WHOLE STACK OF STUFF UP FOR FREE DOWNLOAD

J Randall, the closet Doctor Who fan of Agoraphobic Nosebleed, and all round prolific internet personality, has uploaded an absolute deluge of free record downloads on his label Grindcore Karaoke. Get on that sharpish.

REVIEW: LILLE WINTER GRINDFEST 2010

Spring is gradually leeching the frostbite from our extremities, to the point where it's near impossible trying to picture the Siberian snowhell that turned the United Kingdom into a great big whinging ball of inactivity in mid-to-late December. The North of France was just as bad, Roubaix, just outside of Lille on the Belgian border is all kinds of bleak – the pavement may as well be coated in oiled marbles, yet a hundred or so dedicated grindfreaks braved the tundra for 2010's death rattle. No wheezing, laboured death was this, Lille Winter Grindfest was a full-on frothing fit, kicking January 2011 in the kidney on its way out.

An off-season hostel, Hotel de la Musique isn't quite the grimy squat you'd associated with bills of this calibre, and the well behaved guide dog being the closest you get to the obligatory crust hound on a bit of string – there's a stage wedged in the corner and a well-stocked bar, and it beats skidding around outside. Just because you like to grind doesn't mean you have to live like Onslow in Keeping Up Appearances – sometimes you just want Belgian beer and a cheese sandwich.

Trepan'Dead are one of those bands who shun success and attention, battle-scarred veterans of brutal death/grind they adhere to an old school creed, equating a low profile with underground virtue and it certainly suits their uncompromising bludgeon. They don't fuck about, they brutalise and then fuck off leaving behind only a faint impression of old dudes scowling, and, of course, tinnitus.

Hard-touring roadwarriors A Den of Robbers are the first of the day's Belgians, and the day's first blast of groovy, mid-tempo powerviolence interludes, a theme that continues with les rosbif from The Atrocity Exhibit who've slid like a corpse in the mud over the years from sludge to grind/powerviolence, settling now somewhere in between – this is the best they've ever sounded.

A drum machine really is man's best friend, faithful and consistently shitty sounding – the human aspect of Anal Penetration is without criticism, this dude is a one-man riot of riffs and screams. The high energy levels continue with serrated Germans Mindflair and through into Sylvester Staline, who deliver the first truly spectacular performance of the day. There's an element of 'local heroes' carrying them high, and it's late enough in the day for everyone to be drunk, but you can't shit on a band who get a conga line going and release so much party-hard good vibes through their highly strung French fastcore.

Fans of ridiculous pseudo-stadium metal shit like Soilwork may laugh, but some bands shrink like frosty bollocks in the glare of some decent sound and soccer-fixated powerviolence two-piece Jesus Cröst seem to be one of them. Sorely missing the shitty equipment of the aforementioned crusty squat, they sound like a noisy shit in an aircraft hanger.

The magic white sky powder has stolen away The Monolith Deathcult (perhaps one of the most anticipated bands playing) and Last Days of Humanity (who have trouble appearing in a mirror, having cancelled all sorts of stuff for all sorts of reasons since reuniting), and Leng Tch'e, the official BeNeLux back-up band rush in to fill the gap. It must be lousy for their self-esteem to not get asked to play these things in the first place, or perhaps they've got an agreement with Last Days of Humanity to tag-team grindcore festivals and split the ca$h – conspiracy theories aside, anyone who strikes a pose and sneers at their mosh-friendly crossover appeal (as in people outside of grindcore might like them, joining such 'sellouts' as Carcass, Nasum, Brutal Truth and Napalm Death) is getting shown up as the shit-talking scene fascists they are. People are going insane, lost in the catchy rock riffing and bludgeoning blasts, the atmosphere is amazing, and with fearsome vocalist Serge Kasongo suddenly gaining a pair of novelty antlers, strangely Christmassy.

UNIMPRESSIVE NEW ROTTEN SOUND VIDEO IS A CRACKING TUNE

It's live footage, there's not really much that you can say about that, other than it's nicely filmed but no substitute for getting all up in their shit in a venue - which you'll all definitely do soon. Anyway, it's a good opportunity to listen to one of Rotten Sound's chunky new songs three times in a row. Yeah, do that.

