Poppy Seed Grinder - Humanophobia - 2008 - Sevared/Nice To Eat You Records

Yikes! We've all been waiting for this one; ever since their AWESOME split with Defeated Sanity way back in the day, these guys have been under-heralded masters of Czech slam/brutal death. Their last album of Dying Fetus-meets-Inveracity brutality was released on little known Kharaanus Productions, but those truly dedicated to this scene worshiped it as it was meant to be worshiped...

Now, years later (4 or so to be exact!), PSG has risen again with another grooving, moshing and heavy album of excellence. The production immediately sounds a LITTLE rawer, and the vocals are mixed a bit lower, but the trademark PSG groove riffs and pinches/melodies are still present. The vocalist, Cifron, still employs VERY varied techniques ranging from typical deathgrowls to rabid screams, inhales, gurgles and pig squeals, plus some of his own special deviations; solid stuff as always. The first song features an unprecedentedly complex song structure; no longer does PSG stay on a blasty path as they did a lot of the time on Oppressed Reality, there is more technicality (subtly done rather than ostentatiously like some bands nowadays) and maturity in some songs here. The second track, which was available for a while as a song on their Myspace ("Fetus Of Hatred") is furious and raging with a really catchy verse/chorus section featuring a second or two of turntable scratching(?!), and the early breakdown has some great bass interplay.

This album even features a re-tooling of the title track from their half of the split I mentioned earlier, "Talk Evolution", which is well done and does justice to the original; would've liked to see a re-release of ALL the songs (due to "The Unmenigable Of Consequences" being one fucking sick and awesome song, despite having a nonsensical title) but I can deal with one for now.

Anyway, this is very good stuff, not TOO much of a departure (slightly punkier, a little more underproduced, etc.), and thus not too much of a significant progression, from Oppressed Reality, but it holds up quite well on its own. It's fun, it's brutal and it's not just typical gore slam with no concept; I'll take two!

Band Appreciation: New Yorkment

This is an unusual choice for a band appreciation but New Yorkment are an unusual band. The uniqueness comes not from their music (the opposite in fact), it instead comes form their intent - namely to parody the genre and scene of brutal death metal. Why appreciate a band that essentially mocks my favorite music? Because it's damn funny that's why. For me, most parody fails because it goes too far over the top. Getting bludgeoned over the head with the joke tends to make it less funny. However due the natural extremity involved in brutal death New Yorkment's humor thrives on being over the top. This can be seen in the complete lack of lowercase letters on their myspace page including such utterances as "GORESLAM IN THE HOUSE!!!!!". Their songs also have such amusing names as "INGORGING INGORGITY" and "PIT RIFFMENT". They also lampoon the practice of inventing a meaningless brutal sounding genre name by calling themselves "THUGSLAM GOREPUNCH" among other names (see left).

One of my favorite things they've done is create a myspace page for what seems like hundreds of "Slam Chapters" including ones for Africa and "Killafornia". This of course is making fun of all the NYDM/UKDM/RUDM/TRDM etc. pages which have proliferated recently on myspace.

The music too is worth mentioning. It's pretty much just retarded slams and rather gross guttural vocals. It's like playing baseball (or any sport) with your friends. You suck compared to real players, but you're probably having a lot of fun.

A key part that makes this work for me though is that I sense no malice in it. I could be wrong and admittedly I do not know who made all this and what their intentions are (if you know please enlighten me), but I do not get the sense that the person (people?) behind New Yorkment really hate this music. Instead it's good natured ribbing of the odd idiosyncrasies that have developed in the scene. And besides, if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

New Yorkment Myspace

Check Out This Interview

Hey guys, just wanted to point you towards a very interesting interview with Brian Baxter of Necrotic Disgorgement. It's done by the folks over at Divine Torture. Not only does it point some new releases from ND (yay!), but Brian tells some really compelling stories about his diehard support for the scene and overcoming some severe obstacles in life. It's long, but it's full of interesting and inspiring sections. Don't take it from me though read the interview! LINK

Kraanium - Ten Acts Of Sickening Perversity - 2008 - Pathologically Explicit Recordings

Finally, the moment all slammers have been waiting for...one of the first modern slam albums to come out of Norway. Since very recently (like, now), Norway has been known for its extreme black metal scene, but all that is about to change as these sick fucks barrel through ten simplistic and straightforward (in the best possible way) tracks of slamming, guttural, brutal, sewage-spewing insanity.

