REVIEW: MARYLAND DEATHFEST: THE MOVIE (HANDSHAKE INC)

It's a bit cleaner and a bit hairier, and a bit death metal, but Maryland Deathfest is the Atlantic answer to Obscene Extreme – founded after the organisers of the former spent a summer at the latter. For a European, it's more than a little frustrating to know that there's something every bit as awesome as the gasmask-filled Czech spectacular, but with an effective £700 entrance fee and a seven hour queue in the air separating us.

This isn't an unfamiliar situation. The vast majority of kids in the UK at least who got into sick mosh in the early '00s owed the kind of immense debt to Hellfest and New England Metal & Hardcore Fest DVDs that preceding generations credited to Peel Sessions and Bleeeeeurgh! Comps – without them we wouldn't have been given the visual clues that it wasn't okay to like Eighteen Visions and Atreyu anymore, or have accidentally skipped from watching The Promise or Shai Hulud clips for the thirteenth time and happened upon something totally new. Intimately and expertly filmed footage (sound by Scott Hull, amazingly, and co-production by Richard Johnson, equally amazingly) of an array of bands too staggering good to list without completely overshadowing every other word on this page, and sometimes awkwardly rambling interviews conducted by Landmine Marathon's likeable growler Grace Perry, there's a refreshing hint of good natured irony throughout – the opening talking heads that basically consist of two kids enthusiastically going “Fuck...man, fuck...Asphyx” over and over again are a triumph of inanity.

'Maryland Deathfest: The Movie' is not only bitter pornography for the teary cry-wank of anyone unable to go, but by all rights should occupy the same space in a young crusty's musical evolution as those aforementioned mosh-aids.

BAND OF THE DAY: CAP DE CRANIU

Continuing the Romanian deathcore theme that absolutely nobody wanted, let alone demanded, Bucharest brutalists Cap de Craniu, which means something like 'skull head', lurch from technically salivating grindcore riffs, the sort that Cephalic Carnage have to knock back a few strong cups of coffee to record, to unashamed chest-beating Despised Icon-brand mosh metal. It's hard to be cynical about deathcore when it comes from countries deprived major label marketing campaigns and hideous tour packages with florescent logos – when you take away the bullshit that taints music with insincerity, people just compose what they think sounds awesome, and that's an heartwarmingly simple ethic that Cap de Craniu have clutched to their chests.

Their only solid, physical output so far is 2007's 'First EP for Surgery' and they've been working on a full-length on and off since. Live, the tracks absolutely hammer like, er, skulls being cracked together or some obvious and boring metaphor of that predictable ilk.

REVIEW: SPIRITUAL RAVISHMENT 'CHILDREN OF THE ATOM' (AXA VALAHA)

It's an embarrassing conceit that Romania is some sort of peasant hinterland untouched by soya lattes, wi-fi internet and personal hygene, not helped in the slightest by its few appearances in our consciousness coming via 'and finally...' stories about fortune tellers. Transylvanian four-piece Spiritual Ravishment are from Oradea, right on the Hungarian border, and they're getting right up in your grills with modernity, cranking out what is ostensibly mosh-fuelled thoroughbred deathcore, with the driving mechanical riffage of post-Gothenberg death/thrash jabbing at you on second track 'Hectic' like an unnecessary piece of flying glass in a 3D movie.

All of that admittedly sounds absolutely dreadful on paper – deathcore, like shitty action movies, are difficult to describe without assuming your reader has adjusted their expectations to something beefy and breakdown heavy that tickles the animal parts of the brain untouched by crosswords and logic puzzles. And if this is a shitty action movie for a beer-fuelled Friday night, it's a post-apocalyptic one.

