REVIEW: HOLLOW LEG - ABYSMAL

Sometimes I forget I’m considered a music critic, because I’m really just a fan boy lucky enough to occasionally be paid for my opinions. But critics LOVE when an album/movie/book title can be used as a simple headline; let’s say, for example, the Seymour Hoffman/DeNiro film Flawless (Not quite Flawless, LOLOLOLOL!). Here we have an album named Abysmal, from Hollow Leg, a band from northern Florida that has an “affinity for the roots of American blues music and English metal,” so says their promo material. ‘Abysmal’ just happens to be one of those beautiful words that can be used to both praise and reprimand a piece of art; abysmal most often refers to something of poor quality, but can also describe something that is limitless and deeply profound. Boasting powerful performances from each musician, and offering eight tracks of zero-horseshit, Sabbath-informed sludge (is there any other kind?), Abysmal is built on a solid blues rock foundation with hardcore intensity and addresses themes that may not reach profundity, but are absolutely universal.

I first need to mention that in the second song, “8 Dead (in a Mobile Home),” I heard Scott Angelacos’ howl and immediately thought, “Oh shit, how did it take me a full song to realize this is the Junior Bruce vocalist?” He has one of those instantly recognizable voices that can’t be unheard. I say this more as a warning for non-metalheads: You will be haunted by the voice of Angelacos, which is strong enough to tattoo pentagrams in your ear canal. For metal fans: Rejoice, because his delivery is singularly awesome.

Most of the album feels like Iron Monkey accidentally stumbled into slightly gentler melodies. “Ride to Ruin” introduces a fuzzy higher-register lead to join Tom Crowther’s burly bass tones, and will be my motorcycle soundtrack when I’m eventually an outlaw biker with an eight-foot long beard. Brent Lynch provides some memorable riffs here, with “Blissful Nothing” syphoning Eyehategod’s groove and capturing the slow-motion sense of a day passing sluggishly on hashish, and “Cry Havoc” trapping the listener in an alligator death-roll as drummer Tim Creter goes in for the kill after some Big Black-era Orange Goblin goodness.

While the mixing on both “The Dog” and “Lord Annihilation” feels a little flat, lacking contrast and punch despite some great hooks and well-built tension, Abysmal is an album that’s the middle sprinter in a relay race, taking the baton from the UK’s best doom bands and handing it off to the crusty, lice-scalped troublemakers of the sludge scene. Though the song structures are closely related to 90s hardcore, this album will lead riff-worshipping fanatics of the slow and heavy into the exceptionally loud, wolf-infested abyss. And that, right there, is as close to a title-related catchphrase as I get.

Check out Abysmal over on bandcamp and get yourself the album on vinyl, or by instant download:  http://hollowleg666.bandcamp.com/

And check out Hollow Leg over on Facebook, and maybe some day they will answer what they would hide in a prosthetic limb:  https://www.facebook.com/hollowlegfl

REVIEW: SERPENT EATER - HYENA

Every once in a while I come across an album/movie/book that I feel was made specifically with me in mind, like the artist(s) crawled into my psyche, observed my absolute favorite things, and crafted something to transform my day from totally mediocre to fist-pumpingly awesome. Hyena, the newest album from Cologne, Germany’s Serpent Eater, is one of those albums that I consider a personal gift.

With an inspired mixture of wasteland sludge and icy, dizzying black metal, Hyena feels like Howl’s excellent Full of Hell LP if it spent its childhood scavenging rancid meat from sewer tunnels in an abandoned factory town. Released from Alerta Antifascista Records, this album is a mean, muscular, metallic beast that somehow sidesteps predictability while still featuring conservatively structured, contagious songs that would watch you for hours from the shadows, just to bite your throat out the moment you start dreaming.