BAND OF THE DAY: RUINEBELL

It's perhaps bitterly ironic that Finnish new jack old school death dealers Hooded Menace have been getting so much hype (albeit much deserved) when veteran acts like Machetazo, once orthodox high priests of Spain's fetid goregrind underground turned atmospheric worshippers of Impetigo and Necrophagia's old school horror, have missed out completely. On the upside, there're probably a fuck tonne less patch-jacket posers pricks rocking out self-consciously to Machetazo, but they need more respect and hopefully new project Ruinebelle will redistribute some of those kudos.

A downtuned duo of Machetazo's Dopi Diablo (ex of Frustradicción and also currently in Dishammer) on vocals and drums, and on bass and guitar, Hooded Menace mainman Lasse Pyykkö (ex of Phlegethon and Vacant Coffin, and current of the equally hyped Acid Witch) are working on their debut 7” for the supercult Doomentia Records. There's no music up yet, but with a pedigree like this you know what you're getting in terms of raw venom and rumbling dread. As for the sound, they promise “apocalyptic, heavy and dark, metallic crust in the vein of Amebix, Axegrinder mixed in a blender with some Voivod and Godflesh.”

AMEBIX TITLE NEW DISC, FINALLY

Apocalyptic metallic punk prophets Amebix have finally announced the title of their new album, the first since 1987's 'Monolith', as 'Sonic Mass'. Due to be released through Alternative Tentacles and on vinyl through Profane Existence, you can gawp at some pics from the recording session here.

RAD TOXIC GREEN ROTTEN SOUND SHIRT

Because there just aren't enough green prints in the world, Mike Fisher, who's done designs for Fuck the Facts, Voetsek, Ghoul, Raw Power and so very many more, has just finished this beautiful t-shirt for Finnish grind outfit Rotten Sound, which is coming soon from Warlord Clothing, presumably in time for their Relapse debut 'Cursed', which is out March 15 in the US and 21 in the UK.

UNPOPULAR CRUST COMPILATION UP FOR DOWNLOAD

Ungovernable Resistance radio/promo have uploaded a 23-track compilation of furious crust, grind, anarchopunk and the like for download in order to spread the word about bands who're "great but not very popular" (lol). Get 'Support Your Scene 2011' here.

ROCK 'N' TROLL ANAL CUNT ALBUM FINALLY UP FOR PRE-ORDER

'Fuckin' A', the unashamedly fan-baiting cock rock outing from noisecore pioneers Anal Cunt - their first new album in twelve years - is finally available for pre-order from Patac Records. Apparently first 100 orders will receive a signed pornographic photo of Seth Putnam and a groupie. Enjoy!

NEW DRUGS OF FAITH VIDEO GOES UP ON DECIBEL

Drugs of Faith, the hard rocking, Fugazi-like grinding post-punk outfit led by former Enemy Soil/current Agoraphobic Nosebleed man Richard Johnston have posted a video of a new song taken from their eagerly awaited (by me) first full-length 'Corroded', out February on Selfmadegod, to the Decibel website - check that out here. The clip is produced by Handshake Inc, who produced videos for Fuck the Facts and Today is the Day.

GIVE PRAISE RECORDS LAUNCH WEBZINE

Awesome US powerviolence label Give Praise have launched a webzine, Crucial, in order to continue spreading the word. So far there are interviews with Deep Shit and Weedsteeler - check all that out here.

WORMROT COMPLETE (MOST OF) SECOND DISC

Much hyped Singapore mosh grind outfit Wormrot have nearly finished the nuts and bolts of their second full-length for Earache, drums and guitars were completed in twelve hours on January 7 and vocals were completed January 11.

