Benediction - Organized Chaos

Anyone that’s familiar with the old school death metal world should at least already KNOW ABOUT Benediction (it’s understandable if you haven’t heard their music yet). Having released some pretty important classics like Transcend the Rubicon and The Grand Leveller, Benediction has ended up in the same place as a lot of old school death metal bands. This is a place where they’ve mainly just been living off of their first couple of albums, not having released any other fantastic albums since then…maybe a couple of really good ones, but not any that compare to their first couple of albums. Some other bands that have landed in somewhat similar situations are Six Feet Under, Unleashed, Bolt Thrower, Deicide, Obituary, and Malevolent Creation.

The main reason why this album has received so much criticism is not only because this is the first Benediction record to not have Dave Ingram on vocals (who left to join Bolt Thrower for one album), but also because of how much his replacement changed the band’s sound. The new Benediction sound can be described as more of a “death-n-roll” sound (which I strongly despise) than a straight-up death metal sound. But thankfully, the rock n’ roll layer on this album is very slim.

What The Grand Leveller has that most death metal records of its time don’t is a huge variety in song structure and mood. Organized Chaos doesn’t have nearly as much darkness as previous albums, and makes an attempt on implementing various other genres like nu metal and metalcore. I’m not saying that this is 100% true, but I’m definitely hearing some nu metal in this record along with one or two metalcore-styled breakdowns. I’m going to make a comparison with a band that didn’t exist when this album came out: one of the better ways to describe the sound of this album is having the grooviness that DevilDriver has…except Benediction failed at doing so.

I can see how the band is taking advantage of having a new vocalist and using it as an opportunity to change their sound and start doing some experimentation, since they’re practically a whole different band now. Dave Hunt, the new vocalist, is one of the founding members of the progressive grindcore act Anaal Nathrakh (using the name V.I.T.R.I.O.L.). Of course, a member in a band as experimental as Anaal Nathrakh is going to start making some changes when he joins a pure death metal band like Benediction. To be honest, Benediction wasn’t necessarily meant to be progressive, but then again, it’s good for bands to have change and progress. The only problem with that is that when it comes to experimentation, it’s much easier to fuck everything up than make it sound better. That’s why we have progressive bands like Opeth and The Contortionist (just to name a couple) that do their best to make the impossible possible by making whatever experimentations they do sound fantastic. But of course, Benediction’s experimentation went completely in the wrong direction.

Despite all of that, the rock-solid death metal base that Benediction has always had is still there. The headbanging parts have a lot of groove and none of the musicians lack any sort of skill or creativity. The drumming is good as always, the guitars are very deep and crunchy, the bass kills when you have your subs turned up, and the vocals have a good powerful sound. This is a good enough album to make me smile and not skip whenever a song from it pops up when I have all my death metal on shuffle, but it’s not something that I would go “HEY, LISTEN TO THIS AWESOME RECORD!” The Benediction album that makes me do that is The Grand Leveller, which I gave a perfect score in my review of it. So I would pass this album up as being no better than just another record for the ol’ death metal collection. I would give this album 12/20. 

Misery Index - Heirs to Thievery

I was surprised by the fact that I wasn’t super excited when I saw that Misery Index had released a new album. I told myself that it was time to stop procrastinating and get the album about two months after its release. I guess I had a weird hunch that the band had fucked everything up and that it would ruin it for me if I heard the album. Before the album was finished, I started asking myself “why the hell did you think that?” In other words, this album is a solid slab of grinding brutality and that Misery Index really meant what they said after the Traitors release: they have no plans of EVER slowing down. For those of you that want a quick factual summary of the sound, Misery Index took the sound from Traitors and put back some of the grinding brutality from the Retaliate/Discordia days.

But Traitors had a lot of new melodic elements, unfamiliar in Misery Index territory. Now, it seems that the band liked the sound of Traitors and decided to make the small melodic elements part of their overall sound which, to be honest, wasn’t a bad idea at all. In songs like The Carrion Call, I can hear some Dying Fetus-style breakdowns with a lot of groove. Although there aren’t breakdowns this pronounced in every single track, the existing ones substantially affected the general sound of the record in its entirety. I can see how doing this could have easily ruined the music, but I think that Misery Index realized that these kind of breakdowns would fit in PERFECTLY with their sound. But not only that, there’s a lot more grindcore in their music.