Album opener “Ebola” introduces a mixture of bluesy groove and swirling, psychedelic black metal with demonic dual-vocals. “Last Cold Word” features more snarling, scorched riffs that bathe in the muck dividing Immortal and Dragged Into Sunlight, like black swamp water frozen during the first frost. The guitars capture a sense of gothic dread and still achieve nearly impossible catchiness. “In the Wall” invokes Slayer’s thrashing anger over a rumbling beat that builds to vicious grind, maintaining punk intensity even when injecting some dopesmoking harmonized guitars into the mix. Hyena closes with the dynamic track “Trepanation Nation,” featuring a blizzard of blastbeats and At the Gates riffage with a grimy underbelly of sludgy groove and lumbering explosions of hardcore.

Largely due to their cackling sounds and comedic-relief roles in The Lion King, most people don’t realize hyenas are surprisingly savage animals, and unexpectedly fierce foes that lions battle on a constant basis. It’s not unusual for a pack of hyenas to lure a mother lion away from her young, only to have another sneak in and feast on the babies. Not that Serpent Eater encourage the fervent murder of lion cubs, but it’s a reminder of the necessary cruelty of nature’s order, and right now Serpent Eater can quit relying on snakes for nourishment, because this album proves they’re a formidable predator quickly eating their way up the food chain. Despite some similarities to recent work by I Exist and Vaporizer, Hyena absolutely feels fresh and unique, and shows us what’s possible in extreme music when contrast, tone, mood, texture, and the art of a killer riff are all fully explored.

Check out Hyena, streaming on Bandcamp now, and available for a modest 4 EUR: http://alertaantifascistarecords.bandcamp.com/album/aa95-serpent-eater-hyena-lp

And follow them on Facebook to stay current with all their news:  https://www.facebook.com/SerpentEater

GUEST REVIEW: MAMMOTH GRINDER - UNDERWORLDS

Continuing our series of metal reviews by non-metal fans, Mister Growl welcomes back guest reviewer Shane Frasier, manager of Acquired Taste Bookings and creator of the Behemoth Music Festival (a series of concerts in Upstate New York that recently reached down into Brooklyn). He has also been a member of roughly seven thousand bands, ranging from hardcore punk (Daytime Soiree) to electronic/dance music (Mr. Owl) to eccentric insanity (The Lanky Mofos and The Bumblebees). He was nice enough to accept our invitation and review the new Mammoth Grinder album, Underworlds:

“You don't need much of an active imagination to guess what kind of music Mammoth Grinder is. It'd be funny, and yes, kind of unique, for them to be a jazz quartet, but no, these guys play a thrashy version of hardcore that demands you to throw down in a pit. But fitting the bill name-wise doesn't save one from ridicule, especially in the music world. Thankfully, I have little to gripe about with their new album, Underworlds.

Mammoth Grinder is fast-paced and destructive, but they stay just out of reach of the term “brutal” to save them from being bogged down by such associations. It's the kind of music I feel a psychopath would listen to to get pumped about hunting down some moronic teens in a horror film. While it mainly stays grounded in its fast-paced hardcore roots, it does try to stray often enough to not warrant it being considered bland.

"Wraparound Eyes" and "Paragon Pusher" really emphasize what these guys are trying to do here, sporting quick beats, growling vocals, and thrash-induced riffs that never overstay their welcome (but how could they at under 3 minutes anyways?). The guitar work on these songs takes center stage, with harmonizing parts that effortlessly blend together to create a wall of cacophony so great that I'm sure somewhere, in the vast ruins of space, some universe has been torn apart.

"Barricades" and "Roperide" work at a breakdown-like pace, chugging through with a sense of dread. They feel slightly metallic in their approach, but don't stay true to their tropes. "Barricades" really takes the cake out of these two, mainly because it’s so damn catchy. I've often found it's hard to make slower paced songs more memorable, mainly because, in these genres, they're more focused on being destructive more than anything. It’s nice to be reminded there are exceptions to the rule.

"Born In A Bag" and "Breeding" bring back the speed, displaying a punk attitude in the songs. I know, thrash and hardcore are pretty close siblings to punk in the music world, but really getting them to fit together is hard work. Others like "Moral Crux" deviate from the prominent fast-paced setting, relying on its intensity and slow-paced doom to instill wonder in the audience.

