Kill Theme For American Apeshit: +HIRS+

+HIRS+ - Worship 7''
2012

Wow! Just, frikkin' wow! For some reason I'd never heard of these guys before and I can't understand how the hell I could have missed them. They do the same thing Agoraphobic Nosebleed does, only less obviously self-medicated. I rarely use hyperbolic phrases suh as 'face-melting', 'shredding' or 'ultra-brutal' but in this case I'll make an exception, because this shit is insanely fast and vicious, and densely fucking heavy to boot. This is crazily constructed drum machine grindcore (something I generally stay as far away from as humanly possible) with lots and lots of odd twists and turns, time changes and weird fills and lots of thunderous low end guitars and howling, shrieking insane-person vocals. There's lots of dissonant riffing going on to make everything feel more than just run of the mill technical grindcore/deathgrind as well as a power violence vibe to the way the songs are constructed (not to mention all the samples thrown into the songs, which are great by the way). All their material is available for download at their bandcamp site. What the fuck are you waiting for?

Maktens murar rasar

Livet Som Insats - Livet Som Insats
2011, Grindcore Karaoke

Livet Som Insats plays a style of grindcore that is oddly catchy. They integrate death metal elements into a melodic blend of grindcore and d-beat aggression and they do this really fucking well. They are a musical meld of all the best aspects of bands like Nasum, Entombed, Sayyadina and Skitsystem, but without ever sounding forced. These six tracks are over in a flash, seven minutes or so, but the range they display is impressive. I know next to nothing of the band, but after listening to this for more than seven times in a row, I definately wanna know and hear alot more. I really love how the melodies melt into the tremolo parts and how they so fluidly morph into the bouncy metallic d-beat styled riffs. Everything is rock solid here: the production (which brings to mind all previously mentioned bands), the drumming which is fluid but very energetic, the song writing, the perfectly audible but slightly distorted bass, the massive guitars and the really dynamic vocals..all of it is spotless. What impresses me even more is how all of this seems to be done so effortlessly. I expect great things from this act.

For those not familiar with netlabel Grindcore Karaoke, it is the brainchild of Agoraphobic Nosebleed vocalist, Jay Randall. All their releases are free to download and you should most definately check it out if you're into any kind of extreme music.

10.000 lawyers dead on Robertson/Felt good to just kick back and look at'em/We were fucking laughing at them

Despise You/Agoraphobic Nosebleed - And On And On
2011, Relapse Records

Having been a long time fan of Agoraphobic Nosebleed and the band's particular, ever-evolving, brand of grindcore, I was immensely stoked to see the announcement of their brand new split with power violence old timers, Despise You.
Since I've never really familiarised myself with the latter I was shocked at how completely and utterly Despise You annihilate their partners on this album. Don't get me wrong, I love the AgNb tracks, which range from sludgy slow-as-fuck-moving deathrumbles to vicious grinding assaults, but they're completely overshadowed by the californian power violence act, who incidently may have recorded the most awesomest cover in all of christendom, with their version of punk-icons Fear's old school hit I Don't Care About You (this time titled Fear's Song and with updated lyrics).

This split album, released by Relapse Records, rips through 25 tracks in just over thirty minutes and the styles displayed by the bands work really well together, with Despise You maintaining a very solid hardcore punk snottiness all the way through the tracks and still managing to unleash short amazingly entertaining grinding power violence attacks weaving in and out of the songs; while Agoraphobic Nosebleed's machine-like cybergrind feels less organic, though no less entertaining. The band has forsaken (well, to some degree at least) the insanely short machine-drum grind explosions for which they've become famous, for a more structured, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown-verse-chorus sort of songwriting, which works surprisingly well for a band like AgNb. Vocally, this time around, they've opted for Jay Randall's raging, snarly vocal style, which in my opinion works better than Katherine Katz's kind of feline and less cohesive voice.

I can't stress enough how amazingly great this album is. I've been listening to it constantly since its release and I just can't seem to stop. This is for all power violence fans who remember the good old days of Slap A Ham Records and were amazed by bands like Infest, Spazz, Man Is The Bastard and Charles Bronson.

To listen to a couple of Despise You tracks off the album just click the banner below.