I’ll admit to never being fully on board with Gruesome’s shtick; after having such a blast playing old Death songs on the Death To All tours, Exhumed’s Matt Harvey and Gus Rios formed their own breakaway tribute band, but actually writing new songs in the style of Death rather than just racing through the hits. And, I mean, good on ‘em really, but I’ve always felt that aping one specific band so closely is something of an artistic dead-end – and sure enough, whilst their past records have been decent enough, there was nothing in them that inspired me to return to them over, say, cranking Leprosy for the millionth time instead.
A decade after their debut Savage Land, however, Gruesome have finally ventured beyond Death’s early work to take influence from the progressive song-writing of 1991’s Human, a move that Schuldiner and co. had made in just four years. Better late than never, though, even if this album Silent Echoes feels unnervingly close to its muse at times, from the crystalline guitar tone and musty, Scott Burns-esque kick drum sound, right down to the instrumental track ‘Voice Within The Void (Astral Oceans)’ standing in for Human’s instrumental ‘Cosmic Sea’; see what they did there? There’s something about this one that feels a bit more substantial however. Maybe it’s because the songwriting feels a bit more imaginative and less restrictive, or maybe it’s just because this particular idiosyncratic era of Death hasn’t been cloned as voraciously by the death metal underground, but Silent Echoes feels fresher than anything else Gruesome has offered up yet. It’ll be interesting to see if they eventually make it to their own Symbolic or The Sound Of Perseverance, or better yet, start imagining where Chuck would have gone after that point, but until then, this is a solid slab of classic prog-death in its own right.
What Gruesome are to Death, meanwhile, Poland’s Chainsword are to Bolt Thrower, with the rolling grooves, churning tremolo riffs and even the chaos marine inspired artwork of their third album Chapter XII feeling like a direct homage to the Coventry legends; almost shamelessly so at times, with tracks like ‘Butcherhorde’ sounding uncannily close to the For Victory era, whilst ‘Fox, Rats, Blood & Guts’ delivers some of the doomy swagger that made The IVth Crusade so powerful. Unlike other Bolt Thrower worship bands like, say, Frozen Soul, who inject a bit of modern hardcore flavour into the formula, it almost feels like Chainsword discovered Those Once Loyal and then collectively agreed to never buy another album by anyone else ever again. ‘Contemptor’ belts out some fiddly, technical leads over a riff that could almost work as a slam breakdown in a slightly different context, and ‘Good Mourning, Vietnam’ ups the tempo with both vicious blastbeats and a pretty entertaining section where a couple of guitar solos go toe to toe with the sounds of rotating helicopter blades, but aside from that, Chainsword stick very closely to the script. Lack of originality aside though, it’s hard to argue with the blunt impact of tracks like opener ‘Primarch’. If you’ve been longing for more Bolt Thrower (and who amongst us hasn’t?), then this will definitely scratch that itch, standing up as Chainsword’s tightest, punchiest offering so far.
Old-school death metal fans shouldn’t sleep on Nottingham trio Drēor’s new EP Hell’s Kitchen either. A big step up from their 2023 debut The Terror Rises, these six tracks find the band’s sickly churn really coming into its own, especially on tracks like ‘Pan-Fried Man’, dispensing meaty Autopsy style grooves with a thick, squelchy and utterly rancid guitar tone. Unlike Gruesome or Chainsword, Drēor dare to take influence from more than just one specific band too, with the brash battery and sinewy licks of tracks like ‘Blood & Bourbon’ sitting somewhere between old Entombed and new Carcass, whilst ‘Pancreatic Parfait’s melodic riffs feel like prime Dismember, albeit with more blastbeats.
If it’s blastbeats you’re after, mind, then the new Shitbrains EP is an absolute must. The LA duo are masters of chaotic, stop-start grindcore, marrying the caustic LA grind sound of bands like Excruciating Terror to the more unpredictable and cut up song structures favoured by European fastcore bands. This new release, their side of an upcoming split with the also great Exorbitant Prices Must Diminish, is little over eight minutes long, but contains so many rapid tempo shifts and super tight, stop-on-a-dime details that it feels much longer, in the best possible way – there are more killer riffs and absurdly fast blasts crammed in here than many bands managed across full-length albums this month!
DeadguyNear-Death Travel ServicesRelapse
Given how influential they’d turn out to be, it’s wild to think that the oft hailed pioneers of mathcore Deadguy’s original run only lasted three years until the band imploded in a blaze of glory; having reunited to play the Decibel Metal & Beer Fest in 2021, this current incarnation of the band has already had a longer tenure. They’ve evidently stepped straight back into their old stride however, with this second album sounding remarkably unforced and organic – if this had been presented as a long-lost record they made back in 96 before going their separate ways, I wouldn’t have questioned it, with the bludgeoning grooves and jittering, hyperactive riffing of cuts like ‘Barn Burner’ and incendiary two-minute rager ‘Knife Sharpener’ perfectly capturing the raw vitriol and inventive songcraft that made their debut Fixation On A Co-Worker such a classic.
