INTERVIEW: RAMMING SPEED'S JONAH LIVINGSTON SP(L)ITS ON THE CROSS(OVER)

Boston's Ramming Speed may be cut-off clad crossover thrash commandos, but in certain corners of the world, generally all ages shows in sterile youth centres, the most remarkable thing about them seems to be that drummer Jonah Livingston is one of Backstabbers Inc, one of those hardcore bands whose feverish following is only enhanced by the fact that former vocalist Ryan McKenney since went on to form Trap Them. It's an echo chamber of hardcore hype, which must be a bit odd when like Ramming Speed, your primary influences seem to be '90s death metal and grindcore, crust punk and high octane thrash metal.

“I love it when people that are BSI fans check out Ramming Speed,” says Jonah, surprisingly, “and it doesn't bother me at all if promoters try and use it as a selling point. I’m proud of the time I’ve put into both bands, and while they differ drastically in terms of approach, both bands manage to blur elements of punk and metal, so in that sense it’s all the same. The BSI brothers play metallic guitar riffs with a dirty hardcore punk mentality and the Ramming dudes play punk riffs with a shreddy metal mentality. It’s interesting that the two bands sound so different considering all parties are coming from the same influences - Metallica, His Hero Is Gone, Napalm Death, Skitsystem etc. I guess it just depends which side of the fence you start on.

“As a side note, BSI should have a new CD coming out at some point this year. It was recorded a while back with Kurt Ballou and should finally see the light of day through a friend's record label as soon as some business wheeling and dealing takes place.”

Once you get all the genre demarcation bullshit out of the way, perhaps the key difference between Jonah's two bands is that BSI wore their politics very much on their sleeves – but just because Ramming Speed don't, or don't even have sleeves (see aforementioned cut-offs), doesn't mean they don't have any politics at all.

“One of my favourite parts of Ramming Speed is that we manage to bring political elements into what can so often be a meathead genre of music,” continues Jonah proudly. “Pete writes almost all of the lyrics and we both read lots of world news and various political writings. Generally our 'good morning' - we live together - is like, 'Hey dude, you got work today? No? Awesome. You hear about Gaddafi bombing his own civilians? Fucked right!?'.

“In the song 'Political Party' off our debut full-length we attempted to speak to the idea that you can be both into smashing beer cans against your head AND reading the newspaper. The unfortunate stereotype is that if you’re into politics then you’re a PC fun sponge and if you’re into metal and raging then you shouldn’t think about gender issues or immigration law. I’m not sure if that song really hit the nail on the head or not, but it was an honest attempt.”

They've had plenty of opportunities to get that message out there and see if it sticks, having toured Europe twice in as many years – from fairly big shows in support of Municipal Waste, to more punk, DIY affairs, to the likes of the Czech Republic's crucial Obscene Extreme.

“We’ve always tried to stay on the road as much as possible,” explains Johna. “It’s one of those odd things where you either enjoy it or you don’t, and to be honest I feel like I’d suffocate if I didn’t do it on a semi regular basis. Also, besides just being an antsy person, I feel like touring hard is part of what it means to play this kind of music. To me, being in a band should involve risking the basic things that come along with a normal life. When you’re willing to let everything else fall apart - job, health, relationships, sanity, etc - and put all of your energy, muscle and brain power into touring for six months a year, it makes being in a band more than a hobby. It can easily become the only thing you have left and something really special.

“I’m lucky that at this point in my life I have a stable place to live and a very kind, understanding girlfriend, but I’ve experienced the other side of the coin plenty of times.”

With a harder, crustier sound that's only getting even harder on their forthcoming split with ANS and less than recent (but equally rad) 'Always Digusted, Never Surprised' 7”, you'd assume Ramming Speed had made some sort of decision to stay away from the DayGlo thrash keg party that's lurking in Municipal Waste's lime green wake.

“Our first 7” definitely had a song on it about pizza, so it’s not like we’re totally innocent,” counters Jonah, “but after completing our first US tour to support the record I think we realized that we all wanted to take things more seriously. During that tour we’d almost been killed by Hell's Angels, were held at gunpoint by cops, partied in Vegas, were filmed for a TV show, had the van break down in the desert... I mean, everything that could have happened, happened and it was only our first tour. When we all got home and wanted more, that was probably when we started adding more influences and brutality and thinking about our future as a real band. Partying and thrash metal and circle pits rule, but I don’t know if there needs to be any more songs written about it.”

As for the increasingly venomous sound:

“Definitely dude! A lot of the newer jams are darker than ever with more blasting and d-beats. On the flip side, Kallen [Bliss, guitars] has been writing a lot lately and some of his new riffs party harder than anything we’ve ever had… it’s a weird mix of neanderthal crust/grind and guitar harmony beer chugging party metal. He wears flip flops and drinks daiquiris, so that should give you an idea of where his head is at in regards to songwriting.”

Although currently working on a new record, that aforementioned split should salve your need for caustic, ball-crushing, punked up thrash

The idea for the record started when we played The Fest in Florida, 2008, the same day as ANS. Kids kept thinking we were in their band and vice versa, so we joked about doing a split called RAMMING SPEED IS NOT ANS IS NOT RAMMING SPEED IS NOT ANS. Years later it’s finally happening!

“I actually just got news today that out of the 600 copies Scotty Tankcrimes pressed he’s already gotten orders for 500 of them from stores and distros. The record hasn’t even come out yet and it’s practically sold out! It’s also worth noting that Andrei Bouzikov (Cannabis Corpse, Toxic Holocaust, etc.) drew some sort of weird swamp mutant thing holding all of our heads for the cover art. I think the joke is supposed to be that we all look the same? The ANS dudes eat way too much weed food and it’s their concept, so who knows...

“On the musical side of things, the ANS tracks are pure Suicidal Tendencies/Black Flag worship and ours are a lot heavier and angrier than our older stuff. Our favourite engineer in Boston (Ethan Dussaul) turned our old practice space/home into a studio for two days and it came out super mean sounding. The bass amp was practically on my bed and the guitar amps were in the bathroom! Luckily for me I had my drums set up in the living room area and didn’t have to hug the toilet.

“The 12” comes out April 12 on Tankcrimes, the same day as the new Victims and the Annihilation Time re-press. Funnily enough some of our best moments on the record are when we sound like a mix of those two bands, so it’s appropriate.”

Hopefully, then, there's some left, because without this slab of wax to keep you company, the next dose of Ramming Speed action might be a lot further off than you're used to.

DISFEAR'S HENKE FRYKMAN DIES AFTER BATTLE WITH CANCER

According to a press release from Relapse, Henke Frykman, bassist with Disfear since their inception in 1990 under the name Anti-Bofors, and regarded, along with guitarist Björn Peterson as the band's foundation, has died after a long struggle with cancer.

I never met the guy, but I have incredible memories of seeing Disfear at Obscene Extreme in 2009 - they're the ultimate d-beat party band, so much good feeling and amped up positive energy.

BAND OF THE DAY: VON BÖÖM

Fittingly for Swedish crust punks Von Bööm, everything they touch goes up in smoke. Just as they confirmed for this year's absolutely vital (no exaggeration) Obscene Extreme, they not only lost their drummer but their rehearsal space caught fire, costing them all their equipment.