Underworlds is very solid, and while nothing is really different from anything I've heard before, it doesn't matter. Mammoth Grinder has set up an album that never finds a middle ground, opting to either go fast or slow. That black or white mentality might be a turn off to some people, but that's what kept me going with it. I’ve always wanted a variety of tempos and genre influences in each song, but for some reason, Mammoth Grinder wooed me away from that mentality. It's about time someone did.”

- Shane Frasier

(Editor’s note: This album is in my list of top albums for the year. I will be releasing a Top 50 list in December. - Mister Growl)

Many thanks to Shane for covering this release, and we seem to have some momentum with THREE positive guest reviews in a row from Mister Frasier. Note to self: Send Shane all crusty grind/punk/hardcore/d-beat releases we need reviewed.

Stream Underworlds over here at Bandcamp and buy it for a well-spent $6.66:  http://mammothgrinder.bandcamp.com/

REVIEW: NO FEALTY - IN THE SHADOW OF THE MONOLITH

Some band names require no exploration. Death, or Grave, for instance. Standard death metal band names obsessed with mortality. For No Fealty, a political hardcore crust/grind band from Copenhagen, I admittedly had to do a little research. It turns out “fealty” has the following definition: The fidelity, or an oath of loyalty, of a vassal or feudal tenant to their lord. So it’s safe to say that in No Fealty’s world, if you’re one of the 1% you better watch your privileged ass. Combine that with the (awesomely) disturbing cover, and there’s enough fury here to inspire god to eat his cherubs.

Leaning a bit more on the grind side of the spectrum than traditional hardcore punk, No Fealty peel through twelve tracks in about 25+ minutes on In the Shadow of the Monolith. The album title would be perfect for a classic doom album by Candlemass, but it’s just as poignant here, referencing the nearly unfathomable amount of tyranny and oppression we face (and often ignore) daily. Well, this is one album that’s impossible to ignore. Beginning with the pissed-off stomp of “Deprivation,” the album slams ahead like the first furious charge of a rioting crowd. There are plenty of surprises and enlightened moments of texture here, with the thrashy groove of “Strict Seawater Diet” and the chilling, cold-blooded sludge of “Discomposure” being especially memorable. And of course there are the burners that rage forward at a thousand miles an hour, destroying everything casting a shadow; “Animalism” bares its teeth with prominent bass work, “Savior” takes a jab at D-beat punk with Ramming Speed’s intensity, and “Rabies God” closes the album like a smear of blood on a church’s front door.

There are a few choices that don’t work for me, like the momentum-killing audio clips and spacey atmospherics of “The Emperor is Laughing (While You are Making Plans),” and a queasy bridge riff (around 2:15) in “Feed the Leviathan,” but these are minor complaints compared to the overall unruly energy and DIY, buzzsaw-guitar aesthetic the album successfully captures. When No Fealty employs gang vocals (like in “Damnant Quod Non Intelligunt” and “Deprivation”), that manic approach translates even further to a unified voice of unrest and anger. In the Shadow of the Monolith may not be totally revolutionary in style and execution, but it’s definitely the soundtrack of a rebellion. Combining the blazing speed of Weekend Nachos with the political sludgy, hardcore punk of Ravage Ritual, there’s plenty to look forward to in No Fealty’s future, even if humanity’s future doesn’t seem quite as bright.

Listen to In the Shadow of the Monolith, available now as a “name your price” download over at Bandcamp:  http://nofealty.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-shadow-of-the-monolith

And check them out on Facebook for news, including their account of their recent record release show:  https://www.facebook.com/nofealty

GUEST REVIEW: P.O.O.R. - EXTINCTION OF TRUST

Continuing our series of metal reviews by non-metal fans, Mister Growl welcomes back guest reviewer Shane Frasier, Acquired Taste Booking owner and creator of the Behemoth Music Festival (a series of concerts in Upstate New York that recently reached down into Brooklyn). He has also been a member of roughly seven thousand bands, ranging from hardcore punk (Daytime Soiree) to electronic/dance music (Mr. Owl) to eccentric insanity (The Lanky Mofos and The Bumblebees). He was nice enough to accept our invitation and review the new release from P.O.O.R. (Point of Our Resistance), their album Exttinction of Trust. With the NSA ‘bating while listening to our calls and reading our e-mails and more toxins filling our food every day it’s a perfect time to listen to this album:

“I always thought the saying, 'It's the little things in life', was bullshit. Really? Are you really content with the little things in life? If a gentle breeze whiffed by your face for a few seconds on a brutally hot summer day would you really say to yourself, 'That made my day'? No, you wouldn't, and don't lie to me, because I know who you and know where you live and will make you tell the truth. But, for the first time ever, I found myself uttering this phrase while listening to P.O.O.R's album, Extinction Of Trust.

