Cephalotripsy

Don't call it a comeback, but I'm making a bit of a comeback. A laziness-inspired hiatus has been kicked into touch by a friend who my ego says got bored of waiting for me to write something and went hunting filth himself. Well he succeeded and I'm going to use the first band he mentioned as today's subject. If getting me to write again required a bit of effort that's nothing compared with having to crush the head of a foetus in order to effect delivery. Nice name, Cephalotripsy!

Oh, the vocals are fucking dirty. There's a tiny bit in "Sanguinary Misogynistic Execration" where the pitch heightens and you might even be able to make out a word or two, but mostly the three songs on their myspace profile are just full of proper low-frequency guttural porkage.

As the name and one song title mentioned so far should give away, they're in yer Carcass / Autopsy mode. There's a song called "Aesthetic Upholstery of Molested Dead Flesh" mentioned in some spiel they've written, and I'm slightly disappointed that my first interpretation of those words -- that there's a band called Molested Dead Flesh and one of them calls themselves "Aesthetic Upholstery" -- is untrue. Not to worry though.

Oh christ. I just had a look at their record label's myspace page too, and spotted a band named Leukorrhea. Do I want to know? I think I do. [type type click click] OK, I just looked it up -- turns out I didn't want to know after all. Who'd have thought?

• myspace.com/cephalotripsy
• amputatedvein.com - their record label

Annotations of an Autopsy

Oops. Failed to write anything yesterday. I'll keep this short and sweet while trying to find someone for today: Annotations Of An Autopsy's song Gore Gore Gadget is astonishing. Superb death metal with lots of genuine oinking and squealing going on. I listened to it bloody loads of times in preparation for seeing them live, only to be disappointed by the gig not actually being on. Ah well.

• myspace.com/annotationsofanautopsy
• aoaa.blogspot.com

Gig "review": Brutal Truth, Narcosis, and Total Fucking Destruction

I say gig "review" because this is going to be about as useless as most things I write; yes, I went to see these bands last night, but I was almost entirely unfamiilar with their songs so I won't be giving any decent insights into their set lists or owt like that.

Total Fucking Destruction's drummer had the sparsest kit imaginable. 4 cymbals, one snare, one bass drum, that was it. No toms, nowt else. Still made a fucking racket though. Not exactly in-keeping with their name, but noisy and great nonetheless. Being on so early the crowd was still pretty sparse too, but one bloke was doing his best to make himself unpopular by being totally pissed up and running into everyone. Nice one mate. The music though was pretty insane. I guess it was grindcore, but I'm convinced half their songs were covers of stuff. Not really sure tbh. The drummer did most of the singing and stage presence wasn't a strength; they had a shitload of 3 and 5 second songs between which the gap was only long enough for him to tap his sticks together 4 times; and they were fucking great.

Narcosis are MENTAL. Properly so. Their music's the most difficult thing to listen to this side of the avant-jazz nonsense 6music plays on a Sunday evening. It's very stop-start, occasionally a riff'll seep through but they put a stop to it quite soon, most of the time. I bought their CD, "Romance", off the bass player once he made it to the merchandise stall after their set. Had a proper chuckle at the song titles on the way home. They're miserable northern bastards, basically like Fall Out Boy on PCP -- "Ode To A Worthless Fucking Piece Of Shit", "If Being A Cunt Was People, You'd Be China", and "From Your Hate Filled Heart To My Shit Filled Life" are particular favourites. Fucking great stuff, and a fucking great show. How the fuck that bass player can play it all with his fingers rather than a pick is beyond me.

Brutal Truth were fucking brutal. 35 or so songs, no encores ("encores are for bands who don't know how to finish a fucking set properly" -- not that that stopped people in the crowd shouting for more. Idiots). Not pure grindcore, but then with Lilker about I think the odd bit of thrash is to be expected. Same drummer as TFD though, he must have been fucked by the end of the night, especially since he had a few more drums to hit in this set. Mosh pit nearly sucked my compadre in but we just about stayed safe. It did get a bit fucking hectic in there though and if I was a bit younger I might have gone in meself. Mosh pits don't seem to have really got more violent through the years. Don't really remember many song titles but one that did stick was "I See Red". Tune.

I've got videos! On youtube (where else?), here we go: Total Fucking Destruction, Narcosis, and Brutal Truth. No, I've no idea what songs are being performed in these clips and no, I don't for one moment make any claim that they're decent sound or video quality.

