Cattle Decapitation’s transformation from novelty goregrind act into one of the premier progressive/technical death metal bands of the modern era has been one of the most surprising and rewarding events in modern extreme metal. Now (at least) three records into a career-defining hot streak that’s rivaled by few if any…
From an area of music defined by extremes of seemingly totally accidental shifts in high-tension, high-impact sounds, The Sound That Ends Creation never caves in from pressure to slow down or change moods. It’s without a doubt someone completely removed from even relatively safe but abrasive metal would find the…
Not just one. Not even two. Three! Three brand new microdoses of pissed off, cathartic grinding from mainland Europe. Like an edgy cocktail of swirling football violence and brutalist poetry, we have a track from each band from this upcoming three-way split. Poland’s Psychoneurosis, Herida Profunda, and the Dutch savages…
I don’t listen to grindcore as often as Matt does, but I still know my way around the genre. Deathgrind has always been my preferred iteration of the style. Bands like Pig Destroyer and later Napalm Death are able to couple the unbridled aggression of grind with the memorability and…
Short bursts of off-kilter aggression have yet to go out of style for me. As much as I’ve gravitated toward longer and more complex music, I still periodically revisit my high school affinity for the ’00s mathgrind and noisecore scene. I was addicted to bands like An Albatross, iwrestledabearonce, and…
Coming in scorching hot from sun-drenched, leather-skinned Pheonix today is Woundvac and their brand new EP, The Road Ahead. The grinding hardcore outfit have been mighty busy in the last few years, dropping demos, splits, EPs, and last year’s criminally overlooked LP Terrorizing The Swarm, and today we’ve got the…
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…
This one’s a little bit rushed, as I forgot I had a Grind My Gears to write today, so bear with me while I rush through three new releases for you. All humanely sourced through Bandcamp’s grindcore tag, the three acts blasting, beating, and bullying their way from my fingertips…
2017’s Hatred came and went with little to no fanfare, and that itself is a crime against music. We didn’t cover it here, so more fool us. Not this time though. Undercurrent, the new record from Japanese hardcore miscreants Friendship, demands the attention that Hatred might have gathered, were it…
As a music critic, I’ve always strived to go beyond curation by attempting to contextualize the artists and albums I review. Of course, finding and recommending noteworthy new music is still an important part of the job, especially in today’s saturated music market. But the opportunity for deeper analysis has…