What I am trying to say here is that you don't need to be fancy in order to deliver good music, and P.O.O.R does it well. Fitting itself somewhere between thrash, grindcore and hardcore, Extinction Of Trust passes you by quickly (Not having a song longer than 2:26), but leaves a fun, lasting impression because of the obvious joy these guys clearly had making this music.

The album is comprised of 24 tracks, each one more mosh-pit inducing than the last.  “Bastard Complex,” “Flip The Scripture” and “Your Bullshit” remain my favorite tracks on the album, delivering quick hardcore punk ditties in an otherwise growly thrash album, which, I must admit, is a welcome addition if for any other reason than I am a huge hardcore punk fan. That's not to say I don't appreciate the other songs, on the contrary, they're all great, I just have to make my loyalties clear sometimes.

Songs like a “A Man Called Disease” often wake you up to the fact that you are listening to a grindcore album, but the fact that every song is different in a way really makes you love what these guys are doing. One second “Christian Science Fiction” makes you wonder if you're listening to a metal-influenced tough-guy hardcore band then, like clockwork, a song like “Cherrorizer” smacks you in the face waking you back up to the fact that the grindcore roots of the album are back into full swing. Also, putting one of the biggest smiles on my face is the cover of “Religious Vomit,” a Dead Kennedys song. Being a huge Dead Kennedys fan, I find myself embarrassed saying that I kind of prefer P.O.O.R's version more. I think my only problem with the album is that it ends, and I know that might come across as a cliched answer, but I could care less. It's how I feel. I didn't want this album to stop playing when it did.

Overall, P.O.O.R's Extinction Of Trust totally made my day. It's a wake up call, and a welcome one at that, knowing music like this is out there. Too often are we shoveled the same genre-sticking music day in and day out, knowing full well that, somewhere out there, a diamond in the rough awaits our discovery. If you have a soul, you'll love this album. If not, you'll be crying in your bedroom by yourself, slamming your head against the wall wishing you had a soul so you could like this album.”

- Shane Frasier

(Editor’s note: I also wanted to mention that Matt Harvey from Exhumed also appears for guest vocals and solos. I will be reviewing Exhumed’s Necrocracy sometime over the next week.)

Many thanks to Shane for covering this release, and YAY we finally landed a positive review from outside of the metal community. Sure, maybe I cheated a little, knowing he was a Dead Kennedys/Minor Threat fan and hearing a lot of that influence deep in the belly of this grinding punk album, but I digress.

Stream Extinction of Trust over here at Bandcamp and buy it for a totally modest $7 to support these Californians:  http://poorgrind.bandcamp.com/album/extinction-of-trust

And follow them on Facebook for touring news and info on future releases:  https://www.facebook.com/POORGRIND

REVIEW: SPLIT - TEETHING / RAVAGE RITUAL

This nasty little 12 inch split shares the meanest cuts from two bands prepared to kick the religion right out of your keister. Teething and Ravage Ritual team up for a record that stinks like an unwashed political prisoner and bites like a cannibalistic hermit.

Teething are somewhere between the buzzsaw death grind of Napalm Death and P.O.O.R. and the growling d-beat blasts of Skitsystem. Formed in Madrid, Spain, their music is loud, fast, and storms into brawls prepared to fight dirty, taping glass and chunks of brick to its knuckles. Teething’s songs are a violent call to action that takes Tool’s passive “fuck all the [insert item(s) here]” mantra from Ænima and takes it the next rebellious step forward, like the brutal blur of anger in “Starting Fires.” This is music that fights lies with pyromania and oppression with razors. From the thundering, familiar bass drum gallop to the toxic gang-shouts of “How To Kill A Child,” Teething know how to bring a mosh pit to a boil and bust eardrums with crusty hooks and immediately recognizable hostility.

