Brutalmageddon

This is another split CD that I'm unaware of the purpose of because I can't conceive of an audience who actually wants to hear this stuff. The variety of bedroom death/grind played by these three bands isn't something anyone desires; it's just what happens before the artists have the skill and equipment to make something more interesting. Is there someone out there who would hear about a new release featuring Drain Of Impurity and really jump at the chance to give it a listen? Of course not, and it's very clear that this is a release put together simply to be a release, and for no other reason.

Atavism plays a noisy and chaotic variety of death/grind based around blast beats and fulminating, mostly nonsensical and repetitive tremolo riffs. Vocals are a rather weak and indecisive gurgle, which mostly fits the music which clearly has no idea where it's going or what it's doing. The songs are extremely repetitive, based around only two or three riffs at the most (and of course those riffs are nothing particularly interesting) which are just arbitrarily churned out until the song is over; there's no sense of structuring or any songwriting beyond 'riff one then riff two'. The vocals in particular are hilariously random in nature; they don't have any rhythm or seemingly any lyrics to them, and are just sort of slathered anywhere that they could possibly fit with their strained, constricted grunt.

Atavism's not really a good band but the music is still mostly inoffensive to me just because I've heard so much material in this exact style. I'm not going to say they have potential, because no amount of time or effort is probably going to make these songs any better than they currently are. I kind of appreciate the attempt on 'Guts Encrusted In Mud' to actually have some pacing and a developing idea of structure, but even that's incredibly clumsy and generally weak with nothing going on that hasn't been heard many times before. You can also probably guess that this is awfully produced, and additionally that it's not really worth your time in any way, shape or form.

Drain Of Impurity is next and plays probably the best music on this split. It consists of an awful, tinny programmed drum machine attacked by growls and some actually pretty good and unique technical riffing in the Mindly Rotten vein, albeit being heard through perhaps the worst guitar tone in the world. It's squeaky, digital, and weak, and it's probably a testament to the strength of the songwriting that the riffs still manage to have some power considering the completely wretched and thin production. The vocals are also executed reasonably well though unremarkably; they're a roaring growl that manages to contribute at least a little bit of brutality instead of being a complete cipher like those on Atavism's side. The overall tempo is very fast and grinding, and the chaotic and blistering nature of the songs makes for something that can actually keep my attention throughout a track.

This isn't to say that Drain Of Impurity's music is very good; the structures are oftentimes clumsy and the drum programming is frankly embarrassing, with some absolutely wretched sample choices along with beats either awkward or too static to do anything but just provide a rushing texture under everything else. At typically around two minutes, the tracks are about 30% longer than they need to be and can get arduous, especially with the grating needle-scraping-across-ear-drum production. Despite all these flaws, though, I would rather listen to Drain Of Impurity than anything else on this split, and I'd imagine that with a lot of time and a complete overhaul in equipment, they could turn out some pretty good stuff.

Mincer concludes this three-way, and anyone who's heard even a second of their material can guess that this is the most interesting and possibly the most unlistenable stuff on this CD. While not quite the completely bizarre musical freakout of their latest material, this stuff is still pretty weird: murkily produced and ominous drum machine death/grind with a Mullen-channeling-Reifert vocal performance and riffsets which wouldn't make sense a galaxy over. Not a moment of this makes any real sense; the programmed beats are awkward and completely unreal, the vocals are strained and ready to vomit at any moment, and the riffs don't approach anything even remotely close to typical death metal unless you consider the mildest of Mortician influences to be a good comparison.

Per usual, Mincer is essentially unlistenable and awful, but I have a soft spot for it just because of how willfully bizarre it is. At no point in their career did Mincer make any remote concession to people who actually liked music that makes sense, and instead just tooled away with their brand of disturbed and weirdly dark music that didn't quite sound like anyone else simply because no one in their right mind would want to sound like this. I can't actually recommend this material to anyone except people like me who have a fetish for noisy and needlessly weird death/grind, but it's certainly right up the alley of those six people out there.

Obviously this is a pretty bad split CD, and even though two of the three sides have a very mild bit of redeeming merit, I can't imagine anyone purchasing this and actually being satisfied with spending their money like that. It's not the worst stuff I've ever heard in this vein (after all, I do own a copy of the 'Bizarre Morgue Party' five-way split), but it is pretty bad and should be avoided by substantially over 99% of the people reading this now.