Some people were a bit disappointed by Traitors because it didn’t have quite as much blast beat drumming as they wanted. But now, the band has brought the grinding blast beats from Discordia to dust off the cobwebs and let them shine once again. Although I’ve heard much crisper and tighter blast beats from bands like Dying Fetus and Exhumed, these blast beats are some of the heaviest and most bombarding I’ve ever heard. The drummer branches out and decides to play more chaotic fills during pauses in the music. The unfortunate thing about that is that he does somewhat of a sloppy job on those fills, which are easily noticeable. I like the simpler and much tighter fills that he did in Traitors much better. But then again, he didn’t TOTALLY fail at the more chaotic fills, he was just sloppy. The drumming is fantastic, but the bass has decreased in complexity and creativity. The bassist went from playing a much more complex set of lines to just simply following the drum patterns.

The vocals in this album aren’t necessarily better than Traitors, but they’re definitely more powerful. The seemingly belted-out growls on Heirs to Thievery are the other reason besides the drumming that this album sounds so much heavier than Traitors. Contrary to Traitors, the vocalist has more variety in what he does; which includes frequently placing screams on top of growls, which doesn’t sound half bad. His growls aren’t quite as deep as I would like them to be, which is primarily because he’s putting a lot more force and energy into them. I love how there’s more power, but I liked them more when they were deeper.

It’s starting to look like Misery Index is only further solidifying their place amongst the greatest death grind legends ever. Although I wouldn’t consider them the best out of that particular group, I would certainly consider Misery Index to be one of the best the genre has to offer. I would give this album 13/20. 

Misery Index - Traitors

I first saw Misery Index a long time ago when they opened for Deicide. I remember not being impressed very much by their performance, but that was before I became a HUGE fan of extreme metal. Traitors was my first Misery Index record and now that I’ve been listening to it for over two years, I can now agree that it is a fantastic death grind album. Misery Index has climbed their way to the top and becoming one of the biggest death grind bands ever along with Cattle Decapitation, Carcass, and Dying Fetus (sort of like the big four in death grind). I think the reason why this album in particular has been so successful is because there’s a lot more death metal than grindcore than in the two previous albums.

One thing that makes Traitors easier for me to enjoy than any of Misery Index’s other albums is the bass. Although I like the material on Discordia, the overall sound gets irritating after a while because of the major lack in the lower end. If you want a Misery Index album that doesn’t have too much treble and tons of bass, Traitors is what you need to be listening to right now. Most of the grindcore elements that Misery Index uses are the extremely chaotic, but atmospheric elements that Cattle Decapitation is known for.  But hey! This is fucking Misery Index here! There can’t be Misery Index without grinding brutality!

I’ll tell you this, Traitors doesn’t disappoint. From the second the intro concludes to the insane drumming at the end of the last song, Misery Index continues to pound you into the dirt, proving that their fame is well-deserved and that they have no plans of slowing down anytime in the near future. It seems that in the death grind genre, the drummer usually ends up being the best member of the band. Either that or it’s common for the drummer to be outstanding. I’m not kidding either, Cattle Decapitation, Dying Fetus, Carcass, Wormed, Exhumed, Skinless, Severe Torture, and General Surgery ALL have REALLY good drummers! But besides Wormed and the first two that I listed, Misery Index has one of the best drummers in the genre.

Not only is the grindcore sound lacking in the overall music, but also in the vocals especially. The vocalist primarily does exhaled growls that sound a little bit like yelling (you can hear some voice in his growls) similar to the sound of the vocals from Vader and Jungle Rot. Don’t expect something with as much voice as Vader though, I was just saying that the vocals on this record resemble that sound, but with less voice and more growl. Also, I think I should mention that there aren’t any screams on this record (that I can remember, I might be wrong), so don’t expect the whole growl-scream switch that bands like Dying Fetus and Exhumed do.

Like I said before, the overall sound of the album is very powerful and has a lot more death metal than grindcore in most of the songs. My favorite song off this record is Theocracy; not only for the drumming, but also for the crushing sections that were created for headbanging (that can also be found on almost all of the other tracks, especially the title track). I would give Traitors a solid 14/20 for being one of the more important death grind records and certainly one that I would recommend to death metal and death grind fans. 