Formed in 1984, one would presume they were either spectacularly inactive and were barely even a band, but it's certainly not bullshit – contributing three tracks to 1986's 'Really Fast 3' compilation. They apparently split and then reformed again, annoucning their return with a whole bunch of compilation appearences, contributing a few tracks of swaggering d-beat gutter-punk to 2008 crust compilation 'Sverigemangel', the  'Äggröran 7'  7” and global punk disc 'Lambination', before finally biting the bullet and spitting out a split with fellow piledriving Swedes Motorbreath and a long awaited full-length, 'Punk Rock Terrorists' on FDA Rekotz.

Needless to say it's explosive.

REVIEW: EUSTACHIAN 'THE SPHAGNUM BOG' (GRINDCORE KARAOKE)

If success came entirely from by chaos and schizophrenia, San Francisco duo Eustachian would live in castle, rolling over piles of bills, wiping their asses with silk or just relaxing by throwing darts at a big photo of Lars Ulrich. Sadly, ‘The Sphagnum Bog’ can’t turn this into reality, no matter what explosive mix of extreme sounds it detonates. And it’s a pity, because these dudes deserve much more.

Dissonant and unbridled, the album (available for free download here) finds Eustachian playing eleven songs that feel like 111; such is the (murderous) intention, array of diversity and the horrifying atmosphere that soon the listener’s face will be illustrated on the next release’s artwork like those on the current. ‘Martinique II’ is where the artificial intellect takes over the world (and for a moment makes you think that your audio columns have fucked up), while the breakcore slap ‘Cryptid Globster’ unexpectedly gives way to surprisingly melodic riff where the band go modern, proving that everything can be expected from Eustachian – from dubstep wobbles to cybergrind, as seventh track ‘Mono Sodium’ effortlessly proves. Heavy, avant gard and uncompromising, ‘The Sphagnum Bog’ is a zombie disco covered in blood.

REVIEW: WORMROT 'DIRGE' (EARACHE)

This, for all the slight of hand designed to lead you to believe the contrary, is perhaps the first original grindcore album to come from Earache, the label whose original input helped define the genre, since, as loathesome as it is to assign them this much credit, The Berzeker. With two posthumous releases to pave the way, one from the late Narcosis and one from hyped Texans Insect Warfare, cynics within the scene are fixing their gazes squarely on Singapore's hard-touring, three-piece noisebastards Wormrot (whose 2009 album 'Abuse' was reissued by Earache with lots of bonus bells and whistles) for the first great grind release from the label since the mid-'90s, and perhaps even a return to form as far as the crusty old guard in their machine boiled 'Diatribes' longsleeves are concerned.

Haters lower your hate sticks, Wormrot haven't let us down – 'Dirge's glorious monochrome pen and ink cover art of a rotting face in staggering detail is a statement of the contents' destructive capability. Pitched somewhere between the tightly wound bludgeoning of PLF and Insect Warfare – combining classic d-beat crust/grind song structure with the hyperfast, peddle-pounding pace and thick, pit-destroying grooves of powerviolence – and even that careening, unchained chaos of the absolutely maniacal Unholy Grave. Despite occasional, brief lapses into 'Harmony Corruption'-style mid-tempo deathgrind passages, 'Dirge' is breathless and unrelenting, and at only eighteen minutes long, finishes just before you have a massive heart attack.

BAND OF THE DAY: WORLD BURNS TO DEATH

There's a fundamental dilemma at the heart of this Band of the Day business. Do I pick bands I'm certain you haven't heard yet (based on the fact I haven't), or do I feed the search engine traffic and embrace the fact that nobody really cares what anyone else thinks by picking something you're more likely to be all over (based on the fact I am) so you can just read my opinion, and either disregard it or use it to validate your own?

It's with some guilt that take this opportunity to celebrate World Burns to Death, because it feels like a betrayal of your trust - not a week goes by when I don't bang on their most recent full-length and work up some serious rage.

Formed 2000 with members of From Ashes Rise and Severed Head of State, suffice to say Austin, Texas' Severed Head of State are absolute unimpeachable stalwarts of US d-beat. Actually, formed of members of established bands who pretty much defined the subgenre that their newer band operates in sort of makes Severed Head of State the Texan Disfear. Vocalist Jack Control, also of Severed Head of State, rivals Tomas Lindberg as a set of instantly recognisably pipes – his bourbon-laced bellow cutting through the humming, melodious Anticimex riffs like a veil of acid in the face on superbly venomous 2008 full-length 'Graveyard of Utopia' or 2006's definitive 'Totalitarian Sodomy'.

REPULSION PLAY SONG OFF NEW ALBUM

Just kidding*, here's a teaser of their set from taken from the forthcoming DVD, 'Maryland Deathfest: the Movie II', courtesy of the splendid Handshake Inc, which commemorates the year I couldn't go because of the British Airways cabin crew strike. Fuck direction action, fuck democracy and fuck better working conditions - you bastards cost me a weekend of piss-weak beer and awesome bands.

This is going to be awesome largely for the same reason the first one was. Awesomely filmed pro-footage of some of the best death, grind and black metal bands - the ones you hardly ever see at festivals anyway, let alone on festival DVDs.

*Don't get mad, their words, not mine.

BAND OF THE DAY: VESTIGES

Formed in January 2010 as a duo, the line-up of this Washington DC four-piece has expanded along with their sound, but save announcing the existence of their album – released January and available for download, they're adamant that the music should do the talking. And it has a great deal to say.

Like the changing of the seasons in a nuclear winter, 'The Descent of Man' is a bleak and unforgiving chasm of gaping post-sludge chords echoing endlessly into the darkness, flecked with the occasional rays of light which break through the ashen clouds, and clattering acidic rainfall of black metal riffs and martial d-beat drums. The anguished, hoarse vocals either the sound of the last man pleading to be taken – all of which fits nicely with their general tolling of the planet's plague bell, citing “industrialisation, militarisation, overpopulation, theism, specieisim, and nihilism” as the horseman riding out on the eve of our forthcoming apocalypse.

Vestiges have such a sprawling sonic vision – reminiscent of Fall of Efrafa, Dead to a Dying World and Year of the Flood – that it deserves visual representation: yeah, they're making a film to go with it, plus two more albums, an EP and an LP to "create the narrative". Ambitiously sounding black metal-flavoured post-crust units may be the flavour of the month in beard-land, but ambitious and well executed concepts are still very much the exception.

SIEG FAIL: DECODING ITALIAN BLACK METAL NATIONALISM

One of the problems with the debate surrounding far right ideology within black metal is the fluidity of the terminology. Deciphering a band's belief system is like wrestling with smoke because there's little common language between parties. While a casual music fan might use 'Nazi' as a broad, catch-all term for any extreme racism or ethno-nationalism, a band espousing those beliefs, but contemptuous of the actual philosophy of National Socialism, as practised by Adolf Hitler and friends, can easily deny the claim. While the set dressing of National Socialism is common knowledge – certain words and symbols setting off alarm bells instantly – less well known branches of fascism can slip through the net, as evidenced by that cringe-worthy observation occasionally made about how 'ironic' it is that countries on the receiving end of Nazi aggression (latter definition) can produce Nazis of their own (both definitions), which ignores whatever inglorious tradition of homegrown nationalist movements or inglorious history of militaristic or authoritarian regimes there might be.

