Insect Politics

The twin sibling follow-up EP to "Coping", "Adjusting", is a record that I've admittedly only recently added to the collection. It always seemed to just avoid my eyes for the longest time, until just a few months ago. This EP was self-released by the band, all on black vinyl, 45 RPM.

"Adjusting" was recorded in the same session that "Coping" was, so the sound is basically on the same level. And it's an amazing companion to it's predecessor, arguably even better. This is definitely the more ruthless of the two, the band really saved their most savage and weirder songs for this one. Opening up with a lone bass and drum intro that plays this mosh-stomping riff for the first half of "Dear Life", going straight into noting but relentless blasts for the last duration and into the next track. They manage to sound even angrier and angsty then on "Coping", which is astounding, and a bit more metal as well. "Swallowing" and "Gag Order" both ride these almost Mammoth Grinder/Kyuss riffs, and the B-side is filled with these very tasteful and disgusting dissonant riffs, pulling from some more noise rock/weirdo-metal influences. It's a pretty varied EP, and as usual, it's over before you can catch up. Brilliance.

Near identical presentation and package to "Coping". Down to basically everything except the images and white center labels. No idea why they decided to release it themselves but you can barely tell there's any difference at all.

Purity Control have unfortunately broken up, which is a real shame. But they left us with a near perfect discography, and one I hope to obtain all of. I'm fiending for those demo tapes.

Fun tip: play this at 33 for some murkey icelanding death metal with a 400 pound bald man roaring over it.

Holy Hell

Hard to believe that I haven't done any posts yet about Purity Control, especially about their brilliant vinyl debut, "Coping". I'm pretty sure I got this last year, after hearing some choice words about them by Sean over at SKULLFUCKED (look at the side bar to read his excellent posts and gorgeous pictures). One of Canada's most overlooked and sadly short lived bands in recent years. Their output was small, but they left a big impact on me, this particular EP eventually becoming one of my favorite 7" records. This is the larger black vinyl version, a more limited white vinyl version was released but I sadly missed the boat on that one. 45 RPM.

For the sake of ease, I'll call Purity Control a powerviolence band, but they always stuck out of the crowd for me with their own little unique touches. Coming out of an almost pure noisey hardcore style they had on their demo tapes. The jangely tone of the instruments is still there, but with an obvious improvement to the recording and performance. This sounds like a completely focused and inspired session, and each song displays it's own moments of fantastic song writing. The sharp left turn the breakdown in the first track, "Holy Hell", being a personal favorite.  Or the way they stick to and develop the groove the track "Bedrooms Eyes". What a fantastic record, and it's short! Each side will barely give you 3 minutes of stuff, but it gives me everything I need in it's small tidy package.

Very similar layout and presentation to the EP they put out themselves a few weeks after this one in 2012. Grim, hateful, loathing aesthetic. Youth Attack! should have snagged these guys up.

Fun tip: play this record at 33, it's some seriously disgusting sludgecore.

~VII

Failure Addict

Priapus's first vinyl release on another label! I've always been so curious why these guys have never been scooped up by some big money support. Great guys and tremendous musicians, always delivering tech grind of the highest quality. This is their split 7" with Intheshit, released by Give Praise Records a few months ago. All copies are on black vinyl, 33 RPM.

Intheshit take up the A-side with 3 new tracks. These guys have been around for a few years, I have a tape of theirs that DIY Noise put out a while ago, but haven't kept up with them much since. I believe their's been some line-up changes and what not. The have a very different sound now then from what I remember. Much more chaotic and frantic, bordering on noisegrind honestly. Reminds me a lot of most of Last Days of Humanity's recordings; waves of low end distortion and gun shot snare hits gutting through the thick mess. But with a rough sounding hardcore vocalist instead of gurgles. It's not bad, it's actually better the more I play it. Priapus give us 2 new tracks of finely crafted, spotless, guitar player jizz flowing grindcore. Absolutely flooring stuff, definitely their heaviest recording. These two songs are some of their best tracks so far as well. Tons of archs, power slamming grooves and ridiculous fretwork exercising blast riffs. This is how you do technical grindcore. If you like bands such as Malignancy, Maruta or Noisear, check this band out.

