TOTIMOSHI
Ladron
(Crucial Blast)

SUNNO)))/BORIS
Altar
(Southern Lord)

OM
Conference of the Birds
(Holy Mountain)

DOOMRIDERS
Black Thunder
(Deathwish)

GIANT SQUID
Metridium Fields
(The End)

THE COFFIN LIDS
Round Midnight 

(Bomp)

NACHTMYSTIUM
Instinct Decay

(Battle Kommand)

MORE REVIEWS

I always had a hard time digesting some of the most electronic oriented music.  But Germany’s Drumcorps gets to me because even its drum and bass backbone has a real feel to it, like it is truly flesh and bones, not machine made or mass manufactured.  It is relentless, like futuristic grindcore, like a raw fuck between a metalhead and Terminator once its human disguise has melted. 

“Down”, the second track got me thinking of Nine Inch Nails, a blatantly low blow, but that’s the best I could do. Remember I said I always had a hard time digging electronic music? Well, that’s it, that’s the best I can do. I think of NIN’s hit “The Perfect Drug”, and all I could think was that it sounded generic, “Down” though eats a song like that for brunch and shits eat before 1 p.m.  The drums got me thinking of Scorn, except the tape had to be sped up to like 1000^th degree. Whatever. 

I still fail to see some of the grindcore many are bringing up in an effort to classify Drumcorps. A lot of this music is so loaded with machine-like results, I can’t help but think of the distance between Drumcorps and seminal grind acts like Napalm Death. Almost two minutes into “Pig Destroyer Destroyer” things get truly grind though, so it takes at least two songs and a half before this beast brings out its more natural rage. Like its name it may be a homage to the uber awesome Pig Destroyer, but unlike the American trio, it’s got a mechanic and cutting edge constitution; even when the speedy guitar riff gets stupidly fast its mechanized soul quickly takes over only to slowly, and loaded with real feedback, fade away into silence.  There is an interesting bridge that this Berlin based band is building; it is not unexplored territory but Grist is the best I’ve seen of the mélange; the straight connection between rustic and turmeric classic guitar grind and the esoteric practices of an industrialized techno metal head.

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