• myspace.com/brutalfuckingtruth and brutaltruth.com
• myspace.com/narcosisgrind
• myspace.com/totalfuckingdestruction
  

Gore Beyond Necropsy

I love Japan and the Japanese. They're mental. I'm not entirely sure why that popped into my head today but it did, so I ended up doing a search for Japanese death metal. That didn't come up with much, so changed it to Japanese grindcore and came across Gore Beyond Necropsy.

Whenever there's a "look at how the funny foreigners don't have a perfect grasp of English" TV show or photo section in a magazine or whatever, the Japanese always seem to feature prominently. That's because their economy's so strong they don't need to attract the English or Americans, as tourists or businessmen, to help them. They don't have to whore themselves out to our almighty sterling or dollar just to keep up 'cos thanks to that pacifist constitution we foisted upon 'em after WWII they went proper introvert and did pretty well for 'emselves ta very much.

Genuine socio-economic reasoning aside, the real point is that when the Japanese try and talk English it can sometimes be really fucking funny to a native English-speaker, such as wot I is one of innit. This is especially true when the Japanese in question are a death metal/grindcore band fitting in with the genre's traditions of song and album titleage. Here's a few of GBN's:

• Shitter Than Shit
• Steaming Bubbling Cadaverous Odor
• Gurgling Spiral Repulsion
• Horrendously Analdrilled
• Filth Sounds Of Hatred
• Rectal Anarchy

Oh, I so could go on, but fuck it, just go read them for yourselves. "Rectal Anarchy" made me involuntarily laugh out loud at my desk when I found it.

I don't think I'm even going to bother talking about the music. It's crazy Japanese grindcore, their album "Noise-a-go-go" has 55 tracks on it and lasts 25 minutes, they don't have a website or a myspace profile. Mental.

• interview with Gore Beyond Necropsy (includes links to two mp3s)
• Relapse Record page about them

Avulsed

According to dictionary.com, avulsion is "the forcible tearing away of a body part by trauma or surgery". Nice. I wonder which body part Avulsed are on about?

Spanish pigs today. A proper proper band as it goes, been around for yonks and all that. Not that I'd heard of them before this year, but we already established that I was rubbish at keeping up with death metal for years (my contention that death metal itself was rubbish in the late 90s and early 00s has been dealt with in private; colour me chastised). Anyway, yeah, Avulsed seem to have been around for yonks, with a bunch of splits and CDs under their belt, some decent gore-inspired Autopsy-style artwork and song titles -- I particularly like Stabwound Orgasm lads -- but best of all their lead singer's name is Dave Rotten.

Oink! I really liked all four songs I just listened to on myspace as it goes. And having headed over to their official site for more it's all gone a bit wrong. Not musically, at least not in what I'm hearing, but in what I'm reading. Yes, they've done an instrumental. What is it with (death) metal instrumentals? They're almost always bollocks, and certainly not something this blog's interested in. Where's the oinkage and squealage? Sigh. Anyway, I've also just learnt that their taste for song titles sometimes goes a bit awry. "Burnt But Not Carbonized"? Nice. "Eat Foetal Mush"? Well played. "Cadaver Decapitado"? Good effort. "Homeless Necrophile"? Like it, like a lot. "Addicted To Red Bull"? Err.... "Powered Fish"? Please please tell me that's meant to be "Powdered Fish" -- although even then, uh, what the fuck? Hmm, that said, those last two do appear to be from some kind of remixes album, so perhaps they were just having a little bit of fun...

Anyway. Avulsed are great. They're playing with Fleshrot and all them other bands at the deathfest on June 16th in London too. Mint.

• myspace.com/avulsed


• avulsed.com

Inhuman Dissiliency

There's not really many subjects death metal bands seem to tackle. Irreligiousness, gore/horror, fantasy/sci-fi, and the occasional bit of political awareness, I think that's really the lot. Some bands like to carve a niche out of one subject, a prime example being the sex-horror-gore-core of yesterday's mob. Inhuman Dissiliency are your straight out gore merchants, with a guttural bastard of a vocalist who doesn't seem to need to stop for a breath very often.

