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Saturday, November 23, 2013

Tighten Your Belts

Lycanthrophy is probably a name you've seen pop up a lot in many grindcore circles and distro's, and hopefully, you haven't passed them by, because this band truly is awesome. They've been around for many years, and I do think they are one of the best grind bands to come out of the Czech Republic. Right up their with Needful Thing and Gride for me. The best stuff I've heard from them by far is their sole full length, "Lycanthrophy", black vinyl, 45 RPM.

A brilliant record, very overlooked. This 20 song record is a beautiful 15 minute blaster of non-stop rip-dick fastcore. Fastcore with huge grindcore influence, mind you. The band really has a modern sound on here, pristine and heavy recording, cleaned up very well. More Rotten Sound then Hellnation. It's some intense stuff, but still has some catchy ass riffs, and I'm sure most will have a lot of fun listening to this. People who can get down with bands like Six Brew Bantha and Idiots Parade should be heading to these guys next. 

The cover art was definitely a grower for me. It's still cheesy and crude looking, but it has charm. I dig it.

I do believe this is getting a US reissue from Give Praise Records. The LP has only been issued in Europe so far, so getting something out their more domestically would be nice.

~VII

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Dropdead Split Test Presses

About a month or two ago, Dropdead had some leftover test presses of their two new upcoming split 7"s for sale on the Armageddon Records store site. Any chance to pick up some Dropdead tests should be instantly acted upon so I snatched them both up for a cool 6 bucks each. Plus, new fucking Dropdead jams, so naturally yes. While I am happy to own these, I got to be honest I don't particularly care for either one. I've made it clear that I'm not a crust guy, really at all, and these new Dropdead songs are just too...crusty. And I know! D'oy, Dropdead have always been a crusty band, don't even start with that. But they always held my attention because they were fast and aggressive as fucking hell, and I love them for it! They sounded like a crust punk band, but they all loved powerviolence just a little more. These new songs just make the band sound tired, and worn out. Playing half speed crust tunes that I could hear from anywhere. The vocals don't even have the same grit as they used to, or screamed delivery. Crust is crust, oh well. Here's their split with Ruidisa Inmundicia. Both tests are on black vinyl, 45 RPM.

And here's the test for their split with Systematic Death. I think both of these records are either close to, or just released. 





~VII

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Custodian - IV

In the many circles of modern harsh noise music, I put Milwaukee's Custodian well above most. Spearheaded by Jon Engman, this artists particular moniker has had a discography that has bar none been downright perfection. You could listen to any one of Custodians releases and get the same visceral attack on each each one, the man does not fuck around here. I'm incredibly annoyed that I got wise to this guy so late, as gathering his releases has proven to be quite difficult honestly. What little I have gathered I hold on to like precious gems though. Here is the "IV" cassette, pro-presses, limited to 100.

Custodian's style of noise is completely harsh, chaotic, suffocating, and overpowering. A none stop barrage of jagged, tortured screams of an apocalyptic cyborg wasteland getting ground up by the mouth of hell. Pounding, stretched, industrial booms provide some sort of a backbone, and drop into some crushing low-tone divebombs that will blow you away. It's like thousands of pounds of metal crashing on top of you. All of these sounds are masterfully captured too, this is a fatastic sounded releases, the sounds just charge at you. 

Very nice looking cassette. Simple layout, it gets the job done.

#8/100



~VII