Good packaging on this one. The cover sleeve is printed on very thick paper, it kind of has a hard time folding flat, but man is it sturdy. Very clean black and white printing too.

 Buy this!! Intheshit put out another EP this year as far as I know, and Priapus are recording for another split or EP.

~VII

Flight Of Icarus

It's pretty much a given rule that if you see some Iron Maiden wax, you have to at least strongly consider picking it up. And I, being a total sucker for anything involving their first 5 albums, couldn't pass this pretty looking single up. "Flight of Icarus", off of the album "Piece of Mind". Not one of my favorite Maiden songs, it has some particularly goopy, cheesy parts that I can't help but smirk at. It's a typical mid-paced ballad from the band. I've wanted a picture sleeve single for a while too. The B-side is a cover of Montrose's "I've Got The Fire". It's a bluesy, hard rocking song, sounds pretty Deep Purpley, not bad.

I know Maiden collectors like to get super nerdy about variants and imports and all that, so I'll indulge a little bit. This is just a regular American Capitol records pressing. Nothing special, could find it pretty easily.

~VII

Bleed Me Dry

Caged Grave (or Cagedgrave) really impressed me with their debut demo last year. It was a good example of vicious blastbeat filled hardcore and modern metalzone recordings done well, without sounding too weak or dull. No surprise, they got a good amount of attention shortly after, and the band has been on a steady stream of self-releasing new songs, tapes and records ever since. Their next EP, "Gutless" came out on a 7" earlier this year. My copy was graciously given to me by the band. This is the clear vinyl variant, limited to 115 copies, 45 RPM.

"Gutless" is an absolutely fantastic follow up, and improvement to their demo. This recording is louder, crunchier, meaner, and Caged Grave sound faster and more pissed off then ever. I'm very impressed that these guys are able to sound this good and record everything themselves, outstanding. Not a dull track on here out of the nine originals, and the Left For Dead cover is an excellent bonus. This band will become a monolithic force in hardcore very soon. Fortunately the band pressed many more records for this EP then their demo 7", so this should be easier to find. But knowing this bands following they're probably close to, if not sold out.

Again with the very tidy, superb packaging, This time with a slim glued sleeve, stamped dust sleeve and insert.

I am supposed to be releasing an American cassette variant, but have been getting severely fucked over by the place I've ordered the blanks from, so I've been playing the waiting game for an unreasonable amount of time. This thing will see the light of day though, by golly.

~VII

Women Pissing

I had pretty much given up all hope of grabbing this record for a "non-collectors item" price for a while, until I happened upon it at the Fusty Cunt table at Summer Scum. I still ended up paying more then I wanted to for it, but the thing is finally in my mini-sized mitts, so it all ended up okay in the end. This is the collaborative 7" between two legendary figures in their respective fields of harsh noise; Dominick Fernow, aka Prurient and Sam McKinlay, aka The Rita. 300 Copies, all on marble vinyl, 33 RPM.

The Rita, harsh noise wall OG extraordinaire, supplies the meat on both sides of this record. His signature, dense, impenetrable noise walls are thankfully the only musical parts on this record, with Dominick doing his vocal thing. Singing about "women pissing where they stand" among other things I can't quite make out. Sadly, no lyrics were included here, or titles for that matter. I haven't enjoyed pretty much any of Prurient's recent output, so hearing something he's part of that I actually dig a lot is refreshing. The sound source Sam used for the walls were actually recordings of the synchronized swimmers on the cover, kind of unusual for The Rita. Some super high frequency tones are sustained throughout both sides too.

Comes with a little post card insert.

This is a pretty mandatory record for any fan of The Rita. Getting pretty rare, buy or cry.

