In a rare moment of optimism, I chose to hold out hope for a band who’d decided to call themselves ‘Slugcrust’. Why? Maybe I just felt that they might be suitably icky? Ultimately my needs aren’t met, but they at least get plus points for pulling in a slightly different direction. The band play a crusty but coherent form of grind, one that knows its way around the early Earache catalogue and has probably watched more than a handful of Fiesta Grande live sets on YouTube. Things blister at the edges and there’s a lolloping quality to the riffs that skirts a fine line between primitive and basic. For some reason I’m minded of Godstomper and Hewhocorrupts, neither of whom I’ve listened to in at least a decade so the comparison could be way off base. It’s all sturdy if somewhat uneventful, and while I’d be hard-pushed to recommend it I would still be inclined to check in with the band later on to see if they manage to harness their incipient weirdness and twist their grindcore into a weirder, wilder form.