REVIEW: FACTION DISASTER 'SMOKING SHERM WITH COREY HAIM'S CORPSE' (GIVE PRAISE)

“Recorded live in our homey Justin's living room through a plume of blunt smoke and gallons of wine on September 22nd,” as the band have it, the results certainly favour that take on this disc's origins as being a raw burst of spontaneous hardcore-caked grind, with the slightest noisy whiff of Last Days of Humanity in the gurgling, drain-circling rattle. 'Smoking Sherm...' (which you can download for free, amazingly), the debut album from a filthy little Michigan duo Faction Disaster who seem thoroughly in love with cassettes, is music to skank drunkely alone to amid the flickering lights and reek of stale piss of a desolate motorway underpass.

BAND OF THE DAY: SYSTEM FUCKER

It's easy to descend into thinly veiled Orientalism when talking about how mysterious Japanese bands are, as if the yellow man is inherently unknowable or inscrutable or whatever else writers of 19th Century pulp detective fiction liked to hammer out to further the plot through prejudice. Yes, it's true, we know precious little about noisy d-beat bastards System Fucker, but that's because they don't seem bothered about getting anything down in English. It's not even a low prioty, it's just not a priory at all which is why appreciation of Japanese hardcore is such a diehard interest – it's the musical equivilent of fansubbed anime episodes, at least in the era before it was everywhere and chubby white kids were happily dressing as Sailor Moon at weekends.

Some truly apocalyptic noise abounds on their self-titled EP (and no doubt also on their forthcoming split with the honestly monikered D-Clone), it's mined from the familiar, as is painfully obvious from one look at these posturing postcard punks, but it's ramped up to impossibly clattery levels, taking a Shitlickers cover well beyond its initial battery into whole new territory of harshness.

AGATHOCLES POP OUT OF YOUR CHRISTMAS STOCKING

Because that's what you really want isn't it? The legends of politically aware old school grindpunk, or 'mincecore' if you're a feverish accumulator of redundant genres, have been added to the second Lille Winter Grindfest (alongside the utterly vital Blockheads and Idiot Convention, among others), held December 16 to 17 in Lille, Northern France - a couple of hours from the ferry terminal if you're coming from the UK. Given how little Agathocles seem to play compared to how much tat they release, you really should be there.

Make sure I eat this time, instead of sicking up Leffe everywhere.

BAND OF THE DAY: SWAMP THING

It's tempting to try and make sweeping generalisations about Richmond, Virginia and the kind of bands who dwell therein, but then you remember it's also the home of Lamb of God and GWAR so it's not exactly a DIY thrash-punk paradise, no matter how often those bros mow their own lawns or whatever. Close your eyes and stick on Swamp Thing though, this thrashy, swaggering five-piece have made music to rage hard to since 2006 (I think) and the spittle-flecked sheer conviction of their delivery will help your worldview adjust to the idea that RVA is like the set of Repo Man. Swampies' 2009 full-length 'In Shame' was like an anime Hatebreed prequel, all jump cuts and flashing lights supported by meathead chugging and fistpump-along lyrics, and their new 7” EP on 6131 Records isn't short of the beefy grooves either – stream in here and take your shirt off.

Back when American Nightmare roamed the earth, every crucial underground hardcore band sounded like this – and now they probably don't, so go listen to Swamp Thing and floorpunch your way through the day.

VALIDATE ME AND MY OPINIONS

I'm normally loath to do this and appear a total hustler, but I've got a few bits of writing out there in the world right now. In fact enough of a volume for me to seriously encourage you to check it out.

Decibel #78 features a bit of mad-love for Kevin Sharp-fronted dad punks Primate and Finnish grindcore powerhouse Rotten Sound. Trap Them and Drugs of Faith are in there too, though have nowt to do with me other than being brilliant, like me. It's probably full of Jonathan Horsley too and he's pretty much my favourite writer EVER, Good issue, yeah? Buy it, yeah?

Metal Hammer (April 2011) has a pretty lengthy Deicide piece written by my good self. I spent a lot of time agonising over this one, not least because there're more than enough Deicide features out there, all dully combing over the same tedious ground, and because it was my first cover for the lovely Subterranea bit at the back. This is a genuine piece of history and will be worth a fortune when I have my own media empire, so get it.