Italian fascism was born out of futurism, itself a reaction to perceived deficiencies in early 20th Century Italy – still largely rural and provincial with Italian unity being a fairly recent memory – by a frustrated elite who wanted the nation to grasp the future with both hands "however daring, however violent". Though its relics survive in art, design and architecture (by no means the least of which is the ubiquitous Moka coffee pot whose harsh, modern lines have been funnelling espresso into the faces of futurist pioneers since 1933), its politics found an ally in Benito Mussolini who combined socialist rabble-rousing, hawkish aspirations to a fully militarised and radicalised population, myths of Italian greatness, and, most importantly as far as the futurists were concerned, a desire to transform Italy into a modern, industrialised powerhouse. In 1919, after only a year, the Futurist Political Party formed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the author of the 'The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' which saw war as necessary for the human spirit, was willingly absorbed into Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. A paramilitary movement aimed at dissatisfied veterans of the First World War, the Fasci transformed into the PNF in 1922 – the Partito Nazionale Fascista whose existence is now exclusively prohibited by the Italian constitution.

It's a source of great academic delight that just as there's a direct link between the futurists, who came into being in 1909, and Mussolini's PNF who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943, there's one from then on into the present. Movimento Sociale Italiano – MSI being a not so veiled reference to the slogan 'Mussolini sei immortale' (Mussolini, you are immortal) – was formed in 1946 by the supporters of Mussolini who managed to escape the end of the war without being hung from a lamp post. The most notable of whom was journalist Giorgio Almirante who rose from being a minor member of the PNF to Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Culture of the short-lived Nazi puppet state in Northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic. When the MSI finally dissolved in 1995, its leading lights transferred their affections to new organisations - Gianfranco Fini forming the more mainstream, conservative National Alliance which took him right to the top as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Silvio Berlusconi’s government of 2001 to 2006. His legacy of that time in office being the Boss-Fini Act which capped immigration.

More traditionalist ex-members of MSI, concerned by Fini's new direction and apparent compromise, formed Tricolore Flame, or else enlisted in Roberto Fiore's Forza Nuova who are currently forcibly dismantling refugee camps on the island of Lampedusa, closer to North Africa than Italy. Fiore spent a lot of time in the UK in the '80s cosying up to the National Front (where he befriended now British National Party leader Nick Griffin, the two implausibly running a nationalist tour company together), evading questioning for a series of bombings perpetrated in 1980 by the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari of which he was a member. The architect of the NAR bombing campaign, underlining this neat link between the past and the present, was Stefano Delle Chiaie. Delle Chiaie was a former member of MSI who left in 1960, outraged by their 'recognition' of democratic Italy by standing in elections instead of carrying on their proud tradition of street thuggery and bellowing racist slogans from the sidelines.

The bands within Italian clique Black Metal Invitta Armatta are filled with quasi-fascist iconography, but little that a casual inspection would reveal as genuinely rooted in far right politics – there's no shortage of bands milking the aesthetics of fascism or Nazism in the name of controversy, after all. It's the group's logo (see right), used on their 2007 compilation 'Signum Martis' and appearing on various items of merchandise, that serves as the first major ideological signifier, being as it's identical to that used by poet Gabriele d'Annunzio's short-lived Italian Regency of Carnaro (below left).

The forerunner to Mussolini, in September 1919 d'Annunzio led 2,000 Italian nationalists to occupy the Croatian city of Rijeka (then Fiume), which was being handed over to the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia as part of the general divvying out of Hapsburg domains after the First World War, chasing out the British, French and Americans to proclaim a proto-fascist republic with himself as Duce. Lasting until 1920, he remained active in Italian politics as an occasional critic and rival of Mussolini, and a staunch advocate of Italian expansionism. He has been described as the 'John the Baptist of Italian fascism' and his brief reign in Fiume introduced many of the practices that Mussolini would later employ including the the title of Duce, the Roman salute, the use of the black shirt uniform, the use of the patriotic song 'Giovinezza', the birth of a corporatist society in which everything within the society or the state was supposed to contribute to its whole, and the use of castor oil to torture, humiliate and kill.

The first band on 'Signum Martis', Spite Extreme Wing are unambiguous in their content. Their 2004 debut 'Non Dvcor, Dvco' is based on the writings of Julius Evola, an Italian philosopher and mystic who defined 'spiritual racism', as opposed to the 'scientific racism' of the Nazis, in his 1941 manuscript 'Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race' which came to define the Italian racial policy and anti-Jewish laws of the 1940s. Also in his credits he translated notorious antisemetic forgery 'The Protocols on the Elders of Zion' into Italian, idolised the SS and the fascist Iron Guard in Romania, and carried on his links with the far right well into the post-war era, speaking at fascist rallies in the 1970s and was held in high esteem by the new generation of extreme nationalists as a key writer and spiritual leader. It's also thanks to Julius Evola, whose less obviously political output concerned eastern philosophy (although in light of his long association with genocidal nationalism, the belief that a heroic master race will emerge from the chaos is particularly chilling), that almost all of these bands can be found talking about Kali Yuga, the final, destructive stage of the earth's rotation according to Hindu scripture. Another song on the album, 'A Chi L'ignoto?', is inspired by the aforementioned Gabriele d'Annunzio.

The same album confirmed Spite Extreme Wing's position unflinchingly: “Black metal is to us the violent and revolutionary reference to the world of tradition. A pure European expressive form. Differently from folk traditional or pre-modern instruments aren't used, with the black metal the modern civilization is disembodied using its dirty means. Here is the originality of the suggestion, it’s the avant-gardism of the idea: the Archeofuturism.”

Archeofuturism is where all of Italy's fascist birds come home to roost – although coined by French 'New Right' thinker Guillaume Faye, his book 'Archaeofuturism', helpfully translated into English in 2010, was originally published a decade ago as a manifesto called 'L’archeofuturisme'. Archaofuturism posits that Europe's survival is in embracing technology (a la futurism) and ancient traditions (a la the stage dressing of most fascist regimes, with obvious similarities to Mussolini's 'New Roman Empire' and Hitler's Nordic dream) in strictly hierarchical societies with strict gender roles.

Dressed up in the language of science fiction, it's best understood in simple terms: Archeofuturists believe in expelling all Muslims and immigrants from Europe. Archeofuturists believe that only Europeans are capable of building a civilisation. Archeofuturists believe in a strict, fuedal class system. Archeofuturists believe in a homogeneous ethnic and cultural nation within a greater European Imperium, and contrary to most fascists, embrace the European Union as a step towards employing that. Archeofuturists are openly and unashamedly racist, misogynist and authoritarian.

Second band on the compilation, the more ambient post-black metal outfit Janvs, have few overt references. The god Janus is the only one in the Roman pantheon who was native to Italy and not a transplant from Greece, but they're also influenced by Julius Evola's ideas on society, and their drummer, Massimo Altomare (see left), has an openly National Socialist solo project, Disiplin, whose lyrics, themes and songtitles are all thoroughly immersed in the Third Reich. He's proudly linked to NSBM and writes about the subject in great length on his website: “As rightly comprehended National Socialism is the supreme synthesis of Aryan archetypes and Aryan awareness, the NSBM is the equally supreme synthesis of revolutionary zeal and radical philosophy.”

Altomare's other band, Black Flame, are third on the compilation. Starting off more conventionally Satanic, the band have steadily begun to hint are more politically motivated subject matter, with most recent album, 2008's 'Imperivm', and the song 'Black Svn Thoery', alluding to Nazi occultism. But there's little there other than Altomare's presence that suggests anything deeper than black metal's traditionally juvenile Third Reich fetishism a la 'Panzer Division Marduk'.