I Declare War - Malevolence

Having lived near Seattle for most of my life, I’ve become very involved in the Seattle (and pretty much all of Washington) music scene; especially the metal part. Of course, Washington has its gems like Nevermore, Wolves in the Throne Room, Queensryche, Inquisition, and Demon Hunter as well as its underground gems like Blood and Thunder, Six Days of Darkness, Black Breath, and one of its most recent major uprisings: I Declare War. I never really bothered to listen to these guys until I heard that they were from downtown Seattle. After playing this for the third time in a row, I could at least somewhat understand why these guys rose from the underground so quickly, but when speaking in terms of the entire deathcore genre, these guys don’t really have anything special about them.

Quite a few people have been saying that Malevolence has been one of the leading albums in the newer “waves” of deathcore (hopefully that doesn’t mean “Emmure-core”). When I was hearing people say this, I was really hoping that they had too much vodka before saying that. As far as deathcore standards go, the song structure is devastatingly simple and boring. But the main contributor to the boring factor isn’t the song structure; I’ll talk about that bigger factor later. The drumming is very simple and never does anything. The only things that I can hear from the drummer are the annoying sound of the double kicks, the bass booms at the beginning of some of the breakdowns, and the cymbals in the background. If I want to hear the snare, I have to listen closely. The drummer doesn’t seem to have any trouble at all staying in time, but other than that, he shows no creativity or skill what so ever.

The vocalist reminds me a lot of Adam Warren of Oceano (my favorite deathcore band). I love this really strained growl sound, but the difference between Warren and this guy is that Warren does more than just that cool growl. He screams, he yells, and he even inhales every now and then. This guy just does the cool growl in monotone and occasionally inhales in a way where you virtually can’t hear him unless you block the rest of the music out. The guitars aren’t super overpowering, but they do cover up the majority of the overall sound. The distortion that they have is your average really gritty metalcore distortion that was designed for brutality.

A lot of the elements in the music (including the overall sound) can be found in several older records by some of deathcore’s earlier artists like Suicide Silence, As Blood Runs Black, and Impending Doom. Besides the huge resemblance of Oceano that I Declare War has, most of the simplicity tends to date back to As Blood Runs Black’s debut album, Allegiance. I’m not saying that I know for sure that these bands are actual influences on I Declare War’s sound, but I can say with great confidence that I can hear a lot of elements that were pioneered by As Blood Runs Black and Oceano. The Oceano side is the slower, really thick and sludgy sound and the simplicity is more of the early As Blood Runs Black sound.

The first thing that I think of whenever I see or hear this album is monotone. When you play the first song after the intro, New Age Holocaust, you hear a really thick and dark brutality from the veins of Oceano. But after the first breakdown, the dynamics and overall mood of the music never changes. This sound quickly dulls out by the third or fourth track, and has me asleep by the eighth or ninth track. The sound is completely monotonous for the duration of the album with no changes at all in vocal pitch, volume, dynamics or structure. Some deathcore bands (like All Shall Perish) like to have a complex song structure during the really intense part, and then simplify the structure in order to enhance any mellowness or decline in brutality and intensity.

Some deathcore bands (like Suicide Silence, Carnifex, and Oceano) keep a generally simple song structure (some being simpler than others) and tighten up the intensity to its maximum potential to then release it in an explosive drop in tempo known as a breakdown. I Declare War is one of those bands, but the problem that they have is that the tension never builds OR declines; IT’S ALL MONOTONE, the mood or tension of the music barely changes at all! Once you realize that, it’s already too late because you’ll already be bored to death.

Despite what I’ve heard, I can’t see how I Declare War could be influential in any way. Although their overall sound and song structure is solid, their tone and intensity generally remains unchanging for the duration of the record. I would rate this album 10/20 for not being a bad album, but nothing that I would say good things about either. I would only “recommend” this to diehard deathcore fans. 

