Cutdown

Last year you might remember me posting about a lil' grind band from Connecticut called Gowl. Their infamous 7" EP, "BLURRR" took my heart and ears captive and was my favorite grindcore EP of 2014. It was a chaotic, suffocating, distorted storm of music. Full of attention grabbing riffs, grooves, and some incredibly fast drumming. "BLURRR" was all around wonderful, and the world has sat patiently ever since waiting for their first full length which was teased about. Before that however, Gowl has given us this new demo tape called "Cutdown". Containing some first drafts of songs from the full-length 10". Which was announced would be handled by Mass Deadening and Grindfather Productions. My copy was generously supplied by the band for a review. Limited to 50 copies on orange tapes. Same songs on each side.

Hopefully this tape doesn't mean that the album will be pushed back a lot longer (though with the overflow at the pressing plants currently I don't doubt it), as this tape supplies a lot of mysteries. No track listing or titles are present anywhere on the tape or online. From what I can tell there are nine songs on here, in just under 10 minutes. Gowl's usual blend of chunky death metal riffs with noisegrind's atonal chaos and frenzied hyberblast tempos still remains, and their songwriting has progressed into longer songs, and even more blasting. Seth's deep roar is more up front and clear in the mix then most previous efforts, riding their own unique pattern.
The sound of the recording really does nothing to compliment these songs however. I know it's a demo, and I certainly am not put off by a raw recording. But this kind of roughness just makes everything sound flaccid. Nothing is loud or overblown and mean. And that being the case, a lot of what's on this tape kind of goes in one ear and out the other for me. Unlike "BLURRR", a lot of the riffs don't have that aggressive punch or addictiveness that rough recordings can give music. It also doesn't help that my copy has a dub that is a little iffy. The cymbal hits all have this flanged/washed sound that's a bit distracting. I do hear parts and songs that I know would sound great with a better recording, so I'm not applying a lot of judgement on the 10" based on the sound of this tape. I do certainly hope it improves though.

Fantastic collage art again from Seth.

You can listen to a much better sounding version of this demo right HERE, and also find out how to write the band to order a tape. Bring on that 10"!

~VII

Bummer Alcoholic

This was one tough son of a gun to find for me. I heard fair tale of this already essential split around the mid point of 2013, and searched high and low for it for months, only coming to dead ends and "Sold Out" notifications in scattered distros.  I didn't even know who put this record out! And when I finally did learn of the few collective labels, many of them said that they hadn't received their copies. Diseased Audio finally hooked it up and I landed me one of the dangerously brutal Archagathus/Nak'ay split 10"s. Red/black marble vinyl, 33 RPM.

*As I am uploading the pictures for this post, I am curious as to why I did not take a picture of the cover and record together as I normally do*. I found out about this record right around the time my love for Archagathus and the mid-west grind scenes were peaking. This record was a mandatory purchase for any junkie of those particular brands. Nak'ay are a ruthless Indiana grind trio, who have have slammed the pedal straight through the metal on every release they've put out. This record is no exception, it's barbaric blasturbation grindcore. Insect Warfare on a meth/coke cocktail is about what I can describe this as, with some disgusting lo-fi as shit recordings to give it that extra "umpf". Archagathus bring what I believe are all new songs on this record, and it's a solid handful of tracks. Their current more metallic sound is very strong on here, some tracks like "Decapitated Priest" have a huge amount of straight Swede-grind influence. This is also some of their best sounding recordings to date. Great heavy guitar tones and thunderous drums, and of course the bellowing troll vocals I always love.

(Unintentional artsy angle)

This record is thankfully much more common now. Pick it up, it's good for ya. 

~VII