Frangar, who bring up track six, are also unapologetically nationalist, performing in uniform and assigning each other military ranks. 2007's 'Totalitarian War' celebrates the birth of the Nazi puppet Italian Social Republic on '1943', and their '1915 – Tutto Per La Patria' (everything for the fatherland) celebrates the year Italy entered the First World War – a pair of t-shirts develop the theme with classic fascist propoganda images – the chap modelling it is even wearing the bandanna of fascist Italy's elite commando unit Decima Flottiglia MAS (see above right). Although deeply linked to the Italian black metal far right, they've got impressive international links – at one point featuring a member of notorious French NSBM outfit Ad Homonim.

There's a tendency for apologists of nationalist black metal to accuse any questioning of their beliefs as, ironically, 'censorship', when it's their attempts to have them go unexplored that's the only act of censorship. Claims to be 'apolitical' are ludicrous – all art is political and the references and themes chosen reflect – consciously or unconsciously – something of the way the artists behind them see the world.

Knowledge and debate are the tools by which we reach conclusions, and this is nothing more controversial or combative than that first step.

BAND OF THE DAY: MOTHERPIG

Since forming in 2005, Sarajevo's Motherpig have taken a career path that might be better represented by referring to them as Motörpig from now on. Evolving out of more gore/noisecore orientated beginnings – look to Malignant Tumour and Blood Duster for proof that there's life after death – even in their Murderpig phase there was a streak of punk rock discontent that prevented them settling on typical taboo-busting noisecore provocations. Eventually even the vilest toddler has to stop playing with his poo (or in this case appearing on '100 Way Splatter Fetish' compilations) and grow up, or get institutionalised in some sort of home for the dangerously insane (incidentally, where the cover art for the '100 Way Splatter Fetish' compilations was drawn).

Receiving a jolt of Motörpowered energy in 2008, the band chopped the sleeves off their denim and (dis)charged into their Motörpig era at full-throttle. Armed with broken glass gargling growls, throbbing drums and hard rocking riffs, they released 'The Underdog Philosophy, a split with politically active Belgian grind veterans Agathocles, penned a take on 'Largactyl' for a Balkan Amebix tribute album, played a whole bunch of grind and punk shows, and even opened for the legendary Napalm Death in Sarajevo. With one song up already from their eagerly awaited bastard of a full-length, 'Nojev Let', they promise "influences from all around the world because we've begged for it - dirty South American thrash, harsh Japanese '80s sound, bulldozing kind-a-Nyctophobic-grindish wall of sound. We're proud. We love it. You'll learn to love it."

REVIEW: DEATH-CULT JOCK 'WEST END BLAST' (GRINDCORE KARAOKE)

Containing members of a whole host of awesome Adelaide bands that you probably won't be familiar with unless you either, a) live there, or b) sign up to the AusGrind mailing list (and you really should), Death-Cult Jock are a knuckle-cracking old school crust-grind powerhouse. Nothing reinvented and no reinvention needed, they combining the classic crunch of Terrorizer, Phobia and early Napalm Death, with some proto-death rumbled ripped straight from the musical rib-cage of Repulsion, and that frenzied overcompensation for being born two decades two late that characterises contemporary crust worshippers like Hatred Surge, Iron Lung and Weekend Nachos, in their downloadable debut, 'West End Blast' is lurking in a car park to beat you to death with a tyre iron.

REVIEW: DRUGS OF FAITH 'CORRODED' (SELFMADEGOD)

It's a testament to how seemingly overdue and anxiously awaited the debut album from Agoraphobic Nosebleed/ex-Enemy Soil grindfather Richard Johnson's Drugs of Faith is that there's no such thing as a casual listen. You're never in danger letting 'Corroded' slip into the background, it's something you'll crank right the hell up and devote your full attention to, because after forming in 2002, teasing us with a 2007 split with Polish riff-manglers Antigama, a 2006 self-titled MCD and a bunch of demos, nine years is an awfully long time to wait for something.

'Corroded' rewards the attention you invest in it. It functions perfectly well as a strutting, progressive knockabout – the 'grind' in the 'grind 'n' roll' tag representing an undercurrent of discordance and an omni-present intensity, as opposed to any great wall of noise that'll deter the casual listener like Vlad the Impaler's forest of corpses, but the 'roll' is a subtler checklist of influences and a subtler source of delights. Shades of 108 and hand-on-heart, furrow-browed '90s metallic hardcore in the earnest, pleading exhortations, Fugazi and Helmet style hefty grooves, and the genre-straddling contemporary likes of Tombs, Total Fucking Destruction's weirder, Kool Aid-guzzling moments, and maybe even snatches of Mastodon all bubble up from this swirling concoction like mermaids in Crossed Out t-shirts to caress your ears seductively.

BAND OF THE DAY: THE AFTERNOON GENTLEMEN

For the benefit of any non-British readers, here's a phenomenon you may be unfamiliar with: the British have always been notoriously critical of their own. We take great delight in denying the things our own do and celebrating similar achievements in foreigners, almost as if we're uncomfortable with success or attention. If there's one fast and noisy band in the UK whose litany of crucial releases and stalwart road slogging can't be ignored with our usual disdain, it's Leeds powerviolence/grindcore filthpack the Afternoon Gentlemen.

Forming a good few years before fast angry music became cool again, White Ace-swilling bus station-dwellers The Afternoon Gents' recent history is a stamp of quality: Bloodshed Festival and Lille Winter Grindfest in 2010, and a bunch of awesome discs – including the noisy, Despise You/Hatred Surge-like assault of their 2010 'Pissed Again' 7”and their 2011 split with Canada's OSK – both of which you should pick up sharpish – and looming on the horizon is the mighty Obscene Extreme!

Vocalist Rich (who's also in the North East's high pitched Joe Pesci) even subbed for a couple of Insect Warfare's reunion dates in the UK, so regardless of whether you think that whole event was a triumph or a travesty, respect where it's due, eh?

REVIEW: RAMMING SPEED/ANS SPLIT 12” (TANKCRIMES)

Both lurking in the nastier end of crossover thrash, trying not to make eye contact with some of the gormless meatheads gurning blankly out from underneath flip-brimmed Suicidal caps, Boston's Ramming Speed and Texas' ANS look like characters from 'Repo Man', but sound like a squat door being kicked in by the fuzz. This isn't gigglesome party thrash with ball pools and jelly, this is party thrash with fatalities and arrests - and two house bands.

ANS have honed their sound to muscular tautness since their 2009 third full-length 'Pressure Cracks' put them at the top of the crucial new shit list. In the internal battle that bands of this ilk face between feedback whine hardcore and precision guided thrash – essentially is it 'more punk' or 'more metal' – the latter is beginning to dominating their output, riding the Outbreak/Vitamin X-style neo-old school hardcore chug around their four tracks like a charging pony. It's largely slight of hand, the real difference is that it's cleaner and less crusty, and some extended guitar masturbation on fourth track 'Roehrs' War', but genre is 98% perception anyway so embrace it.

Ramming Speed meanwhile continue to proudly devolve into toxic old school death/grind territory like an apple decaying away into a heap of ashen crud on a time lapse film. The message seems to have not reached them that this path isn't one of the two options as dictated by the holy writ of DRI. Though guitar heroics and buzzing crossover riffs hold the the whole thing firmly in place like burly orderlies on a lunatic, the rot has well and truly set in.