Upcoming Reviews

Here are some possibilities of upcoming reviews:

Deicide (death metal)
God Dethroned (death metal)
Upon a Burning Body (deathcore)
Darkest Hour (melodic death)
Bloodboil (brutal death)
Benediction (death metal)
Goatwhore (thrash black)
Brain Drill (technical death)
Overkill (thrash metal)
Misery Index (death grind)
Blind Witness (deathcore)

Chelsea Grin - Evolve [EP]

Well, Chelsea Grin is back again with another release. This time it’s a 5-song EP titled “Evolve”. Before I listened to the teaser, I was hoping that the title was implying that they had evolved their sound and changed since the My Damnation atrocity (my ears are permanently scarred from reviewing that record). Going to the point of being worse than Emmure, Chelsea Grin started out at a fairly average point by releasing a mediocre EP and a mediocre, but promising full-length debut. This debut was followed by one of the single WORST deathcore albums in history, but if you want to see my thoughts on My Damnation, just read the review I wrote on it. I’m here to talk about the brand new EP that was released just a month or two ago. How bad will my ears be hurting this time? Will they even hurt at all? I’ve already heard the album teaser, so there’s no point in trying to get my hopes up at all because the teaser alone was hard enough to listen to, and that was just 30-second clips of each of the FIVE tracks!

The album cover is intentionally similar to the cover of their self-titled EP, which consists of a face that has a freshly-cut “chelsea grin”. I’m not letting the cover influence my opinion on the record itself (although it wouldn’t make my opinion any more positive if I did), but this album cover SUCKS! Yes, the cover of your self-titled EP was 100% appropriate and I wouldn’t have chosen any other album cover, but this is an embarrassment to visual art! On top of that, the logo has been squished in order to put the record title right above it (why? I don’t know) without blocking the face (which it kind of does anyway). But enough of me bitching about the artwork, let’s just get this thing over with.

Usually I do a track-by-track review with EPs, but even I, Crinn, am not strong enough to be able to dissect and analyze each track with great detail and make it out alive or with the ability to hear. The first thing that I’m noticing is that Chelsea Grin is deciding to take on the recent trend of implementing symphonic and orchestral elements into their music, which was pioneered by Winds of Plague. Then, we also have a HUGE increase in the number of breakdowns in each song (averaging at about…4-6 breakdowns per song).

I can SORT OF see what they’re trying to do, but when you look at it from an overall perspective, what each musician is trying to do is very confusing and doesn’t match-up when put back together. The guitarists seem to have completely lost focus. They’re looking to be more progressive and “avant-garde” than good, which is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of because you can’t just try to be progressive and have it end up well. Do you think that THE ONLY thing on the minds of Iwrestledabearonce was being fast, random, and technical? No! Iwrestledabearonce still shows a shitload of focus on song structure, skill, being tight, and solid performance. Once they get that down, THEN they start doing stuff like wearing cowboy hats and giving songs names like Karate Nipples. Chelsea Grin just do what’s already second nature to them (deathcore) and are making honest attempts at being progressive and FAILING MISERABLY AT IT!

Thankfully, the vocals aren’t as loud as they were in My Damnation, but even then, that isn’t really saying much. The drums are a little bit better, but they still don’t even have enough color or catchiness to them to keep me awake. Everything besides the atrocious attempts at melody, singing (yes, singing), and atmosphere seems to just be outright BORING! There isn’t any taste to this record at all! This EP IS HORRIBLE! DO NOT BUY THIS! There is nothing you haven’t heard before on this record, and everything on here that you haven’t heard before is better left untouched and forgotten. I would give this record 1/20. 

Enter Shikari - Common Dreads

Screamo band Enter Shikari released Common Dreads in 2009. Their past releases have gotten the attention of critics and listeners alike with their unique style of combining the sounds of hardcore punk and metalcore with electrifying synthesizers and techno. I would imagine that there are a few HUGE fans of this band, but most people that I’ve talked to either consider them mediocre/average or completely atrocious; I agree with the latter. I first heard this record a little over two years ago when a friend showed me the song Solidarity (which I will talk about later). Even then, being a much bigger screamo fan than I am now, I really didn’t like the sound that Enter Shikari brought to the board. After being extremely disappointed with Common Dreads, I decided to listen to Take to the Skies, the album previous to Common Dreads…but it wasn’t any better at all; in fact, it was much worse. But I find Common Dreads easier and more interesting to discuss because it’s just the overall musical quality and complete lack of effort that makes Take to the Skies so bad. The things wrong with Common Dreads are just…”Dreadful”.

The ideas and goals behind Enter Shikari have a lot of potential, and have been pulled off in similar forms by other screamo bands such as Asking Alexandria, I See Stars, and Attack Attack!. Enter Shikari know all of the things they need to do to make this fusion sound good…but they couldn’t do it to get another pair of pants. In other words, these guys can’t do ANYTHING right! They can’t write, they’re one of the most unorganized metal bands I’ve ever heard, they can’t play their instruments, the way everything is produced and mixed only does further damage to the already hopeless sound, and they seem to be confused as to what they’re trying to play.