REVIEW: Drudkh ‘A Handful of Stars’ (Season of Mist)

While their politics may be forever enshrouded in the murky fog rolling down off the Carpathians, the actual sonics of Ukrainian atmospheric black metal hermits Drudkh have gained considerable clarity and focus over the last couple of releases, and the hype has undeniably grown with them. There’s a lightness of touch to ‘A Handful of Stars’, moreso than the breakthrough, magazine-moistening ‘Microcosmos’, and simplicity to the interplay between harsh, strained, typically black metal exhortations and emotive, earth mother instrumentals which sees the band bob gently into a vague orbit in the overpopulated, debris-cluttered airspace between post-metal and post-crust, the guitar lines that open ‘Twilight Aureole’ having more than a twinge of Swedish progressive metal chestpounders Burst about them, while the weeping guitar that close ‘The Day Will Come’ seem liberated from one of those dad-friendly ‘driving song’ compilations with a bad ass rig on cover.

Were this any other band than one so stubbornly committed to reclusive cave-dwelling mysticism, it’d be an obvious plea for commercial success - the beefier production, the more accessible melodies lacking the density and primal thunder of, say, 2004’s ‘Autumn Aurora’, are easily the meandering, woodland equivalent of Anaal Nathrakh’s exchange of bowel-loosening, grime-caked terror for more moshpit-friendly party hits. But the crucial difference is that Anaal Nathrakh made their transition without losing their might, and somewhere in the recording process, Drudkh’s once formidable elemental fury that threatened to swallow up the listener like an angry forest with a big angry mouth, has been considerably diminished. ‘A Handful of Stars’ is a fine place for a picnic, the view is chocolate box lovely and the thorns have been cleared from the path, but it makes for an underwhelming full-length when set aside landmarks from their potent past.

REVIEW: Al-Thawra ‘Edifice’ (Subaltern)

Globalisation, that old bugbear of the vomit-caked

shirking classes that make up the crust punk underground, has painted every double-arch in gold leaf and sold the idea of primo latte frappucinos to people who don’t even have running water, but perversely, it’s brought us ‘Edifice’, a lo-fi nugget of such profoundly sincere spirituality and vision, caked in rage that’s open-wound sore and informed by the world’s relentless blitzkrieg of injustice. Globalisation brought together caustic, doom-fired d-beat, born in England and perfected in Sweden, the teachings of Muhammad and the teachings of Marx, traditional Arabic instruments and a hard-touring quartet from Chicago, and stewed them in purpose. Where the band’s debut, ‘Who Benefits From War?’ was untutored savagery, ‘Edifice’ is an immersive sonic whole, dragging you slowly down into a warm bubble bath of hypnotic, swirling instrumentals and rhythmic barking, driving crust riffs and dubstep bass fuzz like Anti-Sect’s unintentional ‘two-track’ rock opera ‘In Darkness There Is No Choice’.

Beyond the music, Al Thawra, one of the original disciples of Taqwacore, are providing this scene’s arteries with a throbbing adrenaline shot of individuality, not a trite strip-minding of some ’exotic’ belly dancing melodies, but an organic sum total of this quartet’s multicultural identity, the atypical and the typical. In a genre, which despite its pretentious to dissent and inclusivity is still defined by its WASP archetype, its empty cage-rattling to a set of prescribed first world white middle class problems, Al Thawra are a reminder of how much clout punk still has in its dual service to challenge and empower.

COMMENT: Insane in the Ukraine, in defence of Drudkh

The press officer (and respected metal journo in his own right, which is a rare and paradoxical beast) for Season Of Mist got in touch to raise issue some points from the previous Drudkh blog, more as a massive fan of the band than 'image management', so for interested parties, his points are in bold and my responses are plain:

If correct, I would recommend getting your historical facts on Ukraine from outside of Polish text books (and to look even further back for an explanation of anti-Polish, anti-Jewish resentments in Ukraine). It is quite easy to get the historic background, if one goes beyond WWII.

Obviously I didn't get my information from Polish text books, I'm English. Secondly I did reference the history of anti-Polish sentiment in the Ukraine prior to WWII, which is confusingly acknowledged in a later paragraph (1). Thirdly as what I was writing was in direct response to Drudkh's more overt nationalist references, it wasn't really up to me what I passed comment on.