BAND OF THE DAY: BYOUSATSU ENDORPHIN

There's some proper Fat Wreck-grade contrived wackiness going on with Osaka thrash punks Byousatsu Endorphin – they even have a mascot that's basically a cardboard box with a face drawn on it and talk about “goofing off”. Yeah, fucking horrendous. We burnt Fat Mike alive in a giant wicker skateboard so that future generations wouldn't have to be exposed to this sort of cringeworthy ADHD Vans Warped Tour bullshit.

Luckily, Byousatsu Endorphin carried on regardless, the image may be lighter than caffeine-free Coke Zero in space, but the music is pure raging thrashcore built around the simple, driving chassis of pop-punk. Incorporating bursts of pop, ska, old school hardcore and FUN FUN FUN into their furious 2010 full-length, '21 Ideas, Useless Of Business', and 2009's '16 Noises, Destroy Your Value' EP, in a combination of intensity and irreverence that'll strike a chord with fans of Crucial Section and ANS, and, er Melt-Banana.

SIEG FAIL: NICK GRIFFIN DEMANDS RESPECT AND OFFERS ONLY HYPOCRISY

The whole poppy burning non-event on November 11, 2010 functioned as a sort of shibboleth to distinguish the bigoted from the non-bigoted. The former complaining that any of obnoxious, unrepresentative fringe group Muslims Against the Crusades who burnt a giant replica poppy should piss off back to Pakistan if they hate our liberal democracy so much – regardless of whether or not they're from Pakistan, and how illiberal and undemocratic a demanding the deportation of people who don't agree with you is.

The story about two Respect Party councillors in Birmingham who refused to deliver a standing ovation for a returning marine who was awarded the George's Cross on February 3 performs a similar function. Respect aren't exactly obtuse in their policies – they're effectively a single-issue party opposed to the Iraq war, but the far right, from the Daily Mail on downwards, chose to frame the event through an Islamic filter and initiate it into their larger narrative about Muslim values chipping away the United Kingdom

Cllr Salma Yaqoob, Respect Party leader and head of Birmingham’s Stop the War Coalition, said, “It was more about the politicians feeling good about themselves for sending our young men to fight for reasons that have proved to be false. I have every sympathy for our soldiers on a human level, they are only doing their jobs. But this ovation was just a big public show, it was false patriotism.”

BNP leader and North West MEP Nick Griffin weighed in on Twitter to brand the Birmingham two “disgraceful creatures,” although he added more recently while attending to his parliamentary duties in Brussles, “Voting session starts with commemoration of all victims of terrorism in Europe. I remember in particular John McMichael, who was a good man, and George Seawright, who was also a good friend. Both victims of Fenian [Republican] terrorism. Sinn Fein MEP should have stayed seated when we all stood.”

John McMichael was the deputy commander of the South Belfast Brigade of the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association who “hand-picked” Republicans for assassination in 1979. He was killed by a car bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1981.

George Seawright was a pro-National Front Unionist politician, who although not directly responsible for any deaths, removed the Irish flag from a public building at gunpoint and physically attacked the then secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Tom King. He was shot in his car by the Irish People's Liberation Organisation in 1987.

When Griffin, a homophobic ethno-nationalist, takes a stand to commemorate the deaths of one mass murderer and one violent nationalist – assigning them both the same moral value as an innocent bystander caught in a car bomb – it's all perfectly respectful and appropriate.

Even though Nick Griffin has spoken at events alongside David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan, and received funding from American nationalist James von Brunn, who later went on a shooting rampage at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, it's all perfectly perfectly respectful and appropriate for him to publicly shed a tear for victims of terrorism.

Although Griffin welcomed expat South African Lambertus Nieuwhof into the party and gave him a mandate to do a spot of web design, despite him trying to bomb a mixed race church school in 1992 on behalf of Eugene Terre'Blanche's Afrikaner Resistance Movement, it's all perfectly respectful and appropriate for him to publicly shed a tear for victims of terrorism.

When nail bomber David Copeland (one of many would-be terrorists who've held BNP membership), killed three and injured 139 with three bombs in London in 1999, one targeting the Asian population in Brick Lane, one targeting the African/ Caribbean population in Brixton, and one outside a gay pub in Soho, Griffin said simply, "The TV footage of dozens of 'gay' demonstrators flaunting their perversion in front of the world's journalists showed just why so many ordinary people find these creatures so repulsive." Having justified those three deaths, it's all perfectly respectful and appropriate for him to publicly shed a tear for victims of terrorism.

But if Sinn Fein MEP Bairbre de Brún – a respected human rights and equality activist who negotiated on the Good Friday Agreement – stands to publicly shed a tear for victims of terrorism, that's not on – she's a hypocrite. And those two councillors in Birmingham – both representing a single-issue anti-war party – refuse to stand to publicly applaud a soldier from that war, that's not on – they're disgraceful and disrespectful.

The real hypocrite, the real “disgraceful creature” is Nick Griffin, unafraid to pick and mix his principles, and happy to condemn violence against the nationalist right as “terrorism” and yet endorse it through association when it's coming from the nationalist. In Nick Griffin's world, as with all nationalist politicians, the “victim” is always convinced of his own victimhood even as he pulls the trigger, signs the order or slams the cattle cart door closed.

BAND OF THE DAY: GO FILTH GO

Like a third generation tape dub, Greek quartet Go Filth Go are playing d-beating furious through a filter of Japanese imitation and amplification. Almost to the point where they're so ashamed of not actually being Japanese that they ape the graphic design, the attitude and the aesthetic, hide behind pseudonyms and bury all actual photographs of themselves. That's some proper otaku desudesudesu ^_^ shit right there, but it's a triumph of 21st Century globalisation and true democratisation of information that you can wake up in the morning and be whoever or whatever you want to be. More power to that.

Formed in 2008, the last year has been their most active with a clutch of heavily distorted, noisy-as-fuck releases, Disclose-style, starting with the 2010 'No Escape From Noise Distraction' tape and continuing into 2011 with two split 7”s so far - one with one-man Swedish d-clones Electric Funeral (one of the awesome Warvictims!) on Phobia Records that features some utterly menacing, near-tribal drumming in parts, and with another solo unit, Brazil's Besthöven.

BAND OF THE DAY: RAPE REVENGE

As an addendum of sorts to the rant that followed Cloud Rat's elevation to Band of the Day status about focusing on a band's perceived femininity as if it's the most remarkable thing about them comes a fresh conundrum, what do you do with a band who define themselves through gender politics?

Calgary, Canada's Rape Revenge are militant straightedge feminists (although not all female) which is all the makings of a new initiate to the No Fun Club inner circle. They wear their politics proudly on their sleeve – walking out of a show in which a joke band seemed to encourage the audience to trade rape jokes might have come across reactionary and opened a whole new debate about how far their compassion and tolerance extends, and how it is they've come to hold the exclusivity on the subject of rape – as well as how come they hate the word 'pussies' and 'cunt', but are happy to embrace the 'bitchy' emoticon on myspace like it isn't a pejorative with a gender implication – but they're at least prepared to stand up for what they believe, because God knows, hardly anybody is these days. With a demo and a self-titled, all too short 7” EP out on xTRUEx Records, both with painfully unsophisticated lyrics which batter you around the head with their war on patriarchy, here's the answer to the opening conundrum: you define them as a whole, in which pretension free, sometimes painfully right-on politics are appropriately articulated through rage-filled bursts of stripped-down hardcore.