I like my screamo to be very powerful and epic. One thing that can really up the power-factor is a good crunchy guitar distortion. The guitars on Common Dreads aren’t even DISTORTED! It sounds like they could be, but it’s so slight that it weakens the music. Throughout the whole album, I’m eagerly waiting for the guitars to get LOUDER and MORE DISTORTED! But NOOOOO!! They want to fucking tease (or torture) you in order to get you to listen to the whole album and get their songs stuck in your head and never forget the day you listened to Enter Shitari.

The vocals are fucking atrocious. Yes, that’s the hardcore punk influence I was talking about, but his yells are fucking WEAK! He doesn’t have the really gravely rough voice he’s supposed to have. His yells have NO energy and NO emotion or dynamics anywhere in the album. His screams are so bad they aren’t even worth pure liquid shit, that’s all I have to say about that. The singing is the worst part. He can’t sing in-tune at all, the harmonizations suck, and there’s no color OR dynamics in his singing. Although there is a shift in pitch, the volume of his singing never changes. So he can’t yell, sing OR scream…WHY IS THIS GUY EVEN A FUCKING MEMBER OF THE BAND!?

The songs don’t have any structure whatsoever. Let’s dissect Solidarity to see what I’m talking about. The song opens with the only good thing this album carries: the one keyboard riff. This opening keyboard riff gets the listener expecting a LOUD and highly distorted hardcore punk-styled opening lead by the guitars. But instead you get the soft, mushy sound of the weak guitars which is then followed by the extremely annoying loud talking (it’s not even yelling anymore, I’ve made that decision). After that goes on for a while, you get introduced to singing that’s better off being auto-tuned. Ok, the song seems to have some solid structure, then right as you’re thinking that, the song COMPLETELY falls apart. You get a…what I think is supposed to be a breakdown (I’m not sure at this point), which contains sudden breaks in the music where…what the hell?

A random electronic sound. That’s the best these guys can do during a breakdown. When bands pause, you usually get a really fast drum fill…BUT NOOOOO!! You had to go ahead and put in that really weird…whatever it was so that you could get some cheap laughs and say “HAHA, FOOLED YA!” After that breakdown, everything seems to be randomly generated and rushed (the music itself isn’t rushed, the writing process was rushed). It sounds like each member wanted to put something different into the song, and the band decided to put all of the things in the same song in order to make everyone happy. This guy here wanted a breakdown, Rou here wants to have plenty of techno, Rory here wants a more melodic sound, and so on and so forth.

Common Dreads is an embarrassment. I’m embarrassed by the fact that I actually waste time THINKING about it. THIS ALBUM IS ATROCIOUS, DO NOT GET THIS RECORD! I’m giving this album 1/20 for being one of the worst albums I’ve heard in a LONG time. This is the last time I will ever waste brain space on this band. 

blessthefall - Awakening

I remember first listening to blessthefall in 2008 when all they had was their debut, which, at the time, I thought was mediocre. Now, I have a much harder time enjoying it whenever I listen to it. Once my heart was sold with the fantastic follow-up record, Witness, I became a huge supporter of their music. Although blessthefall can be found NOWHERE on my list of my VERY favorite screamo bands, they’re still amazing enough for me to donate $12 in exchange for a pre-ordered copy of their newest album, Awakening. I usually like to at least hear a teaser or a leaked track before I pre-order something, but my gut told me that I wouldn’t regret this one. And I was right; blessthefall went on to release their best album yet, catching the beautiful trend of making each album better than the last.

Now that I’m starting to truly realize how overused this breakdown thing really is, blessthefall seems to be one of the major ground-breakers in the “core” community (not including grindcore). When you have screamo and metalcore bands that abuse the breakdown like I the Breather, Beneath the Sky, and Abandon all Ships, blessthefall is one of those reliefs and pieces of proof that “all is not lost”. They do this by bringing back a modernized version of the old screamo sound created and shaped by bands like Hopesfall, The Used, Atreyu, Killswitch Engage, Demon Hunter, and the early works of All that Remains.

