Blast Worship: Incinerated

Where they from?
Melbourne, Australia. Hey, remember Hugh Jackman? He’s Australian. He starred in that movie called Australia. According to Rotten Tomatoes, it got “mixed reviews”. Also, there was an incident about 10-12 years ago where they were filming something about the president of Australia and he visits a local diner and waves hello to one of his constituents and the guy just responds, “dickhead” and leaves. That’s honestly what I think of when I think of Australia. That and Agents of Abhorrence, holy shit that was an amazing band.

Why the hype?
Incinerated have been plodding around for quite some time with their thunderous mix of hyper goreblast insanity and absolutely bowel-shaking slam, so I figured it was about time to do a proper writeup about them. It’s a pretty simple idea to combine hyper goregrind bands like Sulfuric Cautery and Last Days of Humanity with slam, but as far as I could tell, Incinerated where the first and easily the best to do it. One minute you’ll have a blazing grotesque inferno of gore and then, KABOOM, you get smacked with a two by four of equal parts Hemdale, Cock and Ball Torture and utterly savage breakdowns that would make even your most cynical NJHC kid pay attention. Also, the vocals here really stand out. I hear a lot of pitch-shifted malapropisms writing for this column, but something about this Aussie’s screeds really just punctuate in the right way. Must be all the Vegemite sandwiches!

Latest release?
Split with PLF. Damn, you know you’re doing something right when you do a split with Houston’s finest thrash-grinders and still manage to leave a memorable impression. This record is just a fine example of what Incinerated do best: basement gore-blasting inter-spliced with down-tuned slams that give Waking the Cadaver a run for their money in the ignorance department. I thought the title of “Best grindcore breakdown of 2020” was easily WVRM’s “Thorn Palace” all the way back in March, but, goddamn, does the intro to “Human Cesspit” make a hell of a strong case for the crown. Must be all the kangaroo boxing they do down there!