REVIEW: BESTOWER 'BESTOWER' (GRINDCORE KARAOKE)

A member of the Buffalo, New York 'Mutant League' alongside fellow Grindcore Karoakees Inerd and Hoglust, the conclusion one can draw from all of this is that Buffalo's population of grind musicians is half its number of active bands (all three seem to feature at least two of the same people), and that in this corner of the world they like to rage on crusty, doom-laced powerviolence and Bestower keep the standard fluttering proudly in the breeze. Somewhat, fleetingly reminiscent of Weekend Nachos in terms of ratio of neck-snapping grindcore fury to Eyehategod-style tolling of the plague bell in their seven songs in just over seven minutes.

BAND OF THE DAY: ALPINIST

There's music for admiring the windswept vistas from the highest peak your little legs can drive you up, and then there's the music that gets you up there, through the biting rain and daggers of sleet – the driving neo-crust of Germany's Alpinist. Formed in 2007 in Munster, Alpinist have carved out an aesthetic of expertly constructed, ecologically friendly d-beat with the glistening guitar sound and dense melancholy that characterises much of the world post His Hero is Gone and From Ashes Rise.

Releasing a number of splits and two albums in rapid sucession – 2009's 'Minus Mensch' and 2010's 'Lightlaerm' – both are furious bursts of melodious rage, but while the former features moments of glowering Amenra-brand atmospheric menace and 4am dread, the latter sees them explode from mere orange ember to a blinding inferno of full-on post-rock guitar noodling.

Daft name though, they might as well be called Rambler.

REVIEW: FATUM 'SKVERNA' (GAS MASK TERROR)

In the backroom of Fatum's practice space, somewhere on the outskirts of Moscow, is a portal to 1988, that the band have been nipping back in time to in order to convince members of Hellhammer, Bolt Thrower, Axegrinder, Deviated Instinct and Amebix to club together and record an album in their name. Obviously they couldn't take any technology back through the time tunnel, emerging naked, Terminator style, so they had to record a bunch of material using the rough hewn technology of the day and leave it in a bank vault so they could dig it out later and release it as the monstrously good and venomously anarchic 'Скверна'/'Skverna' LP.

You didn't get away with it Fatum, the secret is out and as soon as Timecop is done kicking justice into Instinct of Survival, he'll be coming for you.

REVIEW: INERDS 'STONEWALL' (GRINDCORE KARAOKE)

Originally released on cassette, like what the Vikings and Romans and stuff used to bang out their ch00ns on, Buffalo, New York four-piece Inerds jumped a few places in the format list and stuck their demo 'Stonewall' up for download via J Randall's frighteningly prolific Grindcore Karaoke, blasting their dirty noise up inside iTunes all around the globe. Inerds manage to not only run through a check-list of quality powerviolence – precision battery and full-on vocalised pugilism, moshtastic grooves and sludgey low end collapses where the dizzying momentum gives up and assumes the foetal position amid a pool of sweat – but couple in with a rare sense of fun, superbly petulant snarling and odd little musical stabs thrown in like the soundboard of a bad sitcom.

BAND OF THE DAY: SIX BREW BANTHA

There's no drought of quality powerviolence – no matter what OGs seem to claim. The increasing popularity of fastfastfast hardcore is starting to peel the roof off the genre a bit for the casual fans to peer in like friendly giants, and for the first time in about a million years, it seems like you can start a band for love and eventually have more than the same boring handful of people in Crossed Out t-shirts like it.

The debut full-length (self-released and available for free from their Bandcamp, along with their 2009 demo and recent 7” split) from Canadian trio Six Brew Bantha is a bloody-knuckled riot of death growls, near death riffing, McDonalds milkshake thick powerviolence grooves, a drumsound like logs falling off the back of a lorry as it careens out of control on the motorway, and a mean, single-minded sense of purpose that bats challengers aside effortlessly and tramples them underfoot.

There's no way you can like hardcore/grind/powerviolence/etc and not dig this so hard your shovel buckles.

INTERVIEW: GORE-DRENCHED SICILIAN DEATHSTERS HAEMOPHAGUS PREPARE TO INFECT EUROPE

There're few European nations with as proud a history of trashy, exploitative horror as Italy. The heavily stylised and downright sick giallo films of Sergio Martino, Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento and Mario Bava have become such a vibrant code for cinematic thrills that Argento, amazing, voiced one of the characters in the Italian version of tense sci-fi horror game 'Dead Space'. Coming close second would be Spain, but while the 'Tombs of the Blind Dead' series have being inducted into the doom canon through Cathedral and Hooded Menace, there's also a shuffling legion of homegrown horrors as well, of which Gruesome Stuff Relish, Haemorrhage and Machetazo are the best know. Where are the Italian gorelords ready to celebrate their native culture?

“I don’t know,” admits drummer David of Sicilian old school gore metallers Haemophagus, “maybe ‘cos Italian horror films are in a paradoxical way more famous in other countries than in Italy, or maybe ‘cos there are more posers in Italy than in Spain.”

More than making up for the high poser count, Haemophagus play rumbling classic death metal, right on the cusp of goregrind – the reference points being Impetigo, Autopsy, mid-period Carcass, Master, and getting home from the Grindcrusher tour with an armful of Morbid Angel t-shirts and a blown mind, and forming your own band.

Having released a staggering array of splits to compensate for the rough hand dealt to them by geography – getting into Italy itself is a pain in the cock from Palermo, let alone the bit of Italy that tours pass through  – and 2009's menacing 'Slave s to the Necromancer' full-length, Haemophagus are keen to keep the pace up.

“Nothing is going to make us forget that Italy is one of the worst countries for our type of music really,” explains David, “but thanks to guitarist/vocalist Giorgio’s paranormal creativity, we have always many songs to use for every kind of release and so we are distributed enough.”

Their most recent release, a split with Norway's Grind Crusher is the most recent exhumation from the creative mortuary.

“It’s our third split EP, and I think it’s our best material on vinyl at the moment; we used three songs for this release, in which, in my opinion, you can hear our Napalm Death/Terrorizer influences in two of them, 'Ways To The Flesh' and 'Gaseousness, Bloating And Flatulence', and a thrashier vein in the third, 'Cannibal Whore'. It has been great to share this 7”s with our Norwegian mates Grind Crusher, we have a similar taste about death metal and grindcore, and we passed four nice days with them during our mini-tour in Italy last year.
“At the moment I can announce we have the following upcoming releases: 'Slaves To The Necromancer' LP, Haemophagus/Bonesaw split CD/LP, Haemophagus/Repuked split 7”, Haemophagus/Mesrine split 7”, and we’re just working on the next album - it will be ready sometime in 2012.”

2011 though will see them shuffle across Europe, spreading their vile infection at the Czech Republic's Obscene Extreme and the Netherlands' Bloodshed Festival – both of which you better damn well attend.

“We’re just organizing a three-week European tour with Mesrine after OEF,” enthuses David, “and we plan to do the same with Bonesaw before Bloodshed Fest; we’re psyched for sharing these tours with two great bands like them and to be part of these festivals!

“At the moment, seeing the just confirmed bands at OEF, I can’t wait to see Benediction, Brutal Truth, Entombed, Entrails, Impaled, Interment, Lock Up, Magrudergrind, Suffering Mind, Psycho, Rotten Sound and Squash Bowels.”

So, er, what're your favourite Italian horror films?