Ravage Ritual have a more varied approach, introducing elements of death metal into their charging hardcore grind that only occasionally resembles fellow Finnish band Rotten Sound. “Deadbeat” slams a Disfear-styled attack into a sludgy breakdown that feels like dragging your body across a slaughterhouse floor sticky with blackened, moldy meat and old blood. “Drown Beyond Insane” introduces metallic riffs over blastbeats before switching gears into an acidic groove tailored for possessed headbanging. Then there’s “Hymn II,” a grimy slab of street-gutter doom that sounds like it was cooked up in a basement meth lab, ending with ambient guitar work like a snarling cloud of flies descending on the masses. It’s an eerie, foreboding conclusion to the split album, and I appreciated the tempo shift as it crawled to a stop.

This is a great split from Nooirax Productions that should be sought out by fans of extreme music everywhere. Maybe you don’t share the anti-cop sentiments of Teething, maybe the slower moments in Ravage Ritual’s songs aren’t your poisoned cup of tea, but there’s no denying the passion and aggression in these songs. You get the idea that these guys mean exactly what they’re shouting, and that sort of sincerity amplifies the music even louder for me.

Check out the split album for FREE over at Bandcamp, and donate what you can if you like this album as much as I did:  http://nooirax.bandcamp.com/album/split-12

Then check out Teething over on their Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/teethingband

And do the same for Ravage Ritual:  https://www.facebook.com/ravageritual

REVIEW: HUMMUNE - CRAFTED IN DARKNESS

According to their Facebook page, the band name refers to an immunity to humans, which sounds like the best immunity ever, since humans are just about the most destructive and dangerous force the Earth has ever known. This band’s brand of pummeling, hardcore noise is a very close second.

Hummune was seemingly constructed in 2009 by sinister robots in some Southampton, UK factory with the intention of beating human brains to a gelatinous pulp. I haven’t been able to locate surnames for the three lethal members of this band, furthering my suspicion that they are not human at all, but Terminator-style machines that just happen to have been programmed to rock hard enough to splinter teeth. Crafted in Darkness, their full-length debut, pulses with Unsane’s jarring energy and drags hardcore through sludge like the best work on Fudge Tunnel’s Hate Songs in E Minor. Guitarist/vocalist Stu and bassist/vocalist Mike have rasps that finds the broken glass-covered middle ground between Justin Broadrick’s growliest moments in Godflesh and Lars Göran Petrov’s work in Entombed, just drenched with reverb. The rhythm section (Rik on drums, Mike mentioned previously) is phenomenal, digging deep trenches for mosh pit victims while the guitar soars and stabs. These guys have the tools and skill to do some serious damage.

Then you listen to “Moth” and “Into Dust” to open the album and realize you’re in for even more harm than you anticipated. These songs hit hard but still contain a ton of texture, from splashes of shoegaze to the whispered vocal delivery on “Claw.” Some of the gentler moments remind me of early Deftones and work beautifully to enhance the foreboding mood before the distortion levels every building in a kilometer radius. Not every song hits with the same efficient fury (“Inside” features a jarring rhythm that unfortunately murders the momentum, “Driven to Husk” plods along without the demolishing riffs that made predecessor “Rise” so deadly) but Crafted in Darkness is still a damn good slab of noisy, metallic rock and hardcore. The sneaky groove of “Era” closes out this album on a muscular note, ending so ferociously that you almost forget the intricate songwriting and melodic guitar work snaking around the bass rhythm just a few minutes prior.

Listening to Crafted in Darkness may not make you immune to the frustrations and dangers of dealing with humanity, but for almost one hour you’ll feel like Hummune have toughened you up to deal with all their shenanigans in stride. Either that, or your brain will be gelatinous pulp. But hey, this is metal, you can’t make an omelet without bruising some brains.

