Brickbath

I've been waiting for Mellow Harsher's follow up to their "Demo 7"" for a long, long time. It was a solid bunch of songs for sure, but were drastically improved on with MH's more recent outputs. The two songs on the "Bitter Cold Compilation", split 7" with Internal Rot, and my long awaited "Served Cold EP", solidified them as one of the most exciting grindcore bands in the Midwest. The "Served Cold EP" was very recently released by Washington D.C. based label Malokul records in a run of 500. 100 were on orange and 100 on purple, the rest on black. Malokul very generously sent me an orange and black copy for this review. 45 RPM.

I've heard these songs dozens of times on Bandcamp, and was always thoroughly satisfied with this EP. It keeps some of the roughness of the Demo's recordings, but with the clarity and precision of their more recent output. The vinyl pressing definitely highlights this. Man is it nice to hold a new, physical MH record. Like all their releases, "Served Cold EP" is a brilliant example of how to pull of herky-jerky, techy grindcore, in the right way. The vocals, riffs and brutal drumming all trade off and switch with surgical precision, but they keep it tough! There's no flashy guitar noises, or plastic and sterile sounding production. It doesn't sound like this shit is just wanking, it's earned. Mellow Harsher apply their musicianship into actually writing some fantastic, blood boiling songs! With some very well written breakdowns that thankfully avoid blatant Infest and Crossed Out worship ("Brickbath", "Stepped On"). Playing this in my room I can't help but thrash my fists around and stomp-mosh around the place. Also, probably my favorite snare drum of the year, this drummer is unstoppable.

I love the consistent, crude, colored pencil drawings that Mellow Harsher uses. They're effectively bleak and at the same time raise questions. Mainly why the Charlie Brown sweater? Anyway, Malokul gave the "Served Cold EP" a very nice glued sleeve package with a thick vinyl pressing. No insert however.

The orange vinyl is only available exclusively through the Malokul Records webstore. The purple vinyl is actually a band-only exclusive. So I might pick one up when I see them this month. Just to round everything off since I have 2 of the 3. They look beautiful.

One of the best grindcore EP's of the year. Worship Mellow Harsher.

~VII

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