Two reasons I picked this lot to be today's oinkers and squealers. One, I didn't want to spend hours and hours at work getting lost in myspace (it's not Friday afternoon, for fucks sake) so I stopped hunting pretty soon; two, I liked the word "dissiliency" because I was totally unfamiliar with it. According to dictionary.com it means "The act of leaping or starting asunder", or more likely the act of bursting apart. Either way the band name impresses me through its use of language, and much like a great many bands (did this trend start with Carcass?) they carry it on into their song titles. For example "Necrocannibalistic infest", "Vomiting decayed fecal matter", "Mutilation of self-extracted entrails", ... you get the idea.

The all important vocals are at a frequency so low I reckon if I saw them live there'd be a loose motion or two. Most amazingly he hardly ever seems to come up for air. There's loads of bits where he just emits this crazy growl that goes on for fucking ages. Surely some circular breathing going on. The sound on NecroCannibalistic... on myspace is pretty bad, proper demo-quality, but hey, it starts with a quote from Evil Dead. Win!

Can't really work out the status of this band. Their official website seems to imply they've done very little since January 2006, but on myspace they've logged on recently and even have a gig lined up in March.

• myspace.com/inhumandissiliency
• inhumandissiliency.com

Lividity

I get the distinct feeling that the members of today's band, Lividity, are a bunch of wankers, so before I say anything more about them I'm going to engage in a bit of self-indulgence myself. I'm all chuffed and stuff about my myspace prowess. I realise it's not actually that impressive to get people adding you as friends, or commenting on your profile, but I don't care: I think it's fucking ace that Massacre added me, and I'm all chuffed that Blasphtized left a positive comment on my profile. In a distinctly un-myspace-like fashion, I'm not just harvesting contacts on there to up my numbers, preferring the lower key approach of just sending an add request to each band I chat about (and like; Thus Defiled didn't get one *cough*). That's it as far as promoting this blog goes, and it's really pleasing when it gets noticed. Anyway, back to Lividity.

So, I said they're probably a bunch of wankers. I don't mean that they're unpleasant people, I really do mean they're probably furious masturbators. They seem a little single-minded in their subject matter, right off the bat describing themselves as "Cum soaked torture grind". Not exactly yer romantic types, perhaps I should have waited until February 14th to write about them but, in homage to a song called "No Time For Lube" I figure being premature could work.

Of course, birds love a bit of rough, so it's feasible perhaps that the members of Lividity pull all the time. I for one can't say for certain I'd be that interested in a bird who isn't at least slightly turned off by, say, the picture that comes up on myspace's player when listening to the song "Pussy Lover". Or, say, the lyrics to any of their songs. That said, I'm not here to slag these guys off. I'm here to praise them, in fact. I think the music's actually pretty fucking good and, aptly enough for this blog, there's definitely some proper squealage going on. As well as, I dunno, not so much oinking as perhaps the sound of pigs hunting for truffles (as I type this I'm listening to the aforementioned "No Time For Lube". At work. Heh.)

Anyway, yes. I'm not slagging Lividity off; but I am genuinely amazed. I'm well aware that an awful lot of death metal bands are involved in a race to the bottom where taste, offensiveness, and overall decency are concerned. I remember GWAR getting banned from playing in at least one London borough, and may even have thought back in the early 90s Cannibal Corpse genuinely reached it. But I was young and naive. No more. So even here in 2007 (which, I discovered just this morning, is -- I kid you not -- YEAR OF THE PIG) with so many other bands on my list to go check out I can't say for sure that Lividity have reached the bottom (based purely on their name I reckon Stump Fucking may already be closer) but, so far as the subject of sex goes, they're surely strong contenders.

• myspace.com/lividity
• lividity.info

Massacre

I'm going OLD SKOOL today. It's not an oink, it's not a squeal, it's a death grunt apparently, and this fella Kam Lee is supposed to have pretty much invented it. He doesn't do vocals, he does "vokills", and on the one album by the one band I've heard of him he's fucking great. I wish I still had my long-sleeved Massacre t-shirt :-(

Time was a band like Massacre could release one album on Earache and get a headline slot at the Astoria. The Astoria! I mean, it wasn't full, but nonetheless... can't remember who supported them but I think I reviewed the gig for the rubbishy student newspaper at 6th form college, heh. Crikey. Anyway, From Beyond is one of my favourite death metal albums of all time. I love the vocals, I love the tunes (Dawn Of Eternity, in particular, is mint) and I love Rick Rozz's inability to play a solo that isn't just him having a load of whammy-bar fun. He made me think, briefly, that perhaps I could do lead guitar after all ;-)

Hmm. The urge to shout SYMBOLIC IMMORTALITY!!!! out at my desk is strong. I must resist. And bloody hell, blow me down with a feather, one of the songs on their myspace profile claims to be a demo recorded in 2006. Does this mean there might be a reunion on the cards? Come on lads, plenty of other bands are getting back together for some filthy lucre, there's no shame in it... get on tour with, I dunno, Sadus? Exhorder?