Check out Hummune on Spotify or over here at Bandcamp:  http://hummune.bandcamp.com/album/crafted-in-darkness

And follow them on Facebook for news on shows and releases:  https://www.facebook.com/hummune

REVIEW: OKUS - S/T

I don’t know what Okus means, but the first acronym my brain came up with was Only Kill Ugly Saints. The problem is, that omits all the photogenic saints that Okus could behead just with the sharp blade of their music. This Irish four-piece hails from Drogheda, a city that publically displays the severed head of Saint Oliver Plunkett. History says he was executed in London in 1681, but I think he dreamed of Okus’ music centuries before and it incinerated his faith so quickly that he decapitated himself. Their seven song self-titled long EP/short album is mean as hell and feels like it’s putting cigarettes out on your eardrums.

The album is built around a foundation of death-doom but often blasts into ferocious d-beat punk and noisy hardcore. While their bursts of blackened crust remind me of Young And In The Way, they’re more similar to bands like The Secret or Full of Hell who change tempos more drastically song to song, avoiding easy characterization. Okus’ music is so ugly (HOW UGLY IS IT?) I wouldn’t kiss it with my worst enemy’s bloody asshole. If you read this blog you know right now this is pretty much my way of writing a love poem to a band: Bloody assholes. And I typed that up before even noticing one of the members was in a band once called Bleeding Rectum. This really could be love.

My favorite moments on the album were the gut-churning and intimidating as fuck-all “Bodies” and the rabid grinder “Burn It To the Ground,” though “Light Obscene” also features a tasty metallic groove. Every sound on this album feels blackened, like the songs are heretics splashed with tar, covered in asp scales and ash, then burned alive in front of an audience of cheering children. My only concern is that a couple of the songs linger a bit long, like the two minute intro to “Light Obscene” that delays us from getting to the bone marrow of the song, and “Born In Chains” which seems to lumber forward after the third minute. Apart from these choices this is still a focused, vicious release that treats brutality like the art form it truly is. Also, just to save you a weird visit to eBay, you don’t need to live within spitting distance of a severed saint head to appreciate this music. Those heads are dumb expensive, spend the money on this album instead.

Listen to Okus over on Bandcamp, where this album is available as a “name your price” download:  http://okus.bandcamp.com/album/okus

And check them out on Facebook over here:  https://www.facebook.com/Okusband

REVIEW: WRAITHS - EP 2012

So Wraiths call themselves “hell metal,” and despite the unreliable nature of most self-applied monikers this is actually pretty god damn apt. I would be tempted to substitute “hardcore” for metal, but when it’s this heavy and bruising that’s me just mincing words and being a genre-humping elitist douche. While they’re from the UK, Wraiths’ sound exists somewhere in the combined headspace of Travis Bickle and Richard Ramirez, mixing the horrors of urban isolation and suicidal Satanism in a bucket of bleach, ammonia, and goat blood, resulting in lethal fumes and grotesque hallucinations.

Their 5 song EP is completely dedicated to creating a mood of total hopelessness. These songs are the sounds of life hitting a dead end. If you’re looking for music that soars across the whole kingdom of emotion you’re in the wrong neighborhood, pal. There’s no triumph or love or positivity here, just riffs that are down-tuned, punishing, and blackened with gutter grime. A lot of the credit for the convincing unpleasantness can be attributed to Rae Robinson’s chilling roar, which seems genuinely tortured and resembles Sammy Duet’s supporting vocal work from Acid Bath/Goatwhore when he reaches into the higher registers.

Outside of crust punk bursts in “Black Vultures” and “Monolith,” most of the EP lurches forward at a mid-tempo stomp, a pace matching the somber tone crafted throughout. Despite the overwhelming bleakness there’s still a lot of texture here, from the gang-shouting on “Pyramid Head” to an audio clip from Devil’s Rejects that confirms that Wraiths’ music is here to do the devil’s work. Oh, I should also mention that this may qualify as a concept album, as it seems to follow the same character’s descent into violent vengeance as he pursues a future, following his likely suicide, as a demon in Satan’s horde. Maybe I’m incorrectly analyzing the lyrics, but I have a feeling when the words “I can’t wait to fucking die” are screamed over a sledgehammer of distortion it’s entirely literal. I guess it’s possible he means “die” in the Shakespearean way, as in having a totally killer orgasm, but this EP seems to enjoy shouting fuck more than actually fucking. What can I say, depression sucks.

