UNSU (France) - K.I.A.I. (2014)

 

 The Soufflé of the Samari

   UNSU is a grinding four piece from France and their 2014 album K.I.A.I (Kill Icons And Idiots) is a ripper. I didn't realize this album was released in 2014 until I stumbled on to the band's website and saw that they were hyping up the album's release in December [2014]. (I didn't even know bands still had websites.) Had I known this, K.I.A.I. would've been high on my "best of 2014" list. Like, top 5 at least. UNSU slays the majority of the bands on that list.  

    UNSU drummer, Adrien, is a blast metronome behind the kit. I'm hearing little in the way of tom work during the speedier passages, which makes up almost the entirety of the album; instead relying on mostly snare and cymbal work. I love the snare sound in the mix. It's right up front and has that poppy, solid, wood block sound that sticks out. The snare sound makes his blast beats and the pulsing drag rolls he has a penchant for utilizing resonate that much more.

    The guitar is nice and hefty with distortion. Bassist Micky and guitarist Manu do their jobs quite nicely driving the songs forward, fleshing out the bones laid down by the equally propelling drumming. I appreciate the fullness of the strong use of power chords. No wankery here, as they say. The bare meat and bones approach is usually the best. These songs are great. 

    Vocalist Dam is right in line with the rest of the band. I'm not sure if he's doing all the vocals here, but he's the only one listed as such in the liner notes. Either way, we hear your standard grind vocals here: low gutturals, raspy highs and even higher pitched pig squeals. 

    K.I.A.I. is a well rounded album from a great band. Production sounds good but not overly polished; just slightly fuzzed over enough to even everything out without treading into the "raw" territory. Again, the snare sound is the nice jagged edge of this smooth round pebble. Popping out in the mix just the way I like it. I've always believed in the emphasis of the snare drum in grind over the more metal studio mix of relying on the double bass pedal. But there is some double kick presence here. Mainly in the hardcore, mosh heavy breakdowns of the longer songs. (Longer songs being about a minute and a half, so we're not talking epic here.) The songs with breakdowns and slow opening dirges all eventually fall away to sweet sweet blasting. This seems to be the formula here. And if I had to nitpick, that formulaic structure would be the only downside to this album. UNSU use three types of song writing arrangements on this release: open-slow-fast, fast-breakdown-fast and fast-fast-fast. But I don't mind at all. I love the grindcore formula. I love this album. This thing owns. It's French, bitch! 

FFO: Feastem, Human Cull, Rotten Sound, Mumakil

Listen and/or buy: unsugrindcore.bandcamp.com

[Originally posted on March 2015, House of Grindcore]

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