Posts Tagged ‘metal’

Duma

Thursday, September 24th, 2020

Duma

Duma LP
Nyege Nyege Tapes, 2020

There’s grindcore in Kenya? My ignorance of that fact, which honestly shouldn’t be all that terribly surprising given the reach of extreme metal throughout the world, admittedly piqued my interest in this group. The stunningly brilliant cover image definitely set up some pre-conceived expectations of gnarly metallic hyper chug and gore-centric themes, standard fare for the grindcore genre, but I’m thrilled to report that this not only blasts itself well outside any genre constraints, it’s easily one of the most original forays into extreme music these tinnitus-tainted ears have heard in a long time. This guitar-free grind is rooted in dense, polyrhythmic percussive blasts peppered by washes of noise that make this monster feel more like something from your record store’s industrial/experimental/noise section than the metal bins. In fact, other than the pulse-shredding percussive blasts, the only other recognizable hallmark of grindcore here are visceral vocal growls and wails, which thankfully veer well past cartoonish into crazed. Take some harsh power electronics, mash it up with chopped up gabber beats and bits of William Bennet’s post-Whitehouse project Cut Hands and you’ve got something nearly as terrifying as this monster.

Prong

Tuesday, September 5th, 2017

Prong - ForceFedForce Fed LP (Spigot, 1988)

Seeing Decibel magazine give Prong’s Beg to Differ album the Hall of Fame treatment made me want to revisit their first two albums, as they have always been underrated and overlooked slabs of relentless and bleak thrash. While Beg to Differ is a fairly solid cruncher of an LP (not to mention that it features Pushead artwork and a live cover of Chrome’s “Third from the Sun”) I’ve found that their debut Primitive Origins and sophomore followup Force Fed really deliver the goods. Prong may have made a slight blip on the underground radar when Force Fed was first released but it was definitely eclipsed commercially by Beg to Differ, which was delivered with a slick polish on a major label and nearly instant acclaim for it’s dynamic songwriting and musical prowess. And while those qualities are all well and good, they don’t deliver the same visceral punch of a focused trio slaying it with monstrous riffs played at double speed. I used to think that all the guitar solos on Beg to Differ were what weakened it, but with fresh ears I’ve realized that Force Fed is packed with them too, although here they function to spiral the songs out of control instead of fancy finger flourishes. If your opinion of Prong is based on their later records, you might want to give this and Primitive Origins a spin.

Force Fed on Apple Music

Stone Titan

Tuesday, March 4th, 2014

Scratch ‘N Sniff LP
Safety Meeting Records, 2013

Despite an endless parade of doom metal bands crisscrossing the globe in mutilated Econoline vans reeking of weed and spilled PBR, there are only a few bands that can actually deliver the low-end punch in the gut that makes the genre worth your time. This gnarly two-piece from the wilds of Connecticut is one of the few bands that’s channeled enough generalized misanthropy into 7 slabs of steaming downtuned Doom to make it well worth the tinnitus Scratch ‘N Sniff dishes out by the pound. With the bile-infused rage of squealing feedback-ridden southern sludge like Eyehategod and Buzzov*en, fused with the epic inertia of riff riders Noothgrush and Damad, topped with a tinge of psychedelic stonerisms alá Bongzilla, Stone Titan deliver the goods and put themselves at the top of the doom metal heap.

LISTEN

LINKS

Stone Titan on Bandcamp
Stone Titan on Facebook