Sex Prisoner : "Cautionary Tale"

 If you are wondering about the difference between powerviolence and grindcore, this album might help clarify, as it is rooted more obviously in hardcore punk. Where grindcore hits you with a more consistent blast of speedy these guys give more shifts in the riff and slow down to create a feel similar to a breakdown. They use a more frantic punk style to juxtapose the more deliberate riff that is the backbone of "Jokes on You." The title track is more blasty, blurring the lines between the two genres and leaving the vocals to be the primary thing that anchors it to punk. 

These guys employ a heavy, dense guitar sound along with a burly bass tone. These are captured by rawaraw production sound with feedback squealing out from the corners. Songs like"52 Card Pick-Up" are brief bursts that took a few listens to find where one of thesongs began and the other ended, as it begins to run together."Los Cardinals" brings what I want from hardcore os I appreciate that. The blast beats at times feel like a default mode."Glass Worms" is a little more deliberate. At over tow minutes it almsot seems self-indulgent in comparison.

There is a cool riff buried in 'All My Circuits, ' but when a song is only a minute long, there is not a great deal of room to develop it. "Body Broker is a reminder that they are not too far removed from Nails. The frantic, speedy default of punk can play against attempts at songwriting.. "Half of Me" sounds like a ' 90s crossover. "Wildcat House" is more like an idea for a cool song. "Trapped in My World" is a little more spastic. But it finds its footing. The last song finds a dense riff punishing you. I will give this one a 9 as it manages to work with the transgression of the genre.

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Thetan : "Grand Ole Agony"

 Over the years I have not only warmed up to grind core, but a few of my favorite heavy bands are at least influenced by it...Portrayal of Guilt, Nails and Wormrot. Perhaps those bands set the bar high, but this band likes to experiment so perhaps they will live up to their hype. The first song has a spoken word outburst from Crunchy Black, to remind you they fuck wit hip hop. The song itself is the typical tantrum you might expect. Things do not get interesting until the second song where we here more deliberate nuance. "White Sheets Blowing in the Breeze" benefits from the thump of the over driven bass and the punk attitude infused into the vocals. They also give themselves more time to develop songs than you might expect from this sort of thing. 

"Bless Your Heart" blasts forward with burly bass drive the angry punk snarl. The feedback bleeds into "Gutted".  Strings haunt this song, as it lurches into a more tortured vibe that carries a crusty sludge feel. The Lost Dog Street Band helps them out at times with the more organic country flavored instrumentation, where David Brenner of Gridfailure adds some textured effects to provide more sonic trappings. Despite being two minutes long "Sad Endings and a Feeling of Disappointment" is more of an interlude than an actual song.  It feels like they come closer to a Fistula like crunch for "Coup De Grace" . They throw themselves into a more reckless punk mania on "Culo", which might be the album least impressive moment, but it still works for what they are doing. 

There is a more fuzzed out pound going into "Note to Self" that finds it's power diminished when sped up into a feral frenzy. It lingers before throwing themselves down the stairs toward chaos, which might be the tragic trajectory that separates, power violence from grind core. "Eulogy" finds strings returning, but I am unsure if this justifies a 14 minute song. The first two and a half minutes of a mournful blue grass tinged jam make sense. When they stomp in with their sludged out rumble it still works pretty well. By the 8 minute mark even the solo by Mac Gollehon still feels like this song has droned out into over indulgence. It however is not a total deal breaker since most of the songs are rather compressed. I will give this album an 8.5, I enjoyed it more than I expected.The album drops October 13th.  

Portrayal of Guilt : " Suffering is a Gift"

Going into this with 5 hours of sleep from a manic episode, I thought , perhaps I am not n the right frame of mind for this one. It turns out i was in the right frame of mind for it.  even when it comes to grind core or power vio-lence I need to know you are writing a song, not just making noise, so i can not count the first track of this album. They do a much better job of song writing on " Scarcity" and write a dark little hard core ditty that I find pleasing to my ears.  When you are used to listening to doom and black metal these kind of album can be hard to review , because you think it's all one song rather than a song that is a minute long, so I look up and the album is almost over. "Dissolution" is pretty dissonant. I am not sure I am buying the supposed screamo thing . They are just more melodic than grindcore.

 They do come up with some pretty cool dark shit,"Moral Decay" is another example of this. I just wish they could commit to more than 90 seconds at a time as it is sonic blue balls. If  " A Futile  Light" and the previous song were one song then you would have had one great song. What you get instead are two incomplete pieces that have cool sounds. The last song is a whopping 2 minutes so lets see how they do when it comes to writing a real song. It's more on the hard core side with abrasive noise mixed in. Which would have worked if it was not  sacrificing a chunk of the song to make this noise. When you are writing 2 minute songs there is no time to waste.

Some of you might be surprised that I like this as much as I do. While it's only 8 minute and this year the battle for me has been lots of bands with good sounds not many bands with good songs, if these guys wrote a song and did not clutter it with noise they could be onto something. That something they are onto is why I am giving this one an 8. It is obviously the darkness they tap into which is what I like. I like darkness. It feeds my personal sense of evil. The world needs more evil.  Comes out August 30th on Closed Casket Activities.

Nails : "You Will Never Be One of Us"

I have predicted 2016 as the year grind-core and power-violence breaks through into the metal mainstream. What Weekend Nachos failed to deliver is being jack hammered into your face by this band.  Their guitar tone is as nasty as you can get and still play riffs that hold together actual songs. Even then when I used the word songs here I am describing sharp bursts of anger. Grind-core has never been my forte, typically because of the genre's limited range of dynamic expression. Coloring with only the red crayon of anger can limit what you do, this band from Southern Los Angeles colors with this crayon so well, I know what I'm in for and can hold on for the jolting ride. The first song and title track fakes you out as it seems so maturity might have come into the song writing process for these guys. The message of songs like "Life is a Death Sentence" is barked with a conviction that draws you in. This also feels like some of the barked vocals lock in with the guitar to make for hookier songs on this album.  I am reminded of S.O.D , by the mantra of "your a fucking failure on the song" "Friend to All". The brutal battering ram that is "Made to Make You Fall" packs more of a punch into 45 seconds than many bands do in their entire careers."Violence is Forever" steam rolls you with the weight of the verse riff. The bass player must be a machine to keep up with this drummer. They have a more tightly coiled attack here that comes closer to a sound familiar to more main stream metal ears.

At first listen "Savage Intolerance" might seem like a more single minded tantrum `accented by blast beats before  the nightmarish roller coaster jerks into into even heavier places. Their more punk side is indulged against Kerry King like solos on "In Pain".  They grind into "Parasite" to sink their teeth briefly into a more death metal groove. They hammer a hole into your skull with "Into Quietus" which might be the heaviest song on this album of fucking heavy songs. Here what sells me on it is the range of heavy they can attack you with in the minute and a half this song has you by the ear. To me the best song is going to be the darkest so "They Come Crawling Back" really won me over. The rule here is "cool riffs alone, don't make a good song". These guys take the feral snarl of the guitar and put enough raw anger into them that they are transfigured from just being cool riffs into an honest expression of their worst feelings.


Nails main-man Todd Jones has said they won't become a band that tours extensively due to their families, which  could puts a ceiling on audience this will reach, though I think metal is ready for the next step forward into heavy. This album is being released on Nuclear Blast so that can't hurt things. The bigger label hasn't dampened any of the power, so if you are ready to scream sell out hold your breath. Fans of their previous work are getting what they asked for after "Abandon All Life " made them scream for more. I'll give this album a 10 for what it is, for them to sell me on this genre is pretty impressive.