That comparison to Radovan Karadžić is beyond me, except for the purpose of introducing another murderous war criminal... but while everybody else in Europe is allowed to build nation, Ukraine is obviously not, well according to you: “But what we can pass damning judgment on is that the Ukraine they fought for was defined purely on ethnic lines where clear ethnic lines didn’t necessarily exists – especially as the would-be nation had formed part of a union with Poland and Lithuania for centuries...” (1) as if there had been no struggle against this “union” in those centuries – compare: (and to look even further back for an explanation of anti-Polish, anti-Jewish resentments in Ukraine.) By the way, Lithuanians are part of the Baltic language family and very clearly separated – quite a bad argument for the point you are so desperately struggling to make. Well, you English like “unions” as the Irish can tell part of your empire for centuries, which proves... – (oops, I get polemic, sorry, but I should not pass damning judgement). And where did ever clear ethnic lines exist? That was a romantic notion lacking historic facts all over this... but hey, if you are a Ukrainian patriot at the time, you are obviously a Nazi as defined by you above... err, what?

This point is very confused. I don't think it's up for debate that every people who find themselves without a free homeland are entitled to one, if necessary fight for it. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the chunk of this sprawling commonwealth that would become the Ukraine was influenced by centuries of outside influences, its major cities were heavily Polish and, more recently, in the late 18th Century, Russian Jews had been encouraged to settle thereand in Poland - their poverty and obvious outsider status (which even established, cosmopolitan Polish Jews resented) contributing to what would become grotesquely genocidal antisemitism by the time the Einsatzgruppen party squads turned up in their mobile party wagons. But what the individuals and organisations canonised by Drudkh were fighting for wasn't a nation defined by geographic boundaries but by the (often perceived, and by calling it a "romantic notion" you're agreeing that the definition was bogus and no such demarcation between Poles and Ukrainians was realistically possible, which makes your implied apologism of their murderous methods seem a touch bizarre) ethnicity of the people within it, resulting in what can only be described as ethnic cleansing to use contemporary language.

There are plenty of examples of this in history and they are all, without exception abhorrent. The expulsion of Germans and Hungarians from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War, the population transfers between Greece and Turkey in 1923, the partition of Pakistan and India, and you'll be particularly excited to note, the expulsion of Irish Catholics from their land in Cromwell's Act of Settlement - all of these are the inhuman actions of a state that values its integrity above human lives, so no, being a Ukrainian patriot at the time doesn't make you a "Nazi", but being a Ukrainian patriot who believes that all Poles and Jews should either leave their homes, or go to a mass grave in the woods, that does put you on the wrong side of any objective moral line.

Why you find comfort in Slayer openly embracing that fascist murderer Pinochet, but condemn Drudkh for choosing to remain silent and let their art speak, is hardly understandable - well have fun with it.

I find comfort in the fact that Slayer are able to have a public/open discourse about their beliefs, yet Drudkh won't - leaving us to draw our own conclusions, which is the point of the original piece. If an English band (with links to openly racist bands) were to embrace murderous, puritanical despot/national hero and defender of parliamentary democracy (delete to fit view) Oliver Cromwell and refuse to do interviews while aligning themselves with a right wing 30s political movement, any sane man would jump to the same conclusion. And I am having fun with it, it's fun to learn and it's fun to discuss. Discussion is, after all, the furnace where views are tempered.

COMMENT: Satanic Warmaster probably aren’t Nazis, just idiots

The bête noir of Antifa’s Finnish branch, Satanic

Warmaster ooze Third Reich fetishism from every pore. Sole member Satanic Tyrant Werwolf ambiguously phrased certainly contemporary ideologies which are rooted in Nazism, but without saying whether they were universal healthcare or ethnic cleansing, and hanging around with 100 per cent unrepentant, Sieg Heiling arseclowns like Absurd and Der Stürmer, he allows people looking for a reason to wave pitchforks to construct the reason themselves. Fascism and racism are very real concerns; there are enough genuine hateful idiots around without your kneejerk Antifa bottle-flinger rounding up the 2 + 2.5 to 5 just because it’s a ‘cleaner’ number with no messy uncertainty that keeps you from getting a good old witchunt under way.