I really love seeing my name in print, and I hate almost everything I write until I get the finished copy, open it as a reader and think, 'Yeah, this is alright actually'. Hopefully you'll agree, otherwise I've just coerced you into wasting nearly a tenner.

BAND OF THE DAY: DEAD TO A DYING WORLD

A band for long train journeys through a desolate rural wilderness with your face pressed sleepily against the drizzle-streaked window, Dallas, Texas  seven-piece Dead to a Dying World play epic blackened doom/crust with dual male/female vocals, cello, upright bass and all the usual band ephemera. Each song on their three-(long)-song debut (mixed by Kylesa guitarist/vocalist Phillip Cope) sounds like one of those time lapsed clips of stormclouds streaming omniously over the tops of trees, you can stream it on their bandcamp or pre-order the luscious double-LP package from the brilliantly named Tofu Carnage.

There's no shortage of epic crust with classical influences, or indeed ecologically aware bands prepared to adopt the musical conventions of black metal and inject some contemporary resonance to their lust for striking landscape, but rarely do they sound as monstrous and elemental as this, which is every bit as monstrous and elemental as their name.

INTERVIEW: KEIJO NIINIMAA RECALLS ROTTEN SOUND'S RECORDING NIGHTMARE AND THE EARLY DAYS OF FINNISH GRINDCORE

'Cursed' may be a fairly generic title, but it's at least an apt one for the new disc from Finnish blastmasters Rotten Sound.

“I haven't been listening to it too much any more,” explains vocalist Keijo Niinimaa shortly after they handed in the finished disc to the label. “I gave it a couple of plays when we got it done. It was more unusual because we mixed it twice, for some reasons.”

Mixed by Entombed's Nico Elgstrand to bring that rumbling, rock-fall guitar sound to the fore, he was largely left to his own devices at the desk while Rotten Sound found themselves distracted by a series of live engagements– the end result being an album that the band weren't entirely happy with.

“We tried to do it over the internet, with emails and files sent back and forth,” he continues, “and of course Nic was much more into it than we were. So basically we started on the wrong foot, we didn't start it the right way – getting the whole band in the studio and sitting down with the producer and discuss this thing, and mix the rest of the songs from that. Nico was doing a good thing, there were no real complaints – it was just different.”

One would imagine trying to explain things to someone from a band you grew up worshipping to be quite difficult, apparently not:

“It wasn't really difficult, things were really straight forward in communication. Some of the things were also our fault, so we were really, really open. I was trying to tell Nico what the other guys were saying, what I got from the others. The way we communicate is so straight forward, we were more wondering how we got here and trying to explain to him without really knowing the right terminology, because none of us are really sound engineers. Add to that English isn't our mother tongue, so with that to write what we do like and we don't like, have this and that more... I actually ended up flying to Sweden. So I spent a couple of days with Nico where we finalised the first mix, there we were discussing the production and thought it would have been so nice to do it differently. Even then we felt that the four of us had our moment in the studio and we were really tired, we weren't that satisfied with the mix but we didn't dare say it at that point because we had already delayed the schedule.”

Aside from Nico's instantly recognisable Entombed crunch that makes the new album a real blow to the eardrums, 'Cursed' also features the volcanic rumble of a certain LG Petrov.

“I met him a couple of times before, we played some shows together with Rotten Sound and it was easy to get in touch with him through Nico,” recalls Keijo, “I didn't have his number, but I said to Nico one day in the studio, 'Could you call LG and ask him to do some vocals for the album?'. He'd been speaking about it but we weren't really sure if he could do it, or had the time for it, but we ended up spending a night in Stockholm, which was pretty cool!”

Infamous for their Nasum worship in the early days, and tipping the hat so blatantly to Swedish death metal royalty Entombed on this new disc, it's easy to pick up a certain level of Scandinavian pride on 'Cursed', especially as it's their first full-length for Relapse.

“I haven't thought about it that way,” he says after a pauce, rejecting any claims that they're 'representing' their corner of the globe. “We have released things in the US. 'Murderworks' was on Necropolis, but on Spinefarm we weren't really that well marketed in the US. They were great at putting us out there but it was still a smaller label than Relapse. I don't know if we're that much Scandinavian in our own minds, we're doing our own thing on our own ground. I guess we're picking up a lot of Scandinavian influences, but there's a lot of British grind and crust.”