The old screamo/metalcore sound (commonly referred to early post-hardcore by some) is an ambient and more melodic version of the type of music that the hardcore punk bands from the 1990s played. But then again, on top of the music part being more atmospheric, the vocals are much harsher (therefore giving it the name “screamo”) and the breakdowns are much more pronounced and heavier. Sort of like a much heavier version of hardcore punk, but with less energy. When you think of MODERN screamo, it’s a much simpler version of the old screamo that’s also extremely poppy. Think of taking a modern screamo band, taking out some of the breakdowns, and making it slightly less poppy in order to expose the ambient Hopesfall-sound. That is what blessthefall plays.

When critics talk about blessthefall, one of the most discussed topics is how much the band’s sound resembles the original screamo sound from the turn of the century. But don’t be expecting something really dark, the melodic parts on this record are EXTREMELY melodic and have a beautiful sound. Beau’s singing is what brings out the melodic sections so much. In my favorite song off the record, 40 Days, his singing adds the missing piece to the puzzle that, when complete, creates a powerful melody. His screaming isn’t something that’s super common in this kind of music. It doesn’t really sound super high-pitched like Austin Carlile, but it’s not really deep either. I think it can be best described as a really dirty, forced out yell…but then again, it sounds like a scream! The heaviness and brutality of his screams match the heaviness of the music PERFECTLY. You want heaviness? Listen to Bottomfeeder.

The guitarists aren’t amazing, but the really loud and gritty distortion they have on their guitars is what makes the heaviness factor so great. But of course, they somehow made it so that they can make the melodic sections sound beautiful while still using the exact same distortion. They probably pull this off by playing deeper and more complex chords in the heavy parts and simpler chords in the melodic parts so that they can allow the lead notes to sing through and be heard easier. There’s not really anything about the drummer in particular that I would consider out of the ordinary or special. He does exactly what he needs to do to stay on tempo with minimal (if any) room for fuck-ups. The general simplicity of what he plays makes the overall music easier to swallow, but the drumming does get repetitive after a little bit in certain songs.

Overall, this album is fantastic for a screamo record. With bombarding tracks like Promised Ones and Bottomfeeder and melodic tracks (my two favorite songs off the record being) like The Reign and 40 Days, I would rate Awakening 16/20. I would definitely recommend checking this one out to fans of melodic metal music. 

Gridlink - Orphan

If there’s one metal genre that I’m the pickiest with, it’s grindcore (including all of its subgenres like pornogrind and goregrind). In fact, there are only a handful of grindcore bands that I actually truly like (there are other bands that have only released one descent album) which are Fuck the Facts (my favorite), Wormrot, Pig Destroyer, Napalm Death, AxCx, and most recently, Gridlink. When listening to grindcore (which the exception of Fuck the Facts), it’s pretty damn hard to imagine there being ANY kind of creativity or skill involved in the music writing process. And to be honest, most of the time…there isn’t! I have a couple of friends that LOVE pornogrind and goregrind stuff, and they all tell me that the reason that they love it is because they love the sound of literal utter chaos. They respect the people that are willing to record these extremely chaotic noisy records and professionally release them under a record label. Although I’ve come to (at least mostly) understand the genre and even appreciate some of its artists, grindcore is still a whole different planet for me. But this review is on one of my personal favorites from the genre, Gridlink’s 2011 release, Orphan.

The sound that Gridlink plays is a really atmospheric chaos. The chaos part is obviously because of the intense blast beat drumming and the near-constant abuse of the cymbals. But here’s the thing about the drummer: HE’S GOOD! There’s a lot of grindcore that has some atrocious drumming. When you listen to the really good grindcore drummers in bands like Pig Destroyer and Wormrot, what they do is a little less chaotic and more focused on a bombarding blast beat and staying tight with the bass. Gridlink’s drummer is horse of a completely different color. If you want chaos, Gridlink gives you chaos. I never thought it to be possible to play the drums with this much chaos and craziness and still manage to keep things tight! The reason why I haven’t even mentioned tempo is because…well…there is no tempo! That’s grindcore! But it’s very possible to have a bad drummer that slows down from loss of energy, therefore causing the music to sound sloppy and confusing.

I have no idea how the fuck the two guitarists and the bassist manage to keep up with the drummer, but they do! The bassist doesn’t play an extremely technical part on this album, he basically just plays a gradual melodic bass line really fast with three fingers (kind of like tremolo picking, but without a pick). The level of intensity that the guitarists play is nearly indescribable. But then again, every member (at least) seems to be tight and on-track with the rest of the band! I don’t know how that’s possible, but Gridlink does it.

