REVIEW: AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED + DESPISE YOU 'ON AND ON AND ON...' (RELAPSE)

People have a tendency to overstate the importance of music - the more basic, embarrassing or downright cro-magnon it is, the more people feel the urge to twitter on about the "primal thump of otherness" or whatever the shit crap passes for content in the Wire. Conversely, if you come out and say that you like death metal, not for the "primal thump of otherness", but because you like "songs about sluts getting what they deserve", you're also a bell end. It's a tricky business to get right isn't it?

Why do you like grindcore? Is it because it takes the contents of your heart and spits it out as jagged red chunks from a sonic chain gun? Did you even bother reading the first paragraph? Grindcore is just an instant reaction, and don't you dare try and dress it up in your fancy pants flower language like you're taking it to meet the parents. It doesn't even have to be an instant reaction to anything worthy, it's like a gag reflex spewing out a response to foul tasting world - in Napalm Death's case, it was all about Thatcher's venom dripped claws and impending nuclear dread, and in Anal Cunt's case it was all about how gays, blacks and Hitler are have given the AIDS to YOUR MUM.

Both Despise You and Agoraphobic Nosebleed represent that sort of pure honesty, the fight or flight of grindcore - whether in Despise You's Class of '82 classically inclined hardcore pugilism, or ANb's Class of Nukem High dirtbag futurism. DY's first new material in seven years (so you can all handle the four months it took for this review to turn up), and the dual-vocal Cali powerviolence unit remain utterly ageless and sharp, not that anyone was expecting maturity or progression - it's just rage and relentless, metallic forward motion in shot-glass sized measurements lined up along the bar of your eardrums to be knocked back in quick sucession

With four very different voices driving the octopus mech that is Agoraphobic Nosebleed, to do the unexpected has always been their prerogative, and they open their half of this split album with a sludge-laden piece of riff-heavy low-end before seguing into the breathless, shrieking 'As Bad As It Is...'. Scott Hull's riff-hammering is front and centre, like a rivet gun in the sparks and molten metal of iron foundry. 16 minutes seems the perfect sized dose of ANb, just long enough to register and brief enough to defy dissection - which is as it should be.

If 'On And On And On...' proves anything, it's that when so much effort elsewhere is invested into a contrived demonstrations of some imagined level of quality, on that's tied into coloured tapes, Japanese splits and obligatory references to early MOSH-number Earache bands, the real deal is always just this; a reaction, sometimes raw and primitive, sometimes razor sharp and fret-rapingly sophisticated, but always rising from deep inside like a tidal wave of stomach acid.