Enough with the adjectives and hype, what does this sound like? Well, to be fair, it's very much like Abominable Putridity at first glance. There are heavy slams, even heavier slams, and really well done vocals and catchy between-slam riffs. However, on track 3 something interesting occurs; there's a really fucking cool THRASH(!) riff segueing into some brutal punk sounding stuff, and some sections that literally could have the power to crack your skull in half if heard live. I can also draw a few parallels to this year's (excellent) Gortuary album, such as in the track Midget Fucker which begins with a lame sample erupting into fretboard dynamics and a good-old-fashioned death metal sounding section. Despite the really lame song titles and samples Kraanium uses, I think this is a really well put together first effort from a band that's likely to garner fans from all around the world with its very American style of slam death. Now I'm looking forward to the new Hideous Deformity full-length which should be out this year on Sevared, and that'll round out the Norwegian slam scene for a bit...looking forward to more, cheers and hail Norge!

Band Appreciation: Dripping

Activity has been a little down here at Slam-Minded recently due to both Andy and I entering the drudgery of summer jobs. To remedy this though I figured I'd do some old fashioned appreciatin'

On the docket for today's round of appreciating is Dripping, a sadly departed group of potheads (I mean this in a loving way) from New Jersey. In their relatively unheralded career, they managed to put out one fantastic EP and one extremely good full length album, along with a couple of demos.

Dripping play slam (duh) but instead of just the usual breakdowns, blast beats and gurgles, they add samples of a wide variety of music and other sound bytes. This creates a very strange and somewhat fucked up listening experience, which only makes the very well done metal bits better. This bizarre approach to songwriting really hits its peak on the song "Skydiving Out of the Hemisphere", on their EP. The song combines an upbeat trance number with some absolutely mammoth slams. The juxtaposition of these two diametrically opposed musical styles works to make them both sound really good as the happy melodies play off the destructive rhythms of the breakdowns. It's one of those things that sounds crazy, but trust me it works great and is actually my favorite song. I don't want to say that everyone will like it, that is after all the pitfall of originality, but at the very least one should appreciate its uniqueness. Another one of my favorites is the song "The Interlude of Astrophysics" which begins with the quote "Life is just an interlude to death, you ever think about that?" Another voice replies: "Word son" and off to slam heaven we go.

Some of you may be saying "what the fuck?" after reading all this and I can't blame you. That's just the reaction this band will engender and it's all part of the fun. I implore anyone who hasn't done so already to give Dripping a try and just enjoy the great slams and utter weirdness. It's a rewarding to experience music that is so unique, yet still manages to keep all the aspects of this genre we all love.

Also of note, the liner notes for their full length Disintegration of Thought Patterns... are seriously fucked up. I've read a lot of death metal lyrics and am pretty jaded at this point, but these ones are still disturbing.

MDF Review: Infected Malignity

Infected Malignity were actually one of my first brutal death bands as I blundered my way into the genre via myspace. Two years later I got to see them in concert at the Maryland Deathfest. The only thing that dampened my excitement was the fact that Infected Malignity had changed musical directions from straight out slam to melodic deathcore. Now this might have some of S-M's readers concerned (it certainly made me unhappy), but your worries are unfounded. Infected Malignity still kick ass.

Their set was midday so the venue wasn't too crowded, allowing us to get to the front. After the usual set up and introduction they went right into a song from their newest EP Re:Bel. To my surprise it was actually good! As were their other new songs. Yes it was deathcore, but the melodies were actually catchy instead of Slaughter of the Soul ripoffs and the vocals were a mix of the hardcore shouts (that's the best you're going to get from hardcore) and deep gurgles. They did play Revenge to Capitalism off their debut The Malignity Born From Despair, which admittedly was the best song of the set, but I think that is more a reflection of how good a song is and not on the quality of the other material. I could tell the crowd were hesitant like me at first but they were also won over by the strong show and we were all getting really into it. They were so good in fact that me and about 20-30 (probably half the people in the main area at the time) went over and bought some merch.

They've left the brutal/slam death metal scene we all love but Infected Marignity still get a big two thumbs up for me for their performance at MDF.

Gorevent - Abnormal Exaggeration Released on Macabre Mementos

As the title states Gorevent's first full length Abnormal Exaggeration has been released on Macabre Mementos. Gorevent are from Japan and play decent slam with great vocals (is there a Japanese band with a bad vocalist? They are like the anti-Colombians). I also like the production. It's rawer and thinner sounding than usual, but it works. I'm hesitant to really give this a big thumbs up or down base purely on Myspace listening, but I'm definitely going to pick it up once Comatose gets a hold of it.

Also, does Gorevent mean a vent of/for gore? Or does it mean a Gor[e] Event? Food for thought.

Here's the album cover:

(ed: Both of us are REALLY psyched for this to hit American shores...we'll definitely be featuring a review of it right here!!)