Culturally and physically isolated (in many readings of 'Scandinavia', Finland isn't included – the core three being the tightknit linguistic family of Sweden, Denmark and Norway), Rotten Sound have always had to work that little bit harder to get noticed and to get out there.

“We're a bit of on our own,” he admits, “especially within the metal scene. But there's always been a pretty underground punk scene in Finland, I think it shows the geographical location that they don't really get that much outside of Finland, they're surrounded by sea and have to go over by Sweden so Europe is pretty far away. You have to fly just to play a show there, for instance. Touring is tough in the beginning and grindcore bands are not the most organised people. There's been a lot of Finnish hardcore, crust and punk since the '80s, I think we are more related to that scene, politically and in our mindset, than the metal scene, though we have a lot of metal influences in our sound with the grindcore too.

“I think I was a metalhead, but I'd been turning into some kind of hybrid of both. The first bands I really liked were mostly Finnish new wave bands and those were more punk than the British new wave, but then I got Iron Maiden, after that, Metallica, Slayer, Death, Napalm Death... Extreme Noise Terror made a good impression to all of us. Me and Mika [Alto, guitar] were playing at that time in the same band, basically Extreme Noise Terror and Napalm Death were the reason we formed this band. It was a quite natural change from softer stuff like Metallica and Slayer.

“I was really listening to more metal than punk, even when I listen to punk it was more... metally punk, more metal production like the Swedish bands. Disfear, Wolfbrigade, or Wolfpack, and bands like that. Skitsystem as well, but it was their last album I liked more than the punk, so even there I'm picking up more of a metal vibe. Our guitarist Mika used to be a really hardcore punk but he is also turning to this sort of production worshipping thing, when he is playing with his gear and thinking about how it sounds with his guitar, you'll notice that he is putting a lot of effort into making sure... well, it's his own sound, but it's kind of recognisable even in grind. I can recognise, for instance, Mika and then Brian from Trap Them, they have similar influences but it's different, it's their own sound.”

Having toured with Trap Them previously, they'll be doing so again in the UK in April – as one of the much hyped bands able to bring a crusty, skull-rattlingly raw sound to people who'd otherwise be listening to, oh, some shit nobody really cares about, what does the increased interest in this asthetic mean for Rotten Sound and where has it come from?

“I would imagine that they've realised there's more to music than just playing really technical stuff,” Keijo muses. “I don't think people who listen to Nile or Dying Fetus are turning to hardcore bands, but people who listen to In Flames are realising that there's more to it than this. I'm not saying heavier, but different. Extreme is too weak a word, but people are looking for a wide range – if you take an Opeth record, they have everything in there and I can listen to Opeth even when it's not my favourite. I can listen to Nomeansno, but then I'm more interested in playing one genre. Grind is really intense and concise, people who have seen us live for the first time have said that we're so honest in what we do – and that's what I like in grindcore bands, and we try and tour with bands like this.”

Returning to Keijo's own musical journey, Rotten Sound emerged in 1993 from from the same Finnish death metal scene that produced the feverishly devoured and retrospectively hyped likes of Demilich and Demigod, taking the right hand path into more punk-orientated territory.

“We used to have another band called Vomiturition, that was death metal, we started with the first Finnish wave of death metal bands. That was pre-Rotten Sound, so we used to play with bands like Sentenced and Amorphis, Xysma and Disgrace. Xysma and Disgrace were a grindcore band – I don't know how internationally recognised they were at the time. They were really popular at one point and then they turned into rock 'n' roll bands and everything sounded rock 'n' roll then, and that was the time we formed Rotten Sound because Vomiturition was going that way too and we felt, 'Lets try out this death 'n' roll thing and see how it works'. When we started to play we played mostly with crust bands in Finland, bands like Selfish and Amen and Forca Macabra, and we were playing punk shows mostly.

