Monthly Metal Mixtape: May 2021

Anybody been watching the NHL playoffs and finding it absurd how some of the rinks are cramming 12,000-plus people into them already? And seeing them shouting and yelling with nary a mask in sight and thinking, this is fucking ridiculous? (Just watched the first game in Canada with fans back in the building and nearly every pan to the crowd showed people masked up; god we’re such an embarrassment.) Nope? Just me. Well if you feel like staying in your isolation bubble too, be sure to use these grimy records to keep you company.

Coffin Lurker - Foul and Defiled (2021, Sentient Ruin)

Part of what I like about doing these monthly write ups is listening to something a little outside of my usual sphere. This one is way out of the ballpark and across the street, let’s say six feet under the alley and rotten. This is like you’re trapped in a well for weeks, surviving on vermin and someone finally appears at the top of the well. They toss a rope down. You take whatever strength you have left to pull on the rope, which is attached to an angry manticore who then roars right into the well, punishing your ears as it echoes around the cylinder. I know what you’re thinking, manticores aren’t real! You might start to wonder after being in a well all that time.

Coffin Lurker’s debut album inspires despair. The Dutch duo sludge their way through half an hour of doom. The murky guitar is as indecipherable as the growling vocals. Five songs of brutal, slow, unrelenting decay. Foul and Defiled comes out on June 7 and you can get a wretched taste of it below.

Last Days of Humanity – Horrific Compositions of Decomposition (2021, Rotten Roll Rex)

Goregrind is typically not my genre. There’s something about the edgelord combination of extremely passé exploitation horror movie garbage (oftentimes rife with misanthropic, “apolitical” misogyny), uncensored crime scene photo album covers, and noisy ungrounded audio sloppiness that just makes me go “meh.” Bands that are described as goregrind first are usually mildly interesting at best. That said there are sounds within the mangled mess of a grindcore sub-sub-genre that can be just the right spice of extremity when executed thoughtfully and mixed together with just the right extreme metal influences. Dutch goregrind veterans Last Days of Humanity, nearly thirty years after their debut and fifteen years after their last full length album, have made this happen on Horrific Compositions of Decomposition. They have evolved past the noise with something great, and I’ve been listening to that greatness on repeat.

Like a Jackson Pollock painting, there is a consistent intentionality to the slop that’s thrown on this canvas. 22 minutes better experienced as a whole, the album paces itself around walls of blasting drum-forward noise, groovy deathgrind that seems ripped right out of the library of classic Swedish grinders like Nasum and Rotten Sound, the ever-present hyper-absurd pitch-shifted toilet-gargling gibberish vocals, and audio samples. Every few songs – a variety that spans both sub-30 second noise grind blasts that bleed into each other and death metally head-banging, riff-focused tension builders – there are audio samples. Samples from horrific media are a staple in this style of music. Here they are used expertly to give the album a sense of pacing and a strangely artful backbone. The B Horror clips break up the onslaught to let us pause, breathe, and revel in the absurdity of the album. The introductory song is built around a long-winded harrowing description of radiation sickness and a very beefy build-up of a riff. What I view as the album’s artist statement is made by the combination of music and a tragic interview with a person suffering from catatonic schizophrenia in two songs near the end of the album. Instead of feeling exploitative as it could in a different work, the switch to using real life audio and how it is used here, by focusing on the words of the person – “I am not completely like other people.”, “I am trying to do with my life, something which, few people try to do.” – brings a sense of experienced, aged sadness to the album that otherwise wouldn’t be there. This album is an absurd, catchy, headbangable, noisy, but listenable mess, but it is one that could hang in a museum. – Mike Tri

Sunrot / Ides – Sunrot // Ides Split (2021, Self-Released)

I’ll admit I was unfamiliar with both of these New Jersey bands before this split. But the cover, with the cop’s head popping like a water balloon caught my attention, as did the fact that both bands cover Black Flag. And this was a case where the intrigue is certainly exceeded by the music. Sunrot’s side begins with an audio clip of a helpful reminder, that all cops are bastards, before diving into some doomy sludge with “1312” that is essentially a summation of the ‘abolish the police’ idea. Vocalist Lex Santiago howls like Mike Williams of Eyehategod barking out directions at a rally. Eyehategod and 16 would both work as comparables, but damn I could see these dudes doing a split with Thou too. Honestly, given Thou’s prodigious output I’m surprised there isn’t one. “1312” closes out with a speech from a local Black Lives Matter activist – there’s no subtlety here, and I love it. “Amerikkka” is a minute long sludgy, noisy, feedback-driven mess, again driven by a speech. As for the Black Flag cover, they pick “Fix Me” and slow it down to a grimy stomp, doubling the length of the original song. It sounds so much more desperate than hearing Keith Morris shouting those same lines.

Ides definitely brings the angsty punk on their half of the split. Vocals are barked and spit out with a frothing passion. “Spores” brings a lot of different feels, from more caustic verses to almost post-punky choruses and even triumphant sing-along sections. Regardless of the vibe, it’s just as intensely political as Sunrot’s side, with maybe a bit more of a subtle snark. “Save Room Sleep Paralysis” is a five-minute instrumental drone that hits closer to shoegaze atmosphere than it does to any of the other tunes on this split. For their Black Flag cover, they go with “Black Coffee” and definitely give it a frenetic feel that crescendos during the chorus. Unlike Sunrot extending their cover, Ides tumultuously cram theirs into almost two minutes less than the original. Both bands are expressly political and the (on)liner notes extol mutual aid and the idea that Black lives matter. A great soundtrack while working for a better day. Pick this one up when Bandcamp waives their cut for Juneteenth. – SteveO