“Mario Bava’s 'La maschera del demonio', 'Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga', 'Reazione a catena', 'I tre volti della paura (Black Sabbath)', 'Shock', Antonio Margheriti’s 'Danza macabra (Terrore)', 'I lunghi capelli della morte, La vergine di Norimberga', 'Nella stretta morsa del ragno', Riccardo Freda’s 'I vampiri', Lucio Fulci’s 'L'Aldilà... e tu vivrai nel terrore (From Beyond)', 'Zombi 2', Pupi Avati’s 'La casa dalle finestre che ridono'' - maybe the best Italian horror film!, 'Zeder', Umberto Lenzi’s 'Mangiati Vivi!', 'Incubo Sulla Città Contaminata', 'Cannibal Ferox', Dario Argento’s 'Phenomena', 'Suspiria', 'Inferno', 'Tenebre', 'Opera' - even if I maybe prefer his thriller films like 'Profondo Rosso', Quattro mosche di velluto grigio e L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo' - Claudio Fragasso’s 'Monster Dog', 'Zombi 4', Joe D’Amato’s 'Buio Omega', Bruno Mattei’s 'Virus', Michele Soavi’s 'La chiesa'...”

There was no way that was going to be a short answer.

BAND OF THE DAY: CLOUD RAT

Apologies to Michigan grind trio Cloud Rat, this certainly isn't an argument they deserve to be associated with, but the meatheaded amongst you will notice how you never see the phrase 'female-fronted' associated with them, despite their being a blunt, factual truth to that statement. That's because it's patronising to frame an entire band through some incidental detail as if it's the most significant thing about them. If the only difference is biology, why not talk about your favourite 'Jew-fronted bands' or your favourite 'Jew vocalists'? I mean, yeah, there's a chance that you might sound like a massive racist, but you should remain committed to underlining perceived differences, no matter how ridiculous or bigoted that makes you look. Come on you massive hypothetical hypocrite, tell us about your favourite 'negro-fronted' band!

There's a hint of that muscular death/grind vibe associated with Assück (incidently, I'm cited as a reference on the Assück Wikipedia page which makes me far happier than it really should) to the furious Cloud Rat, albeit with more clattery, traditionally grindcore chaos, moments of calm introspection and pit pounding Magrudergrind mosh. The band's self-titled LP and their half of a split cassette are downloadable with their approval, so, listen to them both and celebrate grindcore being so rooted in punk's aspirational egalitarianism (even if it irregularly delivered on it) for pointing out the gender of band members to be an awkward exception rather than a condescending rule.

REVIEW: TREE OF SORES 'TREE OF SORES' (WITCH HUNTER)

Tree of Sores' six track debut whitens the knuckles. It's a cold, dark tunnel of anxiety and unease, the intoxicating melancholy and throbbing riffs that pound at the side of the head like an oncoming panic attack. Lurking somewhere between the apocalyptic, metallic crust of Amebix and Antisect, and the thinking man's riff storm of Neurosis, you don't fall asleep to Leeds trio Tree of Sores like you do to Isis or Pelican. If you fall asleep to Tree of Sores, something horrible crawls forward inch by inch, takes your unmoving form in its arms, and abandons you in a cold and desolate landscape as evocatively vile as the band's name.

BAND OF THE DAY: SICK-FUCKIN-O

If you claim to like UK hardcore and you don't have a place in your heart for Voorhees, then you're either 16 or you're full of shit, ditto Liverpool's punky Walk the Plank. Lecky, has been vocalist with both and now his new outfit, Leeds-based doomy Infest-worshippers outfit Sick-Fuckin-O, also featuring one of Cro-Mags-alikes Deal With It, have a 7” out on cult German label RSR – all of which, when run through the simple arithmetic of awesome scores rather highly.

Aside from '$ex Cell$' EP, there're two splits apparently on the way – though sources (= the internet) claims they're on a short break, they've managed to crank out their lo-fi hangover dirge in support of Magrudergrind-affiliated straightedge unit Coke Bust and the legendary 7 Seconds. Why don't you go and find out what the score is and report back? Thanks.

REVIEW: YEAR OF THE FLOOD 'REDEFINE THE NATURAL ORDER' (WITCH HUNTER)

As unimaginative a comparison as this is, it's also unavoidable – just as Carcass loom large in any mention of Impaled, you can't separate Nottingham's literary inspired post-metal/crust unit Year of the Flood from sadly defunct literary inspired post-metal/crust unit Fall of Efrafa. Both bands haven't considered for a second how narrow their remit might appear to be, in the former's case the works of celebrated allegorical science-fiction author Margaret Atwood, and in the latter proto-furry parable 'Watership Down' – it's not a theme, or a gimmick, it's just a decoder ring for the band's similar messages of man-made destruction, albeit ecological/ethical in the case of the former, and political/ideological in the case of the latter.

The follow-up to last year's incredible 'A Utopian View', second EP 'Redefine the Natural Order' (which can be downloaded for free or purchased for an agreeable £4) is already more sprawling and mature, with the earlier disc's driving single-mindedness that kept it very much rooted in hardcore's gritted teeth, emerging from a damp fog of Cult of Luna/Isis-brand swirling vistas – albeit it vistas powered by that inescapable, metronomic d-beat – to climax in the desperate pleading with the rolling stormclouds of closing track 'Psycodrama'.

There's no shortage of bands dipping their toes in these waters, or approaching them from a more black metal end with some frosty riffs but otherwise similar outcome – in fact it's one of those stock musical templates which provokes instant foaming over-indulgence by critics and fans alike who have a thousand words for 'awesome' and three words for 'mediocre', but rarely do you get a sense of some cohesive vision with a release as a definite part in a finite story. And that's where the Fall of Efrafa comparison rises up on its hind legs, to sniff the air once more, because they had it too.

REVIEW: BENIGHTED 'ASYLUM CAVE' (SEASON OF MIST)

Gallic deathsters Benighted were never exactly a feast for the brain, it's all about the furious tempo, the sudden bass drops and implausible vocal contortions. 2007's fifth full-length 'Icon' was a perfect, accessible feast – pitched somewhere between Devourment and Aborted for those put off by the former's ridiculous rumble and the latter's descent into meatheaded thug-4-life hardcore posturing. Appropriately enough, sixth full-length 'Asylum Cave' features guest vocals from both, like stylistic angels and devils perched on the band's collective shoulders.

Balancing out the unrestrained deathgrind pummelling with some syrupy licks and tar-thick grooves, and tediously inspired by Austrian dungeon dad Josef Fritzl, 'Asylum Cave' is a satisfying dose of metalheaded brutality, with just enough melody, surprisingly atmospherics and adrenal gland-milking mosh parts to make it more than a simple endurance test – and therefore detested by the monobrowed underground brutal death elite.

BAND OF THE DAY: OD VRATOT NADOLU

All of the conditions for a thriving crust scene in Serbia, apply to Macedonia too – trapped between the pan-European idealism of its neighbours and a twilight of sectarian hatred and territorial squabbles that for many defines the Balkans, Macedonia, like Serbia, is a country on the wrong side of the glass, banging on the window angrily because life is that little bit harder, that little bit more frustrating and that little bit more of a pain in the cock.