• myspace.com/massacrefrombeyond

Blasphtized

So, it's Sunday. That means it's about doing very little, and about religion. Accordingly I'm taking the opportunity to write not very much at all about the irreligious, and fantastically awkward-to-pronounce, Blasphtized.

Wow. In the course of digging out their logo I just found out it was done by one of the guys from Fleshrot. That probably explains why it's so fucking unreadably superb. Or is that superbly unreadable? Either way, I heard of Blasphtized courtesy of Hans from the once-mighty (ie, when they existed) Dark Heresy. They're a couple of lads taking time out from their day jobs in Days Of Perversion -- who sound to me like a mixture of death, thrash and black metal all in one -- to create some drum-machine backed pork-powered utter filth. They do a fucking great job too. I would love to see them live, although that doesn't appear to be a prospect at the moment. Actually even more than that I think I'd love to buy a t-shirt. But most importantly, for me, I'd love to hear a load more songs.

• myspace.com/blasphtized
  

Mumakil

The Swiss, eh? What have they got to complain about? With their great railways and all that cheese and Nazi loot and other shady banking nonsense and army knives and mountains and stuff you'd think they'd be pretty happy. I guess being in a neutral country's a bit of a pisser if you've got some aggression to get out, mind. Maybe that explains why they can produce a band like Mumakil.

I fucking love grindcore. Thing is I honestly didn't know until about 18 months ago that there was a whole grindcore scene, or to be honest more than about 5 bands in the world. Really fucked off I missed Nasum's entire career by not hearing about them until after one of them died :-( but to me grindcore meant early Napalm Death and Brutal Truth and, uh, that was about it. What a rubbish scratch-the-surface-that'll-do fan I was! Well there'll be no more of that, fuck no.

Only came across this mob yesterday. Once again thanks to Terrorizer, on the cover disc, this song gave me goosebumps. It's that good. Looked them up on myspace and their own site and, holy shit, there's oinkage -- but not only oinkage -- there's songs about pigs! Check it out, on their official website you can download a demo from 2005 and there's mp3s called Nailed Pig, Running Pig, Pate, Viande (that's "meat"), how fucking cool is that? Nice and short too. Proper. Superb vocals and amazing riffs. Happy riffs, but never overdone. This lot understand that just because a riff's great there's no need to play it more than 4 or 6 times. I'm so fucking stoked that they're playing in London later this month. Holy fuck! With 9 other bands! A fucking all-dayer, the day after Thus Defiled's bash! What a find. (Yes, I'm thinking of going to Thus Defiled's gig just because there's actually loads of bands on and I want to give 'em a chance live. And it's cheap and there'll probably be a lot of CDs on sale by all kinds of bands)

Oh, fuck, I just realisd I was listening to an mp3 AND the background music from their website at the same time. It sounded fucking great though, heh. Grindcore FOR THE WIN.

• myspace.com/mumakil
• mumakil.ch
  

Job For A Cowboy

I've got a mate who slags me off for reading music magazines. Well, I guess he doesn't/didn't slag me off, but was just slagging off magazines in general for being a waste of time and money. He's wrong, of course, and I put him right with a quite vicious tirade of abuse at the time. I shan't be doing that again in a hurry, but I know he reads this and I'm going to point out that Job For A Cowboy were chosen based on reading their name in the issue of Terrrorizer I bought this morning.

Not actually an article about this lot, they were just mentioned in passing in a piece about Diskreet. The reason they caught my eye was because it said they were "pig-squeal hypesters". Certainly sounded like a band for me, innit.

