Hatred of Solitude

Melbourne heshers Sewercide recently finished a residency at the Gasometer, which meant for the past few weeks my midweek urges for violent grind/hardcore had an outlet. The second show had a killer lineup featuring Sewercide, Doubled Over, Trench Sisters and newcomers Blood Rule. Doubled Over and Trench Sisters ruled as per usual but I want to talk about Blood Rule. I knew nothing about them and to be honest they were super sloppy and noticeably under rehearsed but despite this I was really impressed with their blend of death, hardcore and grind. So a few days later I picked up their demo at Missing Link. I am really glad i did. I can't stop playing this tape. It makes me want to destroy things.

Before i rant about the music i just wanted to note that I really dig the cool red jewel case and cassette. Onto the demo. From the first song (absolute crusher "MPR") this demo is custom built to start pits. Heavy mosh parts, doom influenced riffs and a really cool dirty bass sound (the first thing i noticed live was bassist Ryan's tone). I guess I would peg their sound as between Noothgrush's doomier moments & Crossed Out's faster moments.

The recording captures them perfectly, a cleaner slicker production job would lose some of the dirty hostile vibe. I wouldn't want them sounding any clearer then they do on this release. I think it will be a tough call between this and the new Flesh Police demo for demo of the year for me, I am that confident about this.

You can listen to three of the tracks on the demo here and i highly recommend you do.

Innocence To Ignorance

Courtesy of a trade board i scored this absolute ripper. A first press of Extreme Noise Terror's 'A Holocaust in Your Head' put out by Head Eruption Records in 1988.

Having picked up the Kuro discography bootleg that has been floating around hearing E.N.T.'s blasting (although for some reason uncredited) cover of "We, the Helpless" was a pleasant surprise.

I had been reading about the recording of this (land speed) record and a brief biography of the band in Ian Glasper's excellent book on UKHC "Trapped in a Scene". In it he accurately describes the record as "Pissed off hateful noise with its roots somewhere between early Discharge and Disorder".

In a weird moment of serendipity i happened to listen to Hellbastard after listening to this record and was immediately struck with how similar the track 'Use your Mind' is to the Hellbastard track 'Pylons' released the same year.

 

Compare the opening rumbling bass riff and guitar counterpoint to the similar hellbastard part occurring at around the 1:08 mark below.

  

Now i am not accusing anyone of anything, it was just a moment of musical geekery that I felt was worth sharing. 

Enter the realm of chaos, your nightmare has just begun.

One of the bands that helped introduce me to grindcore (and extreme metal in general) are England's mighty Bolt Thrower. I really lucked out and picked up first presses of both Warmaster (1991) and the gatefold edition of Realm of Chaos (1989). Both records are absolute masterpieces of their style and arguably their best material.

Guitarist Gavin Ward's dense crushing tone and vocalist Karl Willetts' guttural vocals form the backbone of the classic Bolt Thrower sound, perfected on these two records. Hitting a great mix between the fast blasting material and a slower death metal influenced riffing style are what make the band so unique. Riffs like the epic and catchy "Eternal War" and the grinding mid paced "World Eater" are hardly bettered in the world of extreme metal.

'Realm of Chaos' had the original lyrics booklet featuring the lyrics aside artwork taken from the world of Warhammer 40k, obviously a massive inspiration on the band. For closeups on select pages see below. The dark unforgiving world depicted really adds to the whole experience of the band and the original artwork is infinitely better then the recent CD release. For an interesting read as to why they had to change the artwork and how the band feels about this (VERY displeased) read the Ask Earache blog here.