But these songs, despite their themes, will push depression aside and invigorate fans of loud, ugly music. Nothing makes you want to punch God right in his/her/its face more than Wraiths’ bludgeoning attack. This is another raw, uncompromising release from Witch Hunter Records for any fan of music with a black heart and a mean streak. Also, it looks like they borrowed Slayer’s logo for a little while, with promises to return it as good as new. But after hearing this EP I know that when they give it back it will be burnt like a Norwegian church, slick with new blood, and stink like an unearthed prostitute. Such is the danger when making logo-swap deals with Wraiths.

Listen to this nasty slab of hell metal over yonder:  http://witchhunterrecords.bandcamp.com/album/wraiths-ep-2012

And “Join the Pre-Order” by grabbing one of these bad ass T-Shirt/Tape bundles:  http://witchhunterrecords.bigcartel.com/product/wraiths-ep-2012-tape-t-shirt-pre-order

REVIEW: KORESH - CHUMP

I judge books by their covers all the time. Albums too. Luke Drozd’s cover art for Koresh’s new EP Chump perfectly captures the music’s brutal, impish mania, with rage-possessed unicorns dueling for unknown reasons, but probably for something ultra-important, like to impress a nearby unicorn chick who totally digs blood-slicked horns, ‘cause really, who doesn’t? Koresh, who have been churning stomachs with punk-infused sludge for a decade now in London, kick out ugly, nasty tunes that smirk at you the whole time if you’re in on the joke. And the music ain’t the joke.

This release from Witch Hunter and Withered Hand Records, a follow-up to 2010's excellent Crippledriver, crackles with the reckless punk energy of The Stooges or Junkyard-era work by The Birthday Party while dishing out crusty sludge overdosing on groove and grit. The Paul Newell/Donny Hopkins vocal tandem reminds me of Weedeater’s Dave “Dixie” Collins, if his vocal cords were grafted with cells from Nocturno Culto’s throat. There is definitely a sense of fun that permeates Chump, from the celebratory “woo!” in “Straight Edge Till Midnight” to the hilarious audio clip from American Juggalo opening “Wogan” to the T-shirt worthy song title “Adolf Hipster.” Also, “You Can Call Me Gaahl” is my favorite title parody since Carcass’ “Keep On Rotting In the Free World.” Koresh, named after the Branch Davidian leader involved with the infamous Waco incident, share a twisted sense of humor that’s absolutely on my wavelength. You know the friend you can send any joke to, no matter how offensive and reprehensible? Yeah, that’s Koresh. This music is like laughter at a funeral, the type of chuckling that’s contagious and soon overtakes the crowd of mourners.

“Cheer Up Glasgow” shows Koresh at their most bleak, offering tortured doom until it blasts into hardcore punk and a stoned groove that brings to mind the slimy tempo shifts of Eyehategod’s In the Name of Suffering. Koresh crash into jagged noise-rock territory in “Bin Juice,” ripping worlds apart with catchy, spastic riffs that skip gentle head-nodding and go straight to tearing your own head off and tossing it in the air in celebration. The bass-heavy rock of “Shitbird” seems a bit rigid and lifeless compared to the rest of the album, but the final minute still slithers to awesomeness thanks to a killer bass line. Chump is the soundtrack of a bender destined to go bad, the sort of party where hundreds of laws are shattered and at least one person loses a limb. Then years later, when the traumatized partyers break vows to never speak of that night again, everyone admits that secretly, despite the debauchery and limb-loss, it was the best party they ever experienced. Koresh is not polite. They will make fun of your mom, even after you tell her she’s dead. But the joke will get you laughing, and their music will make you swear off civility.

Listen to Crush now and order an awesome CD/Shirt bundle over here:  http://witchhunterrecords.bigcartel.com/product/koresh-chump-cd-and-t-shirt-bundle

And check out the Koresh website for more information:  http://straightedgetillmidnight.blogspot.com/