As it goes the first song I heard had no squealing in it. Not that it was rubbish, in fact all 4 songs on their myspace profile are great, but the song that came on first was most un-porcine. Definitely a bunch of squealage going on in the others though. Great stuff. I'm really liking this. Reminds me of a whole slew of other stuff but not in a "oh, same old crap again" way... but that could be because I've never held much truck with originality for the sake of it. If you can take a style and write a shitload of decent riffs and vocals and stuff in that style, go for it. The problem with, say, Trivium, isn't so much that they sound like an amalgam of Metallica and Sacred Reich and Pantera and a load of other bands -- those bands were all great -- the problem with Trivium is that their drummer's fucking shit.

Job For A Cowboy are touring Europe, including a few gigs in England, in -- shock horror! -- March. If the other bands (Unearth/Despised Icon/Daath) are half decent I reckon I'll head along to that.

• myspace.com/jobforacowboy
• jfacmetal.com
• metalblade.com -- their record label
  

Underneath The Gun

Thought I'd go for someone new today. By that I mean someone I'd never heard of before. With the gift of myspace I thought I'd just browse around until finding a band who sound half decent. On the one hand I get to listen to something completely new and chat shit about it, on the other it gives me an excuse to not write very much because I've been busy today and not had a lot of time on me hands.

Underneath The Gun are a little confused. On their myspace profile they claim that underneaththegun.com is their website, when clearly it isn't. Not to worry, but it would have been nice to read a little more about them than their profile provides. In particular I wanted to know whether I really am listening to a Christian death metal band or not. Not being the rabid irreligious sacreligious type I couldn't actually give a monkeys about whether they've got faith or not, I'm just interested to know whether I've finally found an example of Christian death metal that isn't fucking shite. And, actually, Wikipedia says I have.

Not much oinking or squealing going on here though. I can make out what he's saying half the time, for crying out loud. Mind you I can make out the words on old Deicide and stuff these days, whereas in 1990-91 I thought it was the most ridiculously impossible to comprehend stuff I'd ever heard (Napalm Death and "lyricless wonders" [© Kerrang] Obituary notwithstanding).

Thankfully the music's pretty easy to get on with. It's death metal but there's quite a bit of thrash about this lot. I did think it was going to be really bad at one point though -- after listening to a song on their record label's myspace page I was impressed enough to see the band's page, but somehow I managed also to open Seraph Impaled's page at the same time. Soon enough a song started up in both windows and it just sounded fucking appalling, until I noticed what I'd done and sorted it. No accidental glorious metal mashup discovery for me.

Underneath The Gun are playing in England in a few months time. In Hull. Guess I won't be seeing them then.

• myspace.com/utg
• myspace.com/thecityisburningrecordsuk -- their UK record label
  

Thus Defiled

I was going to write a gig review today. Last night I was supposed to see Eternal Lord, Annotations Of An Autopsy, Khalo and Seraph Impaled at the Peel in Kingston. Unfortunately someone seemed to forget to tell any of the bands that they were supposed to be playing. Pitched up at the venue to find pretty much no fucker there, and a distinctly non-metal band rehearsing or summat on the stage. With a bird singing "Take another little piece of my heart, now baby". Yes, a Dusty Springfield song. Not metal. Bastards. I was really looking forward to that 'n all. Fuck knows what happened, the Peel's website still definitely said the gig was on last night. So, now I need to write about a band instead, and considering the metal-related mood that put me in I figure it's an opportunity to slag someone off rather than rave about them. Step forward, then, Thus Defiled.

Thus Defiled came to my attention because they're headlining an all day black/death metal mini-fest in Camden in 3 weeks time and I thought I'd give a bit of a listen to each band on the bill. Now maybe I'm being a bit premature in saying I'm gonna slag them off, but nothing's going to change my opinion of the first song I heard by them. It's their cover of Slayer's Black Magic, and it's just terrible. Really really bad. I hate it with a passion. But perhaps it's not fair of me to just base my opinion on that, so I'll give some other songs a listen while I'm writing this.

Well. "... And They Shall Fear The Night" is OK. Not appalling. I guess my biggest problem, truth be told, is that they're black metal. Not death metal and not grindcore. And in the main I find black metal to be toss. Fucking hell, this song goes on a bit 'n all, 9 minutes for crying out loud. NEXT.

Oh jesus. Black Magic comes on first on their myspace page. It's JUST SO BAD. NEXT.

OK, that's it then. I just don't like them. I'm listening to Astaroth now and there are a bunch of good riffs in there but I just can't get into them. Damn black metal. If they're proper corpsepainted-up live then I'd probably enjoy their show but I'm gonna have to just stop now.

