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Saturday, January 10, 2015

Ski Mask

I remember gushing/complaining about how I wanted new Mellow Harsher records asap throughout the past couple years. A stupidly tough techy grind band from Wisconsin comprised mostly of peeps from SFN. Definitely not one of the most talked about groups in the genre, for whatever reason. But their impact and influence is present, most notably in newbies like Throat Slitter. Their excellent demo kept me happy for the length of time I waited for fresher jams. Lo and behold, my wish is double granted at the end of 2014 with two new tracks on Diseased Audio's "Bitter Cold Compilation". Which are so good they make me want to shitvomit blood chunks. And what's this? A split 7" with the outstanding Internal Rot! Mellow Harsher's new recordings make me want to rip out my guts and force-feed them to wild animals. While I sadly have neither of those, thought I'd give the 7" repress of the demo a little more light. Not sure how many were pressed, 33 RPM.

If you've heard SFN, and there's no reason you shouldn't have poser, then you'll smell what MH are cooking up real quick. Insanely precise, rapid, and visceral fastcore/grindy madness, with the helpful rawness from the "demo factor". Some of the most impressive and devastating vocal tradeoffs too. These guys seriously "write" their songs, honing them into calculated blast storms. Two of my favorite songs from this were rerecorded for the Internal Rot split, "Ski Mask" and "Stinge". They are all the more painful.

Always loved the art on this. Crude, sleazy, and strange. 625 Thrash and Give Praise Records did an excellent job and gave this the proper package. A nice sturdy, glued sleeve, insert, clean art, and good looking center labels. 

I'm drooling for the Internal Rot Split.

~VII