Listing the Nazi references is a bit of a duck hunt for a band whose second demo was called ‘Gas Chamber’, but this kind of infantile taboo-busting was old and boring when Satanic Warmaster sprung into being in 1998, and actual evidence about what this jet black dildo genuine believes is thin on the ground. Early demos described his stance as ‘Occult nationalism’, which seems to be a profound belief in two things which are equally stupid and made up, but that hasn’t cropped up since. Although, predictably enough for this blend of bombastic , tremolo-raping hornets’ nest black metal, both are cravenly hinted at by every other song title, as they have been by almost every band in the genre – albeit not quite with Satanic Tyrant Werwolf’s autistic frequency. After over a decade of existence he’s crammed enough Third Reich slogans, lyrics and buzzwords into his album and merchandise to reconstruct ‘Mein Kampf’ a segment at a time like a set of hateful fridge magnets, but he has yet to produce a sentence which actually sets out what he believes, instead hiding behind a set of dull clichés about the blood of dead warriors, marauding wolfpacks and the like.

Satanic Warmaster are worst than fascists, they’re just boring and silly, and their sly little backward glances towards actually coming out and saying something controversial are only offensive to the values of people who are looking to be offended.

COMMENT: Drudkh right, do we just take their word for it?

‘I just like the music, I don’t have to agree with them,’ is only a convincing argument up to a certain point. All art is political, in that it’s the product of a certain backdrop, set of circumstances or cultural context – you can appreciate the end result, it doesn’t make you a goosestepping Third Reich sympathiser or personally responsible for dragging Anne Frank from her attic window, but you have to acknowledge just what it is that gives this piece of music its glistening, copper-toned resonance. Any fear about what the music you identify with says about you is tantamount to admitting that the music DOES say something about you, because it doesn’t have to, you CAN just enjoy it as music but an unwillingness to explore the beliefs behind a band is wilful ignorance, like reading ‘the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ and pretending it’s got nothing to do with Jesus.

Part of the problems with confronting the Far Right in extreme metal is that all sides are reliant upon a lexicon which lacks a consensus of meaning. To a pitchfork-waving liberal left witchhunter ‘Nazi’ is a blanket term for anyone slightly to the right of odious Daily Mail pundit Richard Littlejohn – the core tenants being vague ethnonationalism hidden behind a malevolent cloak of ‘common sense’, ‘fairness’, ‘our country’ and ‘our values’ – and defenders of their odious beliefs fall back on the semantic argument that not being followers of German National Socialism as espoused by Adolf Hitler, they can’t possibly be Nazis. It’s an unconvincing slight of hand that a worrying percentage happily accept as the case being closed, wheeling out a extra defence so dense that it insults the intelligence of anyone who comes into contact with it: ‘Given how x nation/people suffered in the Second World War, they can’t possibly be Nazis!’. Almost every nation on earth has a political Far Right, and almost every nation in Europe – from Britain’s British Union of Fascists to Hungary’s Arrow Cross Party – has a history of unpleasant ethnic nationalism contemporaneous to that of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. To compound the insult and further establish this dishwater premise that should be quickly discarded, Nick Griffin frequently drags up his family’s war record as evidence as to why his vile racist organisation clearly aren’t vile racists.

Where these tired and overtrodden arguments involve Drudkh, and indeed all of Roman Saenko’s folksy black metal projects, is that they’ve helpfully released a statement making it clear they’re not supporting “racism and political extremism” and claiming "there's nothing in Drudkh's music or lyrics that would suggest any political outlook", and yet refuse to talk about their beliefs (or anything, in fact). Yes, Slayer have songs about murderous Auschwitz camp doctors, but Slayer do interviews and we can all sleep better at night for having answers to our questions.