~VII

Hoard Of Violence

Rectal Hygienics was the group I was looking forward to seeing the most at this years Summer Scum fest. Another masterfully disgusting act out of Chicago, my most romanticized city in the world. Rectal, for those who are still unaware, is a stripped down, grimy, lo-fi, perverted, violent, noisy "rock" band. Like if super early Melvins got a little too into Brainbombs or something. Blah blah blah, I ended up missing their set. Eternally bummed, especially since they apparently played "Heroin Whore", my favorite song off their debut full length. An excellent album all together, and their last single, which I finally picked up that weekend, follows up with some of their best tracks yet! "Cold Meat b/w Hoard Of Violence", released by the always superb Diseased Audio records. Limited to 300 I believe, 45 RPM.

Both sides of this single are phenomenal rompers. The recording is just a touch more lo-fi this time. but I honestly don't know who that would bother. "Cold Meat" is a more up-tempo diatribe of humiliation, with something that actually resembles a chorus (both songs actually have chorus's, neat). Catchy, to the point, punishing. A superb track followed by an even better one, "Hoard of Violence". This is the track I play more often, honestly. It's got a great groove throughout with this crunchy, sleazy bass line holding everything up. Some of my favorite lyrics since "Heroin Whore" as well, with an unusual, spoken, somewhat crooning vocal delivery. Love it.

We got a very simplistic package on this. One of those single-panel cover sleeves, all on black vinyl with black labels. It's appropriately stripped down. All lyrics and credits are included too.

This thing is long sold out, and I don't believe there are plans for a repress. Scour the internet, kids.

~VII

Water Torture - "S/T"

The recent addition of Buffalo, NY's powerviolence champions Water Torture to next years Maryland Deathfest is a huge HUGE deal to me. Very happy to see these guys, buddies of mine, to be playing a show of this level. The additions of Pizza Hi Five, Mother Brain and Suffering Mind tells me that someone at MDF is doing some quality digging in the underground. But we all probably can say It's honestly something that we knew was going to happen. Since 2014 has been yet another pretty big year in their steady climb in global domination. A with +HIRS+, a 12" discography LP (in Euro and US pressings) and a European tour among many upcoming releases have all made their way into 2014. Their original demo/self-titled EP has also gotten a lot of attention, and the vinyl treatment from Mannequin Rein records a few months ago. I finally picked up a copy when I was in Buffalo for the Summer Scum fest. Figured this would be a good chance to show off this incredible release's past incarnations too.

To me this still stands as one of my favorite Water Torture releases. It has a murky, dark, lo-fi'ness that they haven't gone back to since. And songs like "Cursed", "Amber Grey" and of course "Grey" are still some of the bands best and heaviest. It's great to finally hear this on wax, these tracks are brutal as ever.

Mannequin Rein did a fantastic job with this record. The cover looks exactly how I always pictured it would 7"x7". Nice, thick double-sided sleeve too, all hand numbered. The entire record takes up one whole side of the record, which I think is a pretty smart move. No gaps in between this, just straight forward start to finish. The "secret track" that came with the original download that features Madison from Cloud Rat is sadly absent though. I think they put it on the split 7" with Hades Mining Co. which I have yet to get.

Mannequin Rein knows how to get collector scum like me all excited. Almost all of their vinyl releases have several variants of sometimes ludicrously small quantities. As you can see, all info is scribed on the sleeve.

I also managed to snag one of those test presses mentioned above. Lucky me lucky me. 

Now way back in 2012 this demo was originally released on a cassette as a split with the short lived Buffalo sludge band Dirt Eyes. I think I bought this from the band or got it in a trade with Mr. Goodrich, I honestly can't remember. Very nice J-card, fully screen printed on thick cardstock. The dubbing on my copy is just a touch overblown. Which I think adds to the sound. 

The demo also got a VERY limited European release by the german grind label Knochen Tapes. I haven't really kept up with them much, outside of a couple solid compilations they've put together. This is a pretty nice looking tape too. Solid art, grim looking J-card, and the dub is superb. Wisely going with a single-sided release as well. This thing is limited to 60 copies.

Ain't they pretty? Can't wait to see these guys destroy Baltimore next year.

~VII