Skopje-based, Man is the Bastard-worshipping hardcore two-piece Od Vratot Nadolu deliver more than the juvenile thrill of pasting Од Вратот Надолу into iTunes and fucking everything right up, they offering up swaggering, snarling rocking crust – all throbbing basslines and infected yelps – on their debut album, 'Ziva' (available via Macedonian label Hell Militia, who've done all sorts of brilliant stuff - have a look). Favouring the knuckle-dragging, inebriated lurch, rather than the reckless charge, their banging on the glass of modernity is slow, steady and rattles the frame like a passing truck.

BAND OF THE DAY: DISHUMANITY

Anyone who's even remotely surprised that Serbia can be a breeding ground for absolutely fierce punk rock, doesn't understand the genre at all – the official opposition in parliament are a homophobic, hyper-nationalist straw man party created by Slobodan Milosevic to make himself look moderate, neighbouring Croatia produced one of the earliest grindcore bands in the form of the toxic and chaotic Patareni, a legacy of Titoist 'self-management' allows workers to occupy their own workplaces if they feel the beancounters aren't up to the job and, on top that, the punk scene in the former Yugoslavia was of such renown, that the list of bands who toured there in the '70s and '80s is like the index to one of those terrible punk history books. It's a perfect environment for discontent, in short.

So here we are in 2011 and raw d-beat trio Dishumanity are raging out of the central Serbian city of Kragujevac with twelve tracks of venomously spat crust on their 2010 full-length 'Radijacija' is a series of unpretentious jabs to the face, and is up to download here with the band's blessing. They've played alongside Wormrot, whose ongoing mission to grind the shit out of every corner of the planet even appears to include Serbia – which must have been a visa nightmare – and there's a split with some unnamed Dutch grinders primed for release any day now.

COMMENT: FREE TIBET, FROM BOTH CHINA AND THEOCRACY

As of March 20, 2011, the effective head of state and head of soul of the Tibetan Government in Exile, the Dalai Lama – by all accounts a seemingly pleasant, hugely experienced and likeable public figure, whose made a virtue of peaceful resistance to Chinese occupation of Tibet – will preside over a long awaited transition to democracy for his country's widespread diaspora. They may be the elections of a government with no state, therefore a transfer of largely symbolic power and so subject to perhaps an acceptable degree of cynicism, but this is a remarkable concession from a man who is, essentially, a divinely appointed autocrat - and he didn't even have to be beheaded!

For the first time since the office of the Dalai Lama was established in 1578 as a bishop prince of sorts (to use a Western comparison) by the edict of the Mongol ruler Altan Kahn, who was slowly becoming infatuated with Buddhism, the final rubber stamping of laws will no longer be held by one unelected head of state but by an elected body. For the first time since the Tibetan Government in Exile was founded in 1959, it actually gets to be a government. Well, aside from not having a country to govern.

Regardless of the Lama's reputation as a benign dispenser of wisdom, that it's taken 52 years for the man who in 1999 said, “I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist,” to actually act upon this admiration for the working man and let his people “take control of their future" may seem insincere, especially given his track record in silencing internal criticism, but over the 75 years of his life a huge amount has changed for both Tibet and the ruling theocracy of which he is at the head.

Tibet in 1895, as recalled by Dr AL Waddell, was ruled by an "intolerable tyranny of monks." His sentiments echoed in 1904 by Perceval Landon who described the rule of the previous Dalai Lama rule as "an engine of oppression" and "a barrier to all human improvement." At about that time, another English traveller, Captain WFT O'Connor, observed that "the great landowners and the priests . . . exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal," while the people are "oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft the world has ever seen."

Despite the cultural superiority of your average well heeled English gent at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th, Landon was exceptionally well travelled. A friend of Rudyard Kipling, he covered the struggles in South Africa for the Times and served as private secretary to the Governor of New South Wales, Australia, visiting almost every point on the atlas between. To suggest he may have had a touch of colonial snobbery about him is reasonable, but to suggest he was so unused to the sight of unfamiliar cultures that he was moved to dismiss them in such strong terms is ridiculous – his writings from neighbouring Nepal on its culture, religion and history are still relevant and still in print.

Chinese propaganda makes much of its role as a 'modernising force' against exploitative monks and landowners to justify their invasion in 1950, and the Tibetan revolt of 1959 that drove the Lama and his followers from the country as the death rattle of the landowning class in the face of reforms. What gives these claims strength, and lends this propaganda power, is that they are based on a truth that supporters of Tibetan independence rarely acknowledge. When our relatively harmless 14th Dalai Lama came to power, he inherited a kingdom where torture and mutilation were the preferred methods of punishment (A Tom Grunfeld's 'Making of Modern Tibet' cites monks getting around the prohibition of taking a life by whipping a wrongdoer to near-death and then releasing them in the wilderness to die 'naturally', along with amputation and eye gouging for other offences), serfs who fled from their landlords were hunted down, boys taken from their families to be raised as monks were often sexually abused, and monasteries owned vast tracts of property, people and animals. Pradyumna Karan, professor of Japan Studies at the University of Kentucky and author of histories of Japan, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet, admitted, “most of them amassed great riches. . . . In addition, individual monks and lamas were able to accumulate great wealth through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending."

As with all of these things – from the many abuses and crimes of the Vatican to the hypocrisy and Hindu nationalism of Gandhi – the problem isn't religion itself, but people and what they do with its teachings. As if a reminder were needed of the evils any belief can do when wielded by the venal and cruel, humanist writer and journalist Christopher Hitchens said, “Buddhism has some of the same problems as Western religion. Zen was the official ideology of Hirohito's fascism that was used to conquer and reduce the rest of Asia to subservience. The current dictatorship in Burma is officially Buddhist. The Buddhist forces in Sri Lanka are the ones who began the horrific civil war there with their pogroms against the Tamils in the 1950s and 1960s. Lon Nol's army in Cambodia was officially Buddhist.”

It's this enduring image of a tranquil, mountainous Shangri La, backlit by chanting and gently drifting blossom, every bit as patronising as depicting Scotland as mist-cloaked, magical Brigadoon, that feeds China's vile actions cold scraps of legitimacy under the table. Their almost exclusive access to the image of a 'modern' Tibet in the consciousness of the public, to whom the symbols of Tibetan independence are forever a line of prayer flags and a smiling monk, adds cement to the foundation of fact beneath their gross and distorted claims of ownership. The polarisation of Tibetan independence as a battle between oppressive secular China and mystical monasticism has created a straw man for both factions to rile against. How little of the Dalai Lama's proclamations about democracy are repeated compared to his pious homilies about living a good life?

As the years turn and the old guard have been cycled out of the Tibetan establishment, he's no longer alone in wanting to push his people towards a future that's better than not just the past 50 years, but the past 500. Born in 1983, Trinley Thaye Dorje escaped occupation to take his place as the head of one of the myriad strands of Tibetan Buddhism and has become an icon for many young Tibetans, balancing his traditional monastic schooling with lessons from Australian and English tutors, and an intensive introduction to Western philosophy from Professor Harrison Pemberton of Washington and Lee University. Speaking to Newsweek, he said, “Without tradition, you would be empty. But without modern education, you will have no way to exist in today’s society. I want to help prepare Tibetans so one day when they have freedom they have the [skills] to organise their own country.”

Finally, China will have to negotiate with politicians, elected by the people, and not hated theocratic class enemies of an autocratic regime, and as its rhetoric comes tumbling down, there's a greater chance that its occupation will too and Tibetans will have a Free Tibet, not a Tibet ruled by genocidal Communist party functionaries or sadistic sainted hypocrites.