Swarrrm : Thee Imitation Messiahs

Well, I suppose an imitation messiah is better than having none at all.

I posted this back on the good ship Lucid before it sank, and though it's easily available elsewhere on the interwebs (and in stores, even: buy it), I'm posting it again. This is album is superlative, love this if you love heavy and original music. Intricate, anarchic and abrasive but methodical and with weird hints of beauty; full-blown madness on a tight leash.

食らえ！

Grind Shaft / No Value

Grind Shaft are not a grind band. They play raw-throat, high-energy, thrashy hardcore with liberal doses of harmonica.

No Value are grindcore, and sound like a not particularly large but rather angry drill.


価値のない物を。。。

Knucklehead

　

Furious grind-inflected Sapporian hardcore. This is the former band of ctr's lead singer, Ozawa, and while the slurred, barking, Sakevi-esque vocals are instantly recognizable, Knucklehead were a much heavier proposition than ctr.

They were fixtures on the Sapporo (often associated with SLANG) and Japanese hardcore scenes, active for more than ten years, and and favorites of, among others, 324's Masao. The guitarist went on to form grind band Motiveless.

This was a 2001 release and, like Knucklehead's other releases, ctr stuff and many other tasty treats, can be bought from HG Fact.  A lot of their stuff is also available from HC Holocaust (a great distro).

GOUON

Brutal Extractor

Dominating hardcore noise: Death Dust Extractor play brutal punk beneath a monstrous bass-loaded wall of distortion; More or less like a crustgrind band being sucked through a giant vacuum cleaner of death.

Credit to Mad Blasts of Chaos where I snagged this. (I'd like to buy it, but it isn't in stock anywhere that I can find.)


SLAY YOUR MASTERS OR SLAVE IN CHAINS

Bonus Barbarianism

Now here's how you sell a release:

Loco Homo Cholo Grind vs. Bavarian Metal Tributes. Pamona Cock Fight vs. Cougar Slaying Dio Core. Savage Cocaine Skull vs. Savage Nomad, Skag Barons Amount Armored Steed

(This is from 2009, but is already sold out. Sadly enough, it only contains 3+ minutes of the now 'on sabbatical' CROM: but I'll take what I can get, oh and Agoraphobic nosebleed are pretty rockin' too.)

SPLIT

Crom : Cocaine Wars

The Formula:


+



+



=

(also see here)


THE COCAINE WARS 1974-1989

Presto? : Atentado Sonoro

A 2004 release: Minute-long blasts of grinding, thrashing, multi-vocaled chaos from Brazil; pithy like short kicks to the head.

Check out Presto? here.


ATENTADO SONORO

324 : Customized Circle

Old school stuff (released in 2001, recorded in 1997, first seven tracks previously released on vinyl) from Japanese grindcrust gods 324.

Vicious with conviction and as excellent as might be expected.

CUSTOMIZED CIRCLE

Fuck Shrek

Ogre breaks bones, snaps tendons and picks lesser bands from between its rotten molars. Ogre is a rough beast with hardcore bones, thrashing muscles and grinding teeth.

This band has been around for a while, though I had never heard of them till recently, and I can state that they slay.



The sort of glutenous, scratchy shouts and howls that drive good Japanese hardcore and some vocal sections reminiscent of Tsukasa Harakawa combine over thrash, furious grindy blasts, and pounding metal & hardcore(they drop Force as an influence, and Hellchild fans also might like this).

Eater of Sounds officially recommends Ogre. This originally came out around '03, but has recently been re-released: buy it here. Band site here



LACERATE THE BETRAYER

Coaccion : Invertebrato

Brutal, kick-ass crust. Both well produced & raw in appropriate amounts with lots of velocity & rage.

Like Bumbklaat, Coaccion contains ex-members of Discordia, and the speedy, grind influenced crust they play also bears more than a passing resemblance to the 'klaat.

What can I say? The men are angry. The music's fast. It's good.

INVERTEBRATO

Simbiose : Bounded In Adversity

Following up on my posting of Discordia below, here is some more brutal latin grindcrust, this time courtesy of Portugal's Simbiose, a veteran outfit who've been around since the early 90's. As with Discordia, Extreme Noise Terror are a good referent.

Simbiose are a 6-piece with two vocalists: one mid-ranged growls, one low growls, and unrelenting righteous rage & heavy riffing are what you get here: straight-forward crust/grind with a dose of hardcore that knows what it's doing and does it well.

Released in 2004, this is their 2nd full-length.


BOUNDED IN ADVERSITY

Crom!

First off, let's get one thing clear: Conan the Barbarian is a great movie, not least because it contains moments like this:

Schwarzenegger is at the height of his powers in the role he was born to play [except for Predator and Total Recall everything since has been superfluous], the script is by Oliver Stone, and Basil Pouledouis's soundtrack is excellent:





Conan The Barbarian OST (Basil Poledouris)

Beyond Conan's cinematic triumph, the original books by Robert Howard rank as some of the most important works of early fantastic literature, and the comics by Barry Windsor-Smith are classics in their own right.



From this proud tradition come Crom, and Hot Sumerian Nights, an album-length tribute to metal, punk & the great barbarian, a collage of sometimes borrowed riffs + barrages of thrash, grind and sludge weaved into very extensive samples from the movie,its soundtrack and am radio.

Needless to say I enjoyed the album, and you should too:



Crom : Hot Sumerian Nights

This came out on CD a while back but only just became available on vinyl, so swing over to their myspace to pick it up or for one of their sweet, sweet Crom shirts.

324 : Rebelgrind

Because my blog should contain things I love: Japanese grindcrust masters 324.

If you like heavy music you should really just listen to this.

Rebelgrind