That they know a statement about their politics is necessary means they know full well it requires more discourse. And the reasons rests upon their appropriation of 19^th Century Ukrainian nationalist poets (most prominently Taras Shevchenko), on 2005’s ‘The Swan Road’, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisans in the Second World War, on 2006’s ‘Blood In Our Wells’, which is dedicated to the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, their use of the slogan, on 2007’s ‘Anti-Urban’ EP, ‘Conservative Revolutionary’ (which they share with their openly racist parent entity Hate Forest), which is drawn from the pre-war German political party of the same name. The intentions and the Far Right credentials behind all of these sources is open to interpretation to differing extents, but seeing as the band aren’t prepared to entertain a dialogue around them how can we be possibly held to account for drawing out own conclusions?

Taras Shevchenko was effectively the father modern Ukrainian literature, just as Ukraine was beginning to establish its contemporary national identity, pressing against the Russian Empire, of which it was a component, and Poland, of which it had previously formed the edge (Ukraine coming from the Polish for ‘edge’ or ‘corner’) before being swallowed up by the Empire. He insulted the tsar and church, and was an active pan-Slav (campaigning for a federation of Slavic peoples, many who were under the feudal bootheels of the Ottoman Turks or Austrian Hapsbergs), so definitely an internationalist as opposed to nationalist, but his peons to the beauty of his homeland definitely fed an emerging nationalism of which Drudkh could be argued to be the latest manifestation.

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought for a free Ukraine in the Second World War and unenviably found themselves caught between the rock and hard place of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, to a degree they played both factions fairly skillfully, often co-operating with the Waffen SS against the Red Army, and the ethics of their methods are perhaps not for us to pass judgement on. The Eastern Front was a whole other sticky, bloody mess of divided loyalties and lesser evils compared to the relatively tranquil ‘gentlemanly war’ being waged in Western Europe. But what we can pass damning judgment on is that the Ukraine they fought for was defined purely on ethnic lines where clear ethnic lines didn’t necessarily exists – especially as the would-be nation had formed part of a union with Poland and Lithuania for centuries, and then the Russian Empire. And so the Ukrainian Insurgent Army made good their effort to create an ‘ethnic Ukraine’ in the time honoured tradition, one that Bosnian Serb premier turned oddball mystic Radovan Karadžić currently sits in the dock for in the Hague, by the wholesale massacre and expulsion of Poles from their territory. Between 1943 and 1944 between 80-100,000 Poles were murdered, at least 50,000 in one region alone where the Insurgent Army commander Dmytro Klyachkivsky ordered “We should undertake the great action of the liquidation of the Polish element. As the German armies withdraw, we should take advantage of this convenient moment for liquidating the entire male population in the age from 16 up to 60 years. We cannot lose this fight, and it is necessary at all costs to weaken Polish forces. Villages and settlements laying next to the massive forests, should disappear from the face of the earth.”

Stepan Bandera himself exemplified that pragmatic attitude to the Germans perfectly, his declaration of Ukrainian independence could be argued to kowtow to Nazi interests as a matter of survival - the proclamation announcing that the new state "will work closely with the National-Socialist Greater Germany, under the leadership of its leader Adolf Hitler which is forming a new order in Europe and the world", briefly gaining Gestapo protection before German enthusiasm waned and he was set to a concentration camp. When it came to the Poles, like his organisations military wing he was far less ambigious, saying, "[Russians], Poles, Jews are hostile to us must be exterminated in this struggle, especially those who would resist our regime: deport them to their own lands, importantly: destroy their intelligentsia"

Finally, as fans of the Griffin defence will be proud to note, the Conservative Revolutionary party of Weimar Germany did indeed hate the Nazis, and their leader was offed in the Nazi regime’s first act of state terror in 1933 – the Night of the Long Knives. But this wasn’t for particularly saintly reasons, but because the militaristic, liberal-hating, antisemitic Conservative Revolutionaries were a threat to the Nazi monopoly over the Far Right, being an outspoken part of Hitler's right wing coalition. The difference between the two being the classic political conflict between crass, unsubtle populists (the National Socialists) and largely middle class, educated elite (the Conservative Revolutionaries).

At this point it feels like saying Drudkh’s politics are open to interpretation is a bit more generosity than they really deserve.