Where they from? Edinburg, Texas. According to Wikipedia, the town of Edinburg was founded in 1908 as “Chapin” in honor of one of the city’s founders Dennis B. Chapin, but was forced to change it’s name after Chapin was involved in a fatal shooting in a saloon in San Antonio. The town chose “Edinburg” as a tribute to Edinburgh, Scotland, the birth city of John Young, a prominent local businessman.
What do they sound like? Sci-Fi Gridlink with tough guy vocals.
Why the hype? I’ll be honest, all week I was listening to this band and for some reason was under the impression that this band was from Australia and since I had spent so much energy nerdsplaining the differences between American grindcore and its European counterpart, I was very excited to discuss the Australian grindcore scene and all the great bands that have come from there. But, upon doing research for this article, I discovered that this band is from Texas and I was just like “Le whoops” and all my ideas for this write-up went swirling down the toilet.
It’s funny; all week I was like “Man, this band sounds like one of those Bryan Fajardo-related tech grind bands from Texas,” and what do ya know, they fuckin’ are! When you are stupid, life can become this weird little game where you have a lot of epiphanies about shit everyone else always knew. Like did you know The Beatles is actually a play on the word beat? Just blew your mind, didn’t I?
Latest Release: Setsuna. TBH, the first few tracks on this album didn’t strike me as particularly noteworthy but then the title track kicks in and the band does a better Gridlink impression than I think the actual members of Gridlink could do in 2018. It’s immediately followed by the Artificial Brain-esque, sci-fi death metal intro of “Non Compos Mentis,” and from that point to the album’s finish, the band basically puts on a masterclass in disharmonic skronk n’ grind not dissimilar to fellow regional grinders Noisear and Cognizant.
Favorite Track: “Cold Calculation”. The riff at 1:16 is one of those riffs that gets away with being super serious-sounding because it is executed without an ounce of hesitation and just thoroughly kicks ass.
