Apocalypse Wow!

Hail! Hornet - Disperse The Curse
2011, Relapse Records

On their sophmore release Hail! Hornet brandish a bigger brush and use a broader palette of colours than on their self-titled debut, incorporating a greater variety of styles, from near grindcore and hardcore thrash, to bluesy sludge and NWOBHM-style riffs and more. Not only that, but on this album they manage to incorporate these disparate elements more succinctly and less stealthily than on its predecessor. The song writing is tighter, the vocal patterns are sharper, the riffs more memorable and the drumming fucking stellar. This is a huge step up from an already huge debut. Everything about Disperse The Curse is monumentally ferocious. From the backwards spoken passage and the thunderous opening of Shoot The Pigs to the thrashy, bass-jangly Suicide Belt, to the cavernous dirge-like closing track, Blacked Out In Broad Daylight listening to DTC is akin to being persistently pummelled with liver shots while someone screams rabidly in your face. There is seriously not one single song on this album that doesn't blow me away and does not make me want to break expensive things. The production is wicked heavy and stripped down with a killer bass presence. Did I mention the drumming? I just can't seem to stop listening to it. It's, simply, that good.

I will ride the wings of darkness/fuck your blessed trinity

Toxic Holocaust - Conjure & Command
2011, Relapse Records

There is no doubt in my mind that Conjure & Command not only is the crowning achievement of the career of these yanks so far, but also one of the absolute top five metal record to be released this year. It's an album I've been awaiting eagerly for quite some time now. I'd previously heard the leaked track, Nowhere To Run, and was instantly blown away by the simplicity and stripped down-ness of it and I was fucking itching to listen to the rest of it. And now, finally, it's here. And, man, does it deliver. Conjure & Command seethes with truly wicked old school deathrash, bringing to mind such seminal eighties greats as Kreator, Destruction, Venom, Warfare, Sodom and Slayer.

This is what metal used to sound like in the 1980's before it morphed and split into death metal, speed metal and thrash metal. This was before anyone really gave a shit what they called their music, beyond the vague, but perfectly fine, descriptor 'metal'. This is music defined by, but not at all limited to, eighties deathrash metal, so there is never that odd sense of irony and out of place humour that often cripples bands like these. There is never the sense that the band is desperately trying to relive or re-capture some golden era of heavy metal, which is a venture that almost always fails. There is enough speed on C&C to remind one of Toxic Holocaust's earlier releases, for example in raging opener Judgement Awaits You, but also a greater mix of styles and tempos than before. The already stripped down style of their past body of work is now being eaten down to the bone, leaving only the necessary bare minimum, resulting in top notch song writing. The band delivers ten tracks of crushingly intense punk infused metal that very often reminds me of Venom, though several orders of magnitude better. And speaking of Venom; there is an apparent stylistic vocal turn towards a very Cronos-y style of deep growling coming from frontman Joel Grind, which is awesome. Not much else to say except, this is one of the very few metal albums that actually delivers everything the hype has promised.

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.