them throwing off my playlist or writing schedule, but their appearance from out of nowhere has shuffled the Grind My Gears pack a little bit; fewer words for each, but more bands than usual. As ever, the angriest music performed by the nicest people fills the airwaves this delightful day so take down your hair, crush a can of energy drink on your forehead and push some fools around. The people around you in the queue for the ATM might freak out a little but as long as you’re having a good time, that’s all that matters to me.
Blame Yahweh/Buddha/Vishnu/Martha Stewart
Featuring our very own water-champ Mark Valentino, Blame God did the dirty and dropped a brand new, EP last week. I’d be a class-traitor if I didn’t share it here, so it gets the top spot this week. Absolutely drenched in a thick, scuzzy guitar tone, the five tracks of Power and Control barely clock in under ten minutes but rip through more death metal riffs, crusty d-beats, and harsh blasting blackened hardcore grooves than I was physically prepared for. A few listens later and I had to hit the head to shit out rusty nails which, funnily enough, sounded just as metallic as my favourite track – “Arson in God’s Pasture”. Over four minutes in length (basically the band’s magnum opus), this heretical number toys with some crunchy slow jamming before ripping the head clean aff it and spewing feedback filth through its prolonged climax. Oh, and Trevor Strnad (The Black Dahlia Murder, duh) drops a feature in closing track “Conquest of Mecca”. Dope. Sick. All the adjectives you can think of. And more.
Grind Time-Travel At 188bpm
Coming from this year’s most notable extreme music supergroup, Shock Narcotic‘s debut LP doesn’t exactly have high hopes for what’s coming up for mankind. I Have Seen The Future And It Doesn’t Work is a powerful mess of all the elements that the individual members have brought to the extreme music world in the recent past. Sleazy, off-kilter guitar riffs and tricks from Jeff Tuttle definitely peel off his time with Old Gods rather than the spazzy noodling he was so fantastic at performing live with The Dillinger Escape Plan, while Shawn Knight (Child Bite) croons and spits words like some twisted amalgamation of Barney Greenway and J.R. Hayes. The crunching rhythm section is rife with low-end, tub-thumping performances from drummer Zach Gibson (Shit Life/ex-TBDM) and Battlecross’s low-end lothario Don Slater, pulling in the tight, riffy grindcore that has Terrifyer vibes all over it. Despicably groovy and dirty and out this Friday.
Dissonance Descending Down From The Canadian Rockies
I didn’t know it had already been three years since Calgary’s dissonant, hyperbole inducing Spurn had released new music, not until their new LP dropped into my lap unexpectantly like a bag of broken glass, knives, and crying children. 2016’s Comfort In Nothing has been a mainstay on every phone and device I use every day and now it’s being joined by the equally bombastic, even more elastic (in terms of genre) The Precipice of Excitation. Bandcamp comments compare it to a mixture of Ulcerate, Converge, and Ion Dissonance. I can’t and won’t try to better that comparison as it’s pretty much perfect. The strings sound detuned and barely musical at points, snaking and creeping around odd time signatures and uneasy vocals that are seemingly always on the edge of dipping into sanitorium howling. The production is completely oppressive too, turning the churning drums and bass into vicious vehicles for the playfully deranged dissonant elements to swoop and careen over. Impossible to categorise and there’s a fucking Tom Waits cover at the end too. Unreal noise from the Frozen North.
Turbo Twin City Core Is A Thing
I hope HIVE forgive my ignorance to anything Minneapolis related, but I only had x amount of time set aside to Google what the city is famous for outside of appearing in Fargo. Geography aside, the band from the “bread and butter” state (thanks Google) play the kind of hardcore that purist grind fans won’t admit to enjoying, but secretly blast on their way to their weekly Puritanical Grind meetups. New LP Most Vicious Animal d-beats more than blasts and has a far more punk approach to extreme music than any of the other bands in Grind My Gears this week, but tracks like “Turing Test Subject” and “Ritualized Crime” deliver spades of pissed off violence with hooks deep enough to snare even the most elitist of grinders. His Hero Is Gone and Cursed fans should find plenty of solace in here, with UK noise bastards Geist may be the closest in sound to this particularly fuzzy dose of d-beat. Great, gritty stuff. You can feel the Minnesota snow on your face listening to this.
Euro Powerviolence Bonus Round!
Did you think I was finished for the week? Ha! Fools. There’s just enough time before I go back to pretending to be a functioning member of society for me to share this ridiculous basement recording from “anti power power violence” band PEEP. With “Lil” monikers I can only assume the young creatures behind this rambunctious blast of neon pink, violent punk were/are fans of the now-departed rap star. I never saw the appeal, but whatever, if his influence somehow helped this group in any way, shape or form then kudos. This is an absolutely delightful wee record full of ringing snare hits, feedback riding riffs, and ‘oi’ vocals; there’s even time for a little trap interlude, and some trash-hop to close proceedings. The production on a lot of power violence records put me off for years, but if there’s anyone out there needing a solid introduction to some loud, youthful violence, this could be it. More, please!