Vocalist Tim Singer appears to have frozen in stasis for the past few decades too, as his acerbic roar sounds just as powerful and aggressive, if not even more expressive. Even the sound of the record feels like a late 90s metalcore record, in the best possible way; it’s perhaps unsurprising given that the band once again enlisted Steve Evetts, who produced Deadguy’s 1995 debut album Fixation Of A Co-Worker, but still impressive how effortlessly they seem to have slipped back into their old groove. Recapturing the past is all well and good, of course, but Near-Death Travel Services thankfully isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia, sounding much fresher than a lot of modern metalcore acts who’ve made the formula seem stale in recent years. Deadguy’s sound still feels somewhat primordial here, the bubbling undercurrent of noise rock running through the likes of ‘The Forever People’ colliding with the band’s taut, almost grinding intensity and infectious energy to create a record that feels just as exciting, unpretentious and vitriolic as they did in their hey-day.
PsudokuPsudoktrinationSelfmadegod
After playing a series of rare live shows last year, space-faring psychedelic grind outfit Psudoku have finally offered up a new full-length, their first since 2017’s Deep Space Psudokument. The brainchild of Steinar Kittelsen, the man behind more straight-forward but no less intense grind band Parlamentarisk Sodomi, Psudoku have carved out a distinctive style that really doesn’t sound like anyone else, blending 70s prog rock riffs and kosmische synths with blurred grindcore tempos and bizarre, unpredictable song structures. This latest effort is a somewhat more grounded affair for Psudoku instead of the untamed madness of 2014’s Planetarisk Sudoku, an authentically unhinged record that truly pushed the boundaries of what grindcore could be, but is still lightyears away from most other grind acts.
Instead of the thick, hyper distorted guitar tone usually favoured in grind, Psudoku’s crisp, jangly guitar sound is seemingly better suited to a garage rock band by comparison, but the way it’s used here remains incredibly abrasive whilst also allowing every note to cut through the mix with absolute precision. Just check out the ferocious riffing in ‘PLanetARY-nAmInG-cONVeNtioN’, played with such short, sharp force it almost sounds like a CD skipping before blossoming into a flurry of King Crimson-esque licks as Kittelsen’s warped, reverb drenched bark feels like it’s tearing through the fabric of spacetime itself. ‘cArEFul-obSeRvATioN-of-MiNiAtuRe-bLaCK-holeS’ takes this effect to even further extremes, as shorts bursts of blastbeats create a disorientating stuttering effect, whilst ‘AdVanCed-ScienTifiC-eXperiMent-iNteRrUpteD’ smothers proggy guitar licks in liberal amounts of space echo, conjuring an almost dubby soundscape as they soar past jittery, hyperactive drums. Honestly, Psudoktrination is such a wild ride that the fact it doesn’t even represent the project at its most insane is a feat in itself – but it’s still an excellent introduction to the band, squeezing everything that makes them great in a taut, if bewildering, 27 minutes that becomes incredibly addictive once you readjust your puny human mind to it. Just be warned if you end up digging back through the discography, that’s one black hole you may not escape…
SodomThe ArsonistSteamhammer
The return of guitarist Frank Blackfire in 2018 (the man responsible for the riffs on both 87’s Persecution Mania and 89’s Agent Orange) seemed to light a fire under Sodom again, with 2020’s Genesis XIX holding up as one of the Teutonic thrash legends’ most robust offerings in years. Whilst the pandemic may have derailed them a little, the band is finally back with a follow-up (ignoring 2022’s fairly perfunctory re-recording compilation, of course). Captured on 24-track analogue tape, if The Arsonist doesn’t quite recapture the youthful vigour of Agent Orange, it does a damn good job of emulating its crisp, punchy sound, with the drums in particular boasting a nice organic punch far removed from the clicky sound many legacy acts end up settling for in their twilight years.
The songs themselves are no slouches here either, mind you. ‘Trigger Discipline’ and the raucous ‘Sane Insanity’ find the band at their most Slayer indebted, with Tom Angelripper belting out furious Araya-isms in his higher register bark atop furious thrash riffing, whilst the anthemic ‘Witchhunter’ harks right back to the band’s early days, albeit much tighter and with a cleaner sheen. The sense of raw, primal evil that informed vintage Sodom hasn’t completely dissipated, however – just check out that big, nasty riff that closes opener proper ‘Battle Of Harvest Moon’. The Arsonist isn’t perfect, and there are a few moments where the band fall back on the jauntier, generic mid-afternoon festival fodder that’s taken up space on much of their later records (looking at you, ‘Tapephobia’) – but for a band in their 43rd year of existence, it’s a surprisingly spritely, deft and powerful record.
