Labels: Relapse
Review by: Alex Deller
My second attempt at reviewing this goddamn thing, maybe this time around I won’t make such a hamfisted bodge job. Personally, I have my doubts.
The premise is thus: find two current hot properties in the world of musical extremity, take them back through the whirling time tunnel to an age when they were spotty-faced be-mulletted teens and ask them to raid their record collections, dig out some Earache Records cuties and cover the bastards. Then press onto handsome lucozade-coloured vinyl and get Aaron Turner to knock out some suitable artwork. Kablam.
Isis play a reasonably faithful version of ‘Streetcleaner’ by Godflesh, all thick-as-tar guitar pummel and industrial beats, a monolithic dirge-song which could probably drive you and me both into the ground with no effort at all. My impression: thud thud, kaka-chack cha! Thud, thud. Kacka-chack cha! Add some barely recognisable deep-throated growls and hopefully you’ll be there. Not bad at all.
Pig Destroyer crank out some early Carcass ditties, ditching the Ag Nosebleed complexities and trekking back to the primeval days of grind. This means how-low-can-you-go guitars playing mushy, buzzing riffs, machinegun drumming and desperately unpleasant vom-vox that most likely recount tales of invalids shitting out their own innards before violating the dead.
If this sounds appealing then you’ll probably like it. If, on the other hand, you’re looking at me as though I’ve stumbled wild-eyed and naked into your living room, dragging a dead dog on a length of coarse rope then I guess you won’t.