I don't imagine for a moment anyone from the band will ever read this, but just in case, don't take it personally boys. You've got a record coming out and are headlining that fest and things are clearly going well, because a bunch of people clearly do like you. But I don't. And like I said above, I'm supposed to be writing about death metal and grindcore here, not black metal anyway, so just forget everything I said. Especially if, as my flatmate reckons is likely, you happen to run into me in Kingston or at a gig at some point. Ahem. No hard feelings, eh?

• myspace.com/thusdefiled
• www.thusdefiled.com

Heinous Killings

Tricky to decide who to write about today. Off to a gig tonight so it was tempting to write about one of the bands on the bill, but that can wait until tomorrow. I considered writing about Lividity after spending a while in the pub last night discussing their somewhat unique take on attracting the ladies; I thought I could knock up a bit about Skinless 'cos that's the shirt I'm wearing; and I pondered writing a few paragraphs slagging off Thus Defiled because, frankly, I think they're rubbish. But finally I plumped for a band I'd never heard of 4 days ago. Because yesterday was all about the logo, today has to be about the vocals. Specifically, the most guttural filth since, well, since Cock and Ball Torture at least. Heinous Killings's vocalist makes a fucking inhuman racket. A porcine racket indeed.

This stuff's great. Really fucking good. I've got it on as I type, and there's a bit of a pattern emerging. Each song starts with fairly, shall we say, normal death metal vocals... but as they progress they descend, until a couple of minutes in he pulls out the pig guns. This guy has sty(le). He probably reckons bands who squeal or scream are wankers. He might have a point.

As it goes the music's mint 'n all. Fast. Decent riffs. No solos, which is fine by me. They've got their place but I'm sure I've heard more rubbish solos in death metal than good ones, so leaving 'em out isn't such a bad thing. And I do like bands who have intros containing samples from news stories and stuff, plus I've a bit of a penchant for bands that sing about real murderers. Macabre have always been a fave and Screamin' Daemon aren't bad (although neither band has really impressed me live :-( in fact I thought Macabre were fucking terrible, a real disappointment considering I waited something like 13 years to see them in the UK), so Possessed To Kill is already a favourite. Oh, and as well as on myspace you can listen to it from the page about their album (Hung With Barbwire) on Unmatched Brutality's site 'n all. Proper. In fact, fucking hell, this sounds superb. Best add this to my previously-non-existent list of albums to buy when I'm next in the States, innit.

• myspace.com/heinouskillings
• Unmatched Brutality -- their record label. Someone distribute these guys in the UK! And get 'em touring! Oi, Arcane Promotions, get on the case!

Crepitation

Oh, Crepitation. Crepitation Crepitation Crepitation. I loved you the first moment I set eyes on you, and by "you" I mean your phenomenal logo. Most bands logos are, well, they're not bad. They're alright. They'll do. But yours, oh my gosh. OH MY GOSH. It was at Skinless's gig in Croydon where I first saw the shirt. The logo so indecipherable one of my companions had to go ask the wearer what band it was. I'd love you even if I were deaf and I bought your shirt before I ever saw you play.

So that's it then. Game over. The fight for "most indecipherable band logo" has been won and there's little point in trying to outdo these bastards. If there's a technique to coming up with logos like this I can only think that it's "get a box of matches and throw them on a table". Or "take a photo of some trees with no leaves on".

When I wore my Crepitation shirt to work I had to have my Yahoo! Messenger status line say "My t-shirt says 'Crepitation'", to fend off the hordes of "What the fuck does that say?" questions.

Damn. I realise I'm being hugely superficial about this mob. How laddish of me to concentrate purely on looks when underneath this beautiful exterior there's a serious bit of scallycore going on too. Only one song on their myspace profile at the moment but it's an oinkfest of the highest order. Live they're not bad either -- saw them in Camden between Christmas and New Year at that Anti-Christmas Grind Ethic bash and they fucking ruled.

As they were setting up I thought we were going to be treated to death metal played by a threesome of short-haired hoodied-up mall warriors, but with a tiny bit of disappointment it turned out the bassist (IIRC) had a ponytail and the vocals were provided by yer actual heavy metal (stereo)types. The good news was there were 2 vocalists though, that's almost always a winning situation. Think 3 Inches Of Blood. Think Extreme Noise Terror. And now, think Crepitation. Mind you they didn't last the whole set, as the last few songs were indeed performed as a 3-piece, and were no lower quality for it. Got to say, on that night Crepitation were the best band whose set I saw in its entirety (had to leave 2 songs into Amputated so I can't honestly say they were definitely the best band of the night).

