REVIEW: LYCANTHROPY 'LYCANTHROPY' (BONES BRIGADE)

There are few releases as eagerly, seemingly endlessly anticipated as the debut from the Czech Republic's furious flurry of blasting chaos, Lycanthropy, and through its twenty minute burst of stipped-down, bullshit-free rage you get a clear understanding, as short, sharp and communicative as a blow to the side of the head, as to what fastcore actually means.

It's nothing new, built from the mud like an ancient city, or an egotistical, pretentious partition to divide something that's 'yours', and is therefore wonderful and exclusive and elite, from something that belongs to others, and therefore is popular and diluted and meaningless. Fastcore, like powerviolence before it, is a line in the sand between that hoary old chaos that grindcore first unleashed upon unsuspecting, unbelieving cider-sodden crusties, and the regimented, death-heavy bullshit of twenty years of bands like Misery Index and Aborted, panel beating anarchy into equilateral rods of predictable brutality under the sprawling aegis of grind. Fastcore isn't a bold new movement for grindcore's bright future, it's a reminder of the core values that made grindcore great, and the churning inferno that seethes and splutters behind the ribcage of every true grindcore band.

Grindcore is filth, energy, violence, and release, and over their seventeen-plus minutes of Insect Warfare/Agents Of Abhorrance-like orthodox barbarism, all rat-ta-tat machine gun percussion and a guitar tone like a chainsaw digging into a car door, Lycanthropy prove a potent reminder of just how that sounds.