7

Mincing Fury And Guttural Clamour Of Queer Decay, more than any other, may be the most archetypal of the popular Czech grind bands apart possibly from !T.O.O.H.!, but they sucked anyway so who cares. By listening to '7', you will figure out what everyone means when they're talking about Czech grind- granted, you'll be hearing a much better version of it than normal, but it's definitely part of the same package. That being said, just being acquainted with the genre doesn't give you a reason to pass this up: Mincing Fury has always been above most of the Czech grind scene, and this album was perhaps the one that most firmly placed them in that position.

If you haven't heard Czech grind, a good description for the style (and this album, really) is to take some Malignancy-style technical death/grind, streamline it with a hint of crust, and shake it up with a bunch of seemingly random, occasionally silly experimentation. The final part is where a lot of Czech grind bands fall apart: they become too enamored with the wacky passages and not enough with the grind itself. Mincing Fury doesn't fall into that trap- though there's plenty of strange, shouted eastern European vocals, goofy rhythmic shifts, and sudden digressions into jazzy or sample-laden passages, it never comes off as jokey and ridiculous as it does for many other bands playing in the same style. But really, all that shit is just a side dish for good Czech grind, and the meat of the music is what's too be focused on.

For Mincing Fury, the meat is everything. A precisely defined set of riffing is the centerpiece of this record, moving swiftly but cleanly from oldschool NYDM tremolo riff to slam to spastic, pinch harmonic-fueled technicality without missing a beat. It's when the band gets melodic that things start to pick up even more, like the amazing, almost Lykathea Aflame-inspired riffing on 'Languish'- while the crushing technicality and heaviness is good, the melodic tinge on some of these tracks really spices things up. So does the variation on rhythm: while there's plenty of chaotic blasting and fills, Mincing Fury is just as willing to take things back a notch with some jazzy or simply rocking drumming that often sounds taken from the Polish goregrind scene. Rounding out the instrumental package is the absurd variety of vocal styles on display- what are there, five or more individual varieties at work? In short, this is not an album that you get bored with from track to track.

Really though, I think what I've always liked about this band beyond others in the same scene is the sense of pacing and the ability to keep the listener's interest throughout a whole album. For a lot of Czech grind, the bands get caught up in their weird digressions and beyond those don't have enough ideas to carry an album, but Mincing Fury is clearly a death/grind band first and experimentalist collective second. More importantly, the odder musical elements seem more firmly woven into the context of the music. For other Czech grind bands, a sudden, jazzy flourish might appear deliberately out of context to be jarring and funny, but with Mincing Fury, they somehow manage to bring that flourish in in a way that's still jarring, but makes sense in the context of the song.

This is basically a second-tier classic of the Czech grind scene- if you can't stand the overall nature of the style, you won't like it, but fans of that musical community absolutely need this. I've probably given this album fifteen listens and still have yet to tire of it, and in Czech grind that says more than anything.

When I was very new to metal, I looked to the very obvious places to provide me with bands. One of the places I went to was Wikipedia. I looked under "grindcore", and there I found the band that I'm reviewing. I looked them up, went to Bizarre Leprous' site, and downloaded a few tracks off Lamentations. It was... not generic goregrind for sure. It was just ok. They became a band I just occasionally listened to.

About a year later, while browsing CDs on Relapse's distro, I came across Mincing Fury's newest CD (7). I bought it, thinking I wouldn't be too impressed, but it might be worth a shot. I was absolutely amazed. Within the next two weeks, I played this album nonstop. I love everything about it.

The vocals are one of the best parts of the album. There are many, many vocal styles. They use screams, "gutturals", regular growls, grunts, yells, and, in one song, black metal vocals. They recently lost their second vocalist, but he is one of the three guest vocalists in this album. The vocals all flow so well, much like Gorerotted's "Only Tools and Corpses" and Splatterhouse. The yells they use are probably the weakest part of this album. Usually, though, the ways they use them blend well with the music, particularly in the tracks "Suggestion in the Devil's Shaded Eyes" and "Glimmering Shine of Another Life". The one song that they aren't used so well in is "Pride", which is my least favorite song on the album. Too much yelling, not enough of the other vocals.

The instrumentals are also great. One of the best parts of this album is that it isn't the same old generic goregrind bullshit, like Plasma and GUT. The guitars are all over the place all the time, not just the same low chugging riffs the entire time (also much like Only Tools and Corpses). The drums are also very enjoyable. There's double bass pedals and blastbeats, of course, but the really interesting thing they throw in throughout the album is cowbell, and it actually works really well. Unfortunately, you can't hear much of the bass.

I absolutely love this album, it's everything a good goregrind release should have. I strongly recommend this to fans of Splatterhouse, Gorerotted, Fuck... I'm Dead, Pigsty, and fans of goregrind in general.