I would never have been ashamed to sport a shirt with that logo on it, but the fact the music lives up to the graphics is a proper bonus. Simply put, Crepitation appear to have it all. Tunes? Check. Oinking? Check. Indecipherable logo? The best one. Pick-and-mix genre tagging? Check (GARGANTUAN UK SLAM DEATH BRUTALITY!!!). Full marks lads.

• myspace.com/crepitation
• crepitation.co.uk
  

Infected Disarray

Not really sure what to make of this band name. Infected Disarray? What does that mean? Ah, who cares. The logo's not bad, although a bit too legible for my liking.

But what of the tunes? Well, they're a bit challenging. It's verging on proper hard work giving these fuckers a listen. Check out Gestated Human Slurry -- there's some seriously odd timings going on there. Not to mention a bit of Seinfeld-esque slap bass. Nice filthy vocals, lead guitar a bit too far back in the mix but that could be just the shitty speakers on my laptop. Cracking ending though. And of course it's a large song title, but that's because this mob are masters of the large song title. Slight confusion regarding the name of the band is forgotten when confronted with the aforementioned, plus gems such as Masticated Remains of Detruncation (translation: the remains of a bit of the body that's been lopped off and chewed up), Side Order Of Flies, and Viscous Dermal Tissues Necrotising In Venereal Quagmire.

As an aside, I really like the word viscous. It's not only a great word in itself, with a really nasty feel to it, but a friend of mine once made the typo -- I hope -- of claiming to have just done a really viscous fart. Laugh? I nearly shat. Which seems apt.

Anyway, much like every death metal band I've come across recently, Infected Disarray have embraced the latest trend in describing their music, pigeon-holing, genre definition. The technique seems to be similar to playing with poetry fridge magnets: simply take a bag full of words related, even tangentially, to metal, pick four or five out at random and arrange into something that makes the least nonsense. Accordingly ID describe themselves as SICKENING BRUTAL BLASTING DEATH GRIND!!! Good effort lads.

Infected Disarray, then. Hurry up and announce some gigs y'bastards.

• myspace.com/infecteddisarray
• infecteddisarray.co.uk -- shame their graphics guy couldn't spell "discography" :-(
• grindethic.co.uk -- same label as Fleshrot, innit
  

Cock and Ball Torture

Jesus unicycling Christ these fuckers make me laugh. I've listened to them sober, I've listened to them drunk, I've listened to them hungover, and it never fails. Step forward the band that most makes me want to form a record label called Trough, Cock and Ball Torture.

That rarest of types -- Germans with a sense of humour -- these lads might not have an indecipherable logo but that's more than made up for by having a suitably unpleasant name, the sort of thing you don't want to search for from your work PC, or leave in your google toolbar when you take a screenshot of something to send to your mother. It's nice that their official website comes up first when I search for it, 'cos I'm glad not to have to trawl through pages and pages of things like this:

1. Cock torture cbt trampling of balls and ball squeezing clamps cocktorture.
   Cock torture and ball torture femdom. Submissive men get their balls crushed and trampled. ... ENTER COCK TORTURE. Links: More Female domination and cock torture ...


2. Cock and ball torture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   Cock and ball torture (CBT) is a sexual activity involving torture of the male genitals. ... stories dealing with Cock & Ball Torture, Ballbusting and FemDom ...

when searching for them. Nice.

Anyway. Do this lot oink? Do they fucking ever. I dunno how he manages but this vocalist sounds like a family of pigs at feeding time. I've never heard vocals like it. I mean, really. There's a few tunes on their myspace page (pretty shitty sound on there) and more on the media page of their appalling-to-navigate website and have a listen. I defy anyone to not piss themselves laughing. The vocals at the start of the wonderfully named Anal Sex Terror, for example. The music's not half bad either. I mean I can't claim to be blown away by it, but that's possibly because I can't really concentrate on or hear it, beneath the vocals and my howls of laughter. The main riff in Poontang Clan sounds like a rip-off of something though, definitely familiar.