The vocalist does those really loud, high-pitched shrieks that are really hard to do well. I’ve heard a lot of different vocal styles in grindcore, but this style seems to be the most popular. The next most common grindcore vocal style is the really nasty yell done by Napalm Death, Pig Destroyer, and Inhumate. But the highest screams go to Gridlink. That’s another thing that makes their music sound like an uncontrolled chaos, the screams! But more so than that, I think that the vocals make an even bigger contribution to the noise factor, which is one of the things that Gridlink is known best for.

Most of what I’ve been describing to you can apply to just about any other better-than-average grindcore band out there. So with all of that, what’s so fucking special about Gridlink? Well, although there are other grind bands that do this, Gridlink is the only band out there to combine the sounds of uncontrolled chaos with ambience and atmospheric melodies. The guitarists don’t have their guitars tuned way down like you would expect. In fact, they’re guitars are tuned to a more “standard” tuning, which gives them the ability to play really ambient and melodic chords at a higher range. Some of the melodic lines are just melodies with no specific roots, but there are some that I can hear, like in the second and fourth tracks, that remind me of really old black metal. So with the possibility of having black metal-influenced melodies and having more than just pure grinding brutality, Gridlink is looking to be more than just another grindcore band.

With the really strange, but ambient chords that the guitarists play and the more melodic parts played by the bassist, ambience doesn’t seem to be an accidental element in Gridlink’s music. Being one of the best grindcore records that I’ve ever heard, Orphan gets my score of 15/20. Grind fans should check this one out. 

Fleshcrawl - Soulskinner

So many people know about Fleshcrawl. Yet only a handful of those people are actually familiar with their music. Well for those of you that don’t know where to start with these German fuckers, Soulskinner is the place to start. But the reason why people read album reviews isn’t JUST to know what and what not to get, it’s to find out WHY they should or should not get a particular album. This was my first Fleshcrawl record and, to be honest, I’m glad it was, because although Soulskinner has several strong albums, none of the others even compare to the crushing power of this one. Making their first appearance in 1991 with a four-song demo tape under the name Suffocation (for obvious reasons, they had to change it due to the brutal death band that was rising out of New York City at the time), Fleshcrawl got their name out mainly in western Europe where they opened for bands such as Bolt Thrower, Benediction, and Sinister on small European tours and shows.

But enough history, Soulskinner is the topic of the hour! Fleshcrawl uses one of my favorite types of guitar distortion, which is probably the loudest and crunchiest guitar distortion out there in the death metal world. This guitar distortion is also used by Swedish death metal masters Dismember and Demonical. Along with the music already being fucking intense, the guitar distortion infinitely intensifies the music. The guitarists themselves are very solid and have just the right amount of skill and creativity for the traditional death metal genre. In fact, they play death metal SO well that I can’t really imagine them doing anything else. The bassist is right on the dot with everything that he plays and writes. He mainly follows the basic root-note of the chords that the guitarists are playing (although he’s the only one playing them sometimes).

The drummer and the vocalist are the best musicians on this album. The drummer is virtually flawless. He doesn’t do anything amazing or outstanding, but he’s fucking flawless. His kick drumming is NEVER out of time, the way that he plays is filled with power, brutality, and obvious skill and practice. If I had to put my money on which member I thought worked the hardest, it’d be the drummer without a doubt. The vocalist’s growls are fucking outstanding. When it comes to traditional death metal (with the exception of bands like Obituary, Death, and Divine Heresy), I like to hear deep and powerful exhaled growls that send chills down my back. The vocalist on Soulskinner passes that test with flying colors and proves to be a near-perfect example of what a death metal growl SHOULD sound like. On top of that, his screams are crisp and have a unique edge that reminds me slightly (and I mean SLIGHTLY) of Kataklysm’s screams.

Other than that, everything about this album is exactly what you would expect from a good traditional death metal album. The song structure, tempo changes, and overall sound burst with the classic death metal sound we’ve all loved since its formation in the mid-1980s. For those of you that are looking for a good, classic, and pure death metal release, Soulskinner should be on your “to-get” list. I would give Fleshcrawl’s Soulskinner 16/20 for being a VERY solid death metal record and to be my first Fleshcrawl recommendation.