What the squawk? Let’s get into it.
We’re going to pecking start off with MURDER CONSTRUCT and their first full-length on Relapse, Results. This is a grind supergroup so to speak, with members of Phobia, Exhumed, Cattle Decapitation, Bad Acid Trip and more. This is grindcore to a T, with a healthy dose of death and crust thrown in, but you know what? It’s pretty pecking good. The blasts are effortless and extremely fast, which is no surprise with skin-pounder Danny Walker behind the drums. It’s fierce and it’s noisy, with the guitars creating a hellish racket of noise. This outshines the EP that came out previously and shows more maturity. This record moves, not just 100 percent blasts at all times. Take a listen to the track “Dead Hope”: It kind of sums up the crust/death/grind vibe of this record. At first, the album kind of just blows by you, but on a second listen, there is more depth here. The production is filthy, too, and the little sampling here actually adds to the overall vibe. This is balls to the wall; I just fell off of my perch. 7 Fucking Pecks.
Filthy-ass old death dealers GRAVE are at it again with Endless Progression of Souls. This is their 10th full-length, and not surprisingly, it sounds like Grave. A lot of the slower “doomier” elements of the earlier ’00s aren’t as prevalent here, yet still exist. I mean this is new-school Grave, and if you’re a fan, you won’t be disappointed. The death, the trash, the death and roll are all here. This is Swedish death metal, and the guitars are thick. Clocking in at almost 50 minutes, it gets a bit tiresome, I mean someone should tell them that “leave ’em wanting more” is a popular saying for a reason. You know the deal here: thick-assed guitar tones, growled vocals over some hooky riffs, throw in a melodic solo and put it on wax and we got a Grave record. With the exception of the track “Encountering the Divine,” which is more like Soulless era. These guys have it down to a science, and that science is GRAVE. 6 Fucking Pecks.
How do you piss a MASACHIST off? Put them in a round room and tell them to pee in the corner. Scorned is coming out on Selfmadegod, and someone must have told them to pee in a corner of a round room, because they are pissed. This has those weird kind of riffs that move into blasts. The snare is mixed pretty low, and that could be changed, and the vocals get a little tiresome, as there’s not a lot of dynamics there, but overall an interesting record due to the riffs that are not really traditional grind riffs. I can’t decide if I like it or think it’s just OK; perhaps it’ll grow on me like a good feather rot. Until then… 5 Fucking Pecks.
KATATONIA, uhhh, people dig this? I’m not into it. It’s like supposed to be spooky doom, but it comes across pretty weak. I know these guys are like forerunners in the doom-influenced death genre, but this is not that cool. Anyway, Dead End Kings is a mishmash of clean riffs into doom riffs with some clean vocals, coming across like a European version of like Machine Head or something. I know people dig this band, but I guess certain music is not for everyone, and this isn’t for me. More gothy, I guess. I’m hesitant to to hate on this because I know they are a classic band, but this thing stinks. 3 Fucking Pecks.
