CEPHALOCHROMOSCOPE

TSUBO (Italy) - Capitale Umano (2023)

Teoria Del Complotto My first introduction to Italy's TSUBO was a blind purchase of the band's 2012 release, . ..Con Cognizione Di Causa , through Give Praise Records' old distro. I didn't have any real expectations other than the promise of some form of a grindcore experience. With its stringent vocals and wailing guitars, the twenty track death-grind release made for a sufficient entry to both the band's then fledgling discography and to the T -section of my alphabetized CD media shelf. It would be anothe…

Woundflower (USA) - Misery (2024)

Salt The Wound Before I can tell you the story of Woundflower and their debut full-length, Misery , we will have to first talk about the band Bled To Submission . Blog alumns and friends to The House of Grindcore , Nashville's Bled To Submission released their third and final major release, Bury Them in the Graves They Dug For You , on Nerve Altar Records back in 2021. After a musical career spanning some five years, the band ultimately chose to bury themselves in the grave that they dug by calling it quits soon after the rel…

Blue Holocaust (France) - 13 Flies on Bloodstained Velvet (2024)

We talk a lot about music subgenre around here. Grindcore, powerviolence, noisegrind, goregrind, fastcore, mincecore... Infinite gradations between the basic constituent parts of metal, punk and noise music. Recontextualized through time, location, means, intent, etc. to create differences that wholly change the finished work. Film subgenres work in the same way. First, grabbing pieces from several different larger genres. Then filtering them through context (time period, country, politics, popular culture, film trends, budget, artistic inte…

Suppression (USA) - Spiritual Sepsis (2024)

The bass guitar is the black sheep of the standard rock band configuration. It’s a well-worn saw among rock musicians that the bass exists simply to fill in the audible frequencies not covered by the rest of the band. Bass is considered simple enough that anyone with a shred of musical acumen can pick it up in a pinch. However, some musicians take its black sheep status as a challenge. Groups like Primus invert the usual bass/electric guitar dynamic, with Les Claypool’s lead bass augmented by Larry LaLonde’s adventurous guitar work. In extre…

Holy Grinder (Canada) - 10 Desecrations (2024)

For some bands, a signature sound is a curse. The Ramones never shook the "every song sounds the same" accusations, despite making a record with 60s Wall of Sound pop producer/murderer Phil Spector or making a mid-80s hardcore album. Neil Young famously waged war on Geffen Records in the 80s by releasing an electronic, vocoder-heavy experimental rock album followed by a 50s-throwback rock 'n' roll album after pressure from the label to imitate his previous successes. For Holy Grinder, however, their distinctive sound is a s…