“At some point we started to do more metal stuff and that was the point we started to play with more metal bands. Nowadays... I don't know, in Finland there isn't much of a grindcore scene as such, there is a few bands, but usually all of the promoters are mixing up the line-up a little bit.”

As far as mixed line-ups go, they don't get more diverse, yet aesthetically unified, than the Czech Republic's Obscene Extreme, the home of all things nasty and filthy.

“Yeah, very much,” he enthuses of his excitement for getting back. “It's our fourth time. We get a good response there and in the Czech Republic in general, they've always liked us and they really know their grind. The scene seems bigger than normal and Obscene Extreme has really helped in that because Curby has done such a good job in making it the house festival. There's a warm feeling at the festival, you'll notice that it's very peaceful considering there's lots of people totally intoxicated and having fun. It's crazy, I've been sitting there at the amphitheatre that they usually have and there's band after band with ten minute change overs, and you can sit there for hours watching grindcore bands play after each other – some say it gets boring, but it doesn't! I can take an overdose of grind at Obscene Extreme!”

REVIEW: BURZUM 'FALLEN' (BYELOBOG)

It's interesting how prolific Varg Vikernes is now he has to pay his way again instead of mooching around at his majesty's pleasure, perfecting the soap flick with his toe to avoid bending down, and interesting how much of that music is rooted in his classic albums, ie, the 'black metal' he claimed to hate, now that unit shifting makes a difference. If his career wasn't dependant upon being so 'controversial', he'd probably have started recanting on his heinous politics in exchange for magazine coverage – but luckily he doesn't have to, he only has to allude to a shift in his worldview for people to keep projecting some sort of narrative onto his mediocre music.

While 2010's 'Belus' was deliberately provocative, the original 'White God' title released knowing the kind of furore it would receive, and the concept of a god's descent into the underground the sort of laughably transparent metaphor that teenage goths fill their blogs with, 'Fallen' isn't obviously a headline grabber or a declaration of his own messianic brilliance, but he has indicated that it's more personal and the title, 'Fallen', along with some of the song titles are teasingly reflective. That's more than enough to fill pages of print and avoid talking about the actual music - so chalk up one small victory for image management.

Superior to 'Belus' and less repetitive, it's nevertheless clear that as an active entity, Burzum has been outpaced by the bands he inspired – they don't sound nearly as old, creaky and confused. Hummable riffs, frantic tremolo frotting and better production are marred by some odd moments – the tinny galloping riffs of 'Budstikken' that are more reminiscent of My Little Pony-brand Finnish folk metal than anything genuinely menacing, Chinese restaurant instrumentals on the outro, and whispery mumbling and painful clean warbling throughout – that break the immersion in an otherwise convincing dose of folksy melancholy. 'Fallen' is neither the eagerly awaited second golden age of Burzum, nor an overhyped bag of shit –  it's just above average, unremarkable and devoid of any real lasting impression. The worst thing that could happen to Varg is just for people to not care, to dull the bright blue flame of interest to the point where he's neither a misunderstood genius, nor a dangerous racist nutbag – just another bedroom Viking selling t-shirts in runic fonts through his bigcartel. Another few albums like this and we'll be there.

REVIEW: NO GANG COLORS 'HONORARY COP' (GRINDCORE KARAOKE)

Driving right over to the cusp of unlistenable and then parking up there with their feet on the dashboard, cigarette smoke drifting lazily out of the window, and clearly not giving much a fuck, Gold Coast, Conneticut feedback fiends No Gang Colors take broad cues from Pig Destroyer and Agoraphobic Nosebleed, and deliver this second original EP (three other discs in their catalogue are pure remixes) with the raw, no-frills aggression of Man is the Bastard. One of the latest releases from J Randall's prolific download-label Grindcore Karaoke (get it here NOW NOW NOW), 'Honorary Cop's deliciously sludgy and discordant 'Streetcleaner'-inspired guitar sound like someone bashing on a static-filled oil drum filled with a steel bar drives the songs out over the aural detritus of samples and feedback squalls they force you to shift through in their four song, six minute power shot of harsh digi-powerviolence. As a bonus, the name is reminiscent of Randall's Twittergate exchange with the much hyped Nails over whether or not the singer is a cop - he isn't and they got all bent out of shape, so hopefully they'll think this is aimed at them. Fingers crossed, because that would be funny.