Weeping SoresThe Convalescence AgoniesI, Voidhanger
The classic Peaceville doom sound seems to be having something of a resurgence of late, with bands like Dream Unending and Tribunal updating that misty, gothic atmosphere for the modern age whilst putting their own distinctive spin on it. You can add Weeping Sores to that list too; comprised of half of Pyrrhon (namely vocalist Doug Moore and drummer Stephen Schwegler), the band put out a crushing debut in 2019 before increased activity with their other band (not to mention a severe shoulder injury for Moore) put the project on the back-burner for a few years. This second album was worth the wait however, refining the melancholy sound of their debut and tightening up their songwriting even further. Whilst the songs here are still pretty progressively minded (note the sprawling fourteen minute title track, for example), there’s a much tighter focus this time round, with ‘Empty Vessel Hymn’ in particular feeling like a vintage Opeth epic shrunk into a sub-four minute banger and laden with yearning, almost post hardcore sounding riffs. ‘Pleading For The Scythe’, meanwhile, delivers some delicious doomy riffing, with Schwegler’s surprisingly bright, crisp sounding drums ringing out with pristine clarity atop Moore’s thick, musty guitar tone.
Unfortunately violinist Gina Eygenhuysen isn’t present for this album, which is a shame given how much character and emotional depth her sombre strings added to the debut. Despite this, The Convalescence Agonies has an even wider sonic palette, with friends of the band contributing cello and banjo, alongside keyboards courtesy of Scarcity’s Brendon Randall-Myers. Opener ‘Arctic Summer’ wastes no time in showing off this new line-up, as leaden death/doom riffs collide with luscious swathes of morose strings, before eventually erupting in a flurry of blastbeats and gnarly death metal licks, whilst the aforementioned title track tastefully seasons its lumbering grooves and labyrinthine structure with little flourishes of strings, without drawing too much focus from the band’s chasmic misery. If you enjoyed the first record, have an especially strong affinity for early death/doom or have simply ever wondered what early My Dying Bride would sound like with more shrieks and blastbeats, this is for you.
Give OverDone InJungle Noise
If you don’t recognise this Leeds crew from their previously named incarnation FAxFO (or Fuck Around & Find Out), you’ll surely be familiar with their illustrious pedigree, counting the likes of The Afternoon Gentlemen, Cattle, Gets Worse, Sloth Hammer, Thank and a load more killer bands across their collective CV. After a swift name change to the infinitely more charming Give Over, the band have never sounded tighter, dishing out raucous, sludgy powerviolence bangers that not only feel punchier than their debut, but significantly more unhinged. ‘Earth Leakage’, for instance, manages to cram furious blastbeats, hulking great hardcore riffs, a breakdown likely to cause more than a few long-lasting injuries and a brief Bastard Noise-esque soundscape in little over a minute.
Despite Done In’s dedication to brevity, the EP feels much sludgier and heavier in general; check out ‘Yearly Hundo’, which almost sounds like an ominous early Corrupted-esque dirge to start with, before swiftly pivoting to blink’n’miss it, stop-start grinding carnage. Even hyperactive punky ragers like ‘Big Harmer’ can’t resist the urge to dish out huge, squelchy grooves amidst more rambunctious riffs. Vocalist Steve Myles sounds absolutely feral here too, spitting out righteous vitriol and urging listeners to “make your spin kicks connect with tyrants” on the incendiary closer ‘Zen And The Art Of Scene Maintenance’, which is sure to cause uproar when played at your local DIY venue of choice – don’t miss ‘em!
Sex GermsWhiplashCrew Cuts
Sex Germs came out of the gate swinging on their last EP, but this debut album feels even more finely tuned, a lurid, hyperactive sonic mutation with audible clumps of garage rock, powerviolence, egg punk, crossover thrash, noise rock and raw d-beat fused together into an utterly exhilarating 17 minutes. Just witness how swiftly and convincingly ‘Break Free’ bounces between sassy garage rock strut and vicious d-beat fury, with vocalist Anna Hazlewood switching between exuberant yelps and ferocious, throat-shredding barks. Hazlewood brings heaps of character to the band, effortlessly vaulting between sarcastic vitriol, sugary squeals, caustic death growls and even anthemic bellowing on the hooky ‘Drive’.
The band have riffs galore too, often with a gloriously skronky edge to them; the angular yet propulsive licks on ‘Breeder’, for example, almost feel like Zappa-infused surf rock, albeit placed snugly within a hardcore punk context. There’s a subtly psychedelic feel to a lot of these songs, none more so than the aptly titled ‘Trippin’’, as some tasteful vocal delay and swooshing space rock feedback collide with rockin’ leads to create a somewhat headier experience than your garden variety hardcore band. With bags of energy, memorable and tight songwriting and punchy yet detailed production, Whiplash is a severely addictive listen.