They're a touring band, internationally, which is handy. From their blog I see that they were meant to play last summer in the UK with Gorerotted but it fell through, and it doesn't seem like they've any dates lined up soon. Shame. It's not a phrase I ever really imagined I'd be saying but it seems I've no choice: I want to see Cock and Ball Torture live. Now lets see what ads google shoves on this entry.

• myspace.com/cockandballtorture
• cockandball.de

Fleshrot

Death metal in the mid/late-90s, and maybe even early 00s, was shit.

Roadrunner were partly to blame. IIRC they churned out a few too many death metal bands that all sounded the same, thanks to Morrisound and Scott Burns. The Scando reaction was to start church-burning and killing each other while making shit music, and in the UK Cradle of Filth became famous for having better t-shirts than tunes. I could never give much black metal the time of day; when I saw Emperor in London in 1997 I thought they were a load of toss. So perhaps I gave up on death metal, but only because it was almost all bollocks.

Except it wasn't, really. It was just hiding. And a funny thing happened in 2006. In August, to be precise. I got a new flatmate and the first Saturday after he moved in I had nowt planned for the evening. Neither did he. On a random whim I thought I'd check out the Peel's website and see if there was owt on. And owt was on; an Extreme Metal night.

Fleshrot were playing.

I hold Fleshrot responsible for the renewed vigour I find in myself when it comes to death metal. They're to blame for everything, including ultimately the existence of this blog. They played a fucking blinding set that night in Kingston, and acted as my portal back into the world of death metal, especially UK death metal.

It didn't start well. They looked like a stoner band. The singer came on just walking, not bounding. There was no energy and we couldn't see his eyes, as he just stood by the mike with his hair draped over his face. But once the intro riff went away it was a full on oinkfest of the highest calibre and I went home proper invigorated by what I'd seen.

So look, I'm not a proper journalist, and truth be told when it comes to music criticism I can't really do that good a job. I just want to call attention to the bands I find out about, and at the same time call a spade a spade. In this instance that means saying this: Fleshrot play good death metal, and oink like bastards.

Soon after seeing them I dropped them an email via an address I got off their website. To date they're still the only band I've got in touch with (actually that's a lie; the singer from NecroRitual wants to buy me a pint for putting videos of them up on youtube) but it was phenomenally encouraging. Here's a cut-down version of the exchange we had (no words changed, just some taken out for brevity):

Hey Fleshrot - saw you guys at the Peel last Saturday and thought you were totally superb. You going to have t-shirts on sale at the Cartoon next week?

Glad you enjoyed it mate, hopefully we will have some tees available on the 23rd, if not,we have just recieved our new artowrk for our upcoming album, so [...]

New artwork? Hope you're not changing your logo!

erm, we are kind of, [...]

All I really care about is that the band name remains almost indechiperable.

hahah yeh man, itl be even more undreadable!!

These boys obviously get it. Fleshrot, I salute you. I've seen you live twice -- and it would have been 3 times if you'd not "called in sick" to that gig in Camden on Dec 29th -- and I'll see you again, no doubt.

• Fleshrot.org - their official website


• myspace.com/fleshrot


• grindethic.co.uk - their label/distro

Oinking and squealing

There seems to be a death metal and grindcore renaissance going on these days and I love it. So, until such times as I inevitably just can't be arsed keeping this going any more, here's my attempt at briefly reviewing and publicising (hah!) the bands I come across. It's less than a month old but 2007 looks like being, as Annihilator claim, "The Year That Metal Returned In Full Force, With A Vengeance!!!", and that's a bandwagon I'm happy to jump on.

Mind you, as large as Annihilator are -- that fucking appalling third album notwithstanding (ignore the reviews on Amazon, those people are wrong) -- they mean metal in general. And while they may be right (I'm looking forward to seeing the Love/Hate reunion more than most people I know) I'm being a little more specific here. This blog is about bands with vocalists that sound like stuck pigs. Bands with unreadable logos and incomprehensible lyrics. Bands obsessed with gore or violence or misanthropy or chauvinism or just plain offensiveness for the sake of it. But mainly the logos and the sounding like pigs.

It's about Fleshrot and Crepitation. It's about Blasphtized, Beef Conspiracy and Lividity. It's about Cock and Ball Torture and Despondency. It's about Anoxia and Annotations Of An Autopsy. It's about oinkers and fucking squealers. Bring forth metal!