BAND OF THE DAY: UNDEAD CREEP

Featuring two of Sicilian death dealers Haemophagus, it's reasonably to wonder what the point is of yet another old school death metal knockabout from the same set of people. But, if anything, it's a sign of artistic credibility, and the reason why both bands are hella rad. While Haemophagus are all about the crusty gore of Autopsy, early Carcass and Impetigo, Undead Creep have brewed up a frostier blend of Stockholm worship, with the usual savage reference points of Dismember, Entombed and Nihilist, delivered with a clattery punk chaos and that genuine lust for primordial darkness that makes Haemophagus so undeniably evil.

The band's 2009 tape/CD-r demo was the absolute bizniz and their debut album, 'The Ever-Burning Torch', which is due June on CD through Dark Descent and LP through Iconoclast, is going to be insane.

BAND OF THE DAY: SAYYADINA

The first real exposure I had to SAYYADINA was when I grabbed a few titles from Sound Pollution, doing a new trade with them. This is straight-forward fast grindcore at it's best possible point. The music really fits together in a way that keeps it flowing at unimaginable speeds while maintaining a form of chaos and order that really blast through the speakers. I have never seen these folks live, but can only imagine what a live show must be with these blasters. They basically only have about a chunk of seconds every song to slow down a bit, and catch up with each other. The slower parts basically mean you will be getting some chunky bass and guitar lines, with a tinge of metal! Total grindcore - this pretty much sums it all up in a nice easy one-liner that you can write on you're news posts and reviews!

Sayyadina has had a CD released on Sound Pollution, which was then released on a LP by Nerve Altar. The most recent project was for a CD on Relapse.

BAND OF THE DAY: FRIGHTMARE

Gore grind - splatter grind are genres that can really go either way for me. It's either really good, or really bad, there are not that many middle of the road bands as far as gore grind is concerned, or what bands classify themselves as. A few bands really stick out: Machetazo, Gruesome Stuff Relish, Ghoul - but really my favorite would have to be FRIGHTMARE. I think really, the main part of enjoyment I get from Frightmare is that effective way of using old slasher and horror movie samples - Any band can put in a few samples over their music, but these splatter hounds do it in such a way that the ring of the guitar plays over the sample and you are soothed into a furious world of death, revenge, and blood stains that take weeks to get out of your clothes.

They also have a very pleasant way of bringing thrash metal, grind and even some blast beats all in one epic platter. There is really never too much of one genre that make up "splatter" grind... This I find, is usually my pet peeve in other bands that follow this formula. They over-play one thing or another and you are left bored.

Frightmare has had releases on Razorback Recordings and Torture Garden Picture Company.

REVIEW: FACIOUS KHAN 'BOMB IN MY GUT' (SELF RELEASED)

From the fine folks that bring you BREATHILIZOR, comes a very easy listening dose of noise, sometimes acoustic, two man music entourage. The vocals bring to mind Danny in The Shining, as he was doing the voice of the little boy that lived in his mouth. Screechy, and whiny that makes you want to believe what the masterful "Poopy Necroponde and FOOD" has to say! The lyrics range from the totally bizarre to somewhat trying to make a point, "let's not care about anything and eat cake!" The music is really a back-side to this particular demo, and does maintain a haunting air of mystery and wonder to the excited listener as they walk through this certain lair of horror and agony - The main focus would totally be on the vocals and voice effects that come naturally from you're speakers. The bowels of hell are alive and well and coming from my iTunes! Because as life presents itself, it is nice to leave you with this bit of advice... "I Don't Want to Know about Mowing Lawns, Raising Sheep, Washing Socks, I just Want to know about Drugs and Sleep."