Blast Worship – Stagnater

Where they from?
Boston, Massachusetts. OK, I’m just gonna say right now that “Massachusetts” is easily the hardest word to spell in the English language. There are just so many ‘S’s and fucking ‘T’s and what even is this shit? This is like a nightmare for my dyslexic self. Close runner ups have to be ‘guarantee’ and ‘restaurant’, both of which I had to google for this article. ‘Guarantee’ is a tough one because it’s an exceptionally useful word but JESUS CHRIST, those fucking ‘A’s and ‘U’s fuck me up every time. Oh, also, I hate every sports team from this city.

What do they sound like?
Death/grind that leans a little more to the ‘Death’ side of things but the songs are still short, which to me is the most important part of being a grind band.

Why the hype?
Death/grind: You brought it up, let’s talk about it. I always felt a personal reluctance around this particular subgenre because I was always skeptical that it kind of existed. So many bands out there label themselves “death/grind” as to distinguish themselves from the rest of their various death metal brethren but to me really sounded no different from the other standard-bearers of that genre. The biggest barrier for me were the song lengths, I genuinely believe you cannot call yourself a grindcore band (or grind-adjacent) if your average song is longer than two and a half minutes. Song brevity is one of those aspects so unique to grind that I just think you really cannot take it away in most circumstances. I mean that was half the reason I signed up for this shit to begin with, so I wouldn’t have to pay attention for more than 45 seconds at a time.

Well, I’m pleased to say that these Boston bruisers got the memo as their average song length is anywhere from one minute to 90 seconds — bravo! The pace of the music here is more lumbering than focused on speed, which is why I say the group tends to lean more toward the death metal side of the equation, but worry not, there are blasts aplenty. This band reminds me at times of early Plague Widow, a group who’s music also felt like it more fell on top of you from atop a bookshelf rather than came speeding out of nowhere.

Latest release?
The Guillotine Demo. Yeah, this is definitely a big boy demo right here. I mean, it was mastered by Scott Hull. One thing this band does that I really love is put blast beats under super heavy chugging riffs such as in “Eulogy For Scapegoats.” I guess if you were to say that there was a specific death/grind trademark, it would be that. God, I am such a sucker for those, it’s like my version of catnip. Or crack.

Bandcamp