Bump N’ Grind: Three Things Missed From 2015 and One From 2012
2015 may be through with us, but we ain’t through with 2015. Over the course of the holiday season, I ran into some quality bands that are more than worthy of praise. There’s plenty of stuff in this edition of Bump N’ Grind that was so good, it floored me on the first pass through each release. Let’s give some praise to the genre that celebrates the obliteration of snare drums at the rate of AK-47 fire.
No Brainer – Hollow Veins
I’m going to ease you folks into this nice and gently. The first band on deck has released music recently, but I’m particularly fond of this banger from 2012. You’ve gotta love the insult to injury of naming your band No Brainer and have the cover of your album depict someone getting their brains ripped out. Hailing from Milwaukee, WI, these guys combine grind, crust and power violence with poise and decorum. Keeping most of their songs under the two minute range, No Brainer rips through ten tracks faster than 1980’s Hulk Hogan could tear into one of his ready-to-shred Roidamania shirts. The songs are fueled by punk power chord driven rage that trades back and forth between thrash and blast beats while rarely ever slowing down to give room to breathe. The screamed vocals sound as if they are struggling to get out from under all the rest of the instruments, yet reside comfortably alongside them in the mix. Also included amid all this chaos is a great cover of Eyehategod’s “Peace Thru War” which is given a grind crust treatment that works well with the slightly cleaner production used here. If you are digging this, by all means check out their split with Augurs for four more songs like the rampaging violence on display in Hollow Veins.
Livstid – Split
Livstid from Norway just brings it on every track on this split with Khmer. This is some cutthroat punk crust d-beat that will peel out on your forehead in a head-on collision like Stuntman Mike. They leave no survivors. They give new meaning to destroying everything in their path. I’m particularly fond of “Frihet får du aldri” and the way they incorporate the melodic punk gang shouts over those filthy, crusty d-beats. If you fall down drunk while listening to Victims, then Livstid will make you black out. I like energetic music that I can touch and feel. Livstid strikes a nerve that I never new existed. Every single dimension of this band from the vocals to the guitar to the bass to the drums is focused and determined. I want to get a golf cart with an audio system powerful enough where I can crank this shit, head on out to the green and make White Anglo Male Golfers run away in fear while I put baseballs on a tee and swing for the fences while yelling, “It is high, it is far, it is gone!!!!!”, as I make pathetic attempts at trying to get a hole in one. This is the soundtrack to that, and because of how awful I am at golf, I’m probably going to have to play these eight songs ten times per hole and I’m totally fine with that.
Corrupt Leaders – Grindmother
Some of you may be familiar with Corrupt Leaders from this vid that went viral featuring a member of the band’s mom contributing some backing vocals for the band’s upcoming EP. This made the rounds at the time of its release, but I only came across it recently. And since we didn’t touch on it here, now is the time to remedy that because this ever so brief four songs in three minutes is an aural onslaught that will have you reaching for the replay button with the conclusion of each spin. In the amount of time you can listen to one of those epic doom pieces, you can listen to Grindmother four times and still be thirsty for more. If you want to hear the Grindmother’s contribution to this release, look no further than the opening screams on “Black Cloud”. Corrupt Leaders take you back to Utopia Banished era Napalm Death on this one in just four short bursts of crusty goodness that will most certainly dirty up your day.
The cameo didn’t end there. The Grindmother apparently liked being behind the mic so much that she got promoted to lead vocals, and the song “Any Cost” has surfaced with the 67 year old grind phenom shrieking and shrilling over some more of that tasty grind provided by the Corrupt Leaders crew. I’m sure most of us all love our mothers, but it makes you wonder – how cool is your mom?
Implore – Depopulation
Nothing brings a bigger smile to my face than when I’m browsing a band’s Bandcamp page than when I see “HM-2” prominently displayed as part of their arsenal. It is at that moment that I say, “Do you have those fuckers turned up to 11?” The answer to that question with regards to Germany’s Implore is a resounding yes. The buzzsaw guitars are fully fueled and backed by a fierce drum kit assault that runs roughshod over you like a herd of classless Walmart shoppers on Black Friday. Implore takes some Rotten Sound-ingness, mixed with some of Entombed’s Left Hand Path-edness and sprinkles it with some crusty dust that results in probably some of the best death grind you will hear this year. Some of you may even want a mulligan on your AOTY lists because this is that good. I have nothing further to add to this other than this album is not on Bandcamp yet, but you can purchase this from Pelagic Records and check it out in the video below. I Implore you (pun intended) to get down with this, you will not be disappointed.
