As Europe begins its long-overdue descent into a pandemic paranoia, the Grind keeps Grinding here at Heavy Blog. From my frozen mountain hideaway, I’ve picked some rowdy and punky grind and powerviolence acts to soundtrack your self-isolation. Some demos, some fully realised works of shart, some shit that could quite rightly belong in an edition of What’s Up, Punks? (hey Bill!). Regardless of location, all the acts below offer something unique in their approach to fast music played recklessly loud. What are you waiting for? You can’t go outside or out to a show, so check these fucking links.
Homes Under The Hammer – Buckingham Palace Edition
Taken from their upcoming Prosthetic debut Colony Collapse, “Thorn Palace” might be the first WVRM song to contain 69% sledgehammer swings. South Carolina’s only real grind act are long-timers in GMG lore, stretching back as far as the first edition of this cursed column, but they’ve never sounded sharper or more full of ire. This latest track has a fake-out end halfway through – after about a minute of having your brains shaken in your skull – but those mad cunts bring the riff back. Not slower though. Just the same riff with even concrete boot stomping. Being lucky enough to have divulged in Colony Collapse several times this week, I can only confirm that yes, this is the longest track on the record and no, this isn’t even nearly as heavy and pissed off as WVRM get. All smothered in chest-bursting production and sequencing so smooth you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re listening to a 25-minute mega track. 3rd of April for this big, sweaty bastard of an LP.
100 Tracks To Seriously Worry Your Immediate Family With
If you’re late to the Miscarriage party like me, then now’s your chance to play catch up and ingest their latest obtuse attack of completely overblown grind/noise/gore/bedroom rave ditties. The track titling on this huge, ridiculous record is hilarious – the looping of tracks named after the sequential letters of the records name makes it basically impossible to highlight any one particular seven to sixty-second portion. Get through the initial wave of decibel-induced nausea and it doesn’t take long to start hearing actual portions of twisted black and death metal under all the cum-belching demon growls. There’s even some Discordance Axis in the warped chords of “S”. I’ll no doubt talk about “depraved” music again this year, but in comparison to this, I’m just being polite to whoever else gets slapped with that tag. This is truly Fucking Disgusting, and as such, Miscarriage obviously belong in the Grind My Gears Hall of Shame.
Euro Powerviolence Power-Up (It’s A Me, Blahhhluigi!)
Dumping a bunch of links with one to two sentence reviews might be cheating, but I’ve got washing to get out of the machine and a mountain of paperwork to fill out for my new business venture – Blast Beat Your Enemies: Pay us to find a local drummer to sit outside your foes’ room blasting a kick, snare, and hi-hat until they give in to your nefarious demands. Onward.
I don’t have a particularly strong gag reflex – I nearly spew every time I brush my tongue – but the mad bastards in Gag Reflex don’t give fuck number one. The janky basslines and ringing snare are exquisite. As far as this being their demo? I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.
More juiced-up punkviolence from Haexler here. A (very) little bit more polished but still made of edges and corners sharp and rusty enough to give your future offspring tetanus, you’ll be soothed by the opening acoustic passage before having your teeth reduced to dust by all the Downton Abbey samples. For real.
Lastly, from all the way up in Finland – Sick Urge. Listening to this quite radiant burst of hardcore-fastcore did indeed give me a sick urge to tear off my shirt at the front of a show and spit into the air. You only get scene points if you catch the blood-flecked phlegm on your eyes, nose, and chin though.