I caught this German band a couple of years ago at our annual London Deathfest and remembered them as soon as I pulled the CD out the envelope. This is their fourth full length and every one sees fewer songs on it despite similar running time, very much suggesting that the group are placing more emphasis on the death and less on the grind. This is very much the impression I got on playing it although to be fair there are certainly grind aspects rearing their head as we progress. I guess the band have matured their sound and want to put a bit more substance to it, which with the production along with the requisite volume levels that one must adhere to when playing this is very solid indeed.
Ploughing in with all instruments at full force on ‘Stillborn Paradise’ there is pretty much no letting up for the whole of the CD. Vocals from Christoph Mieves are low and growl out of the mix around the instrumentation which unravels with harmonious leads and violent drum pummelling. There is a headless corpse on the album cover and a cleaver on the back, this is rather like the sort of soundtrack to brutality one would expect to go with one of the new breed of torture heavy horror films where life is all too cheap. There is simply a slight break of a second in the drum barrage from one song to the next and we are flung headlong into the title track which strums and grooves along at an unmerciful pace. A few stop /starts are handled nicely as the band drop it all on a dime and bounce straight back in. The words, smash, mutilate, chew and spit out spring to mind and could easily go along with ‘Beyond Recognition’ some of the underlying harmony here brings to mind Morbid Angel and this is certainly no bad thing at all. It’s incredibly difficult not to whiplash your neck or play giddy air guitar along to this. Speaking of giddy guitars there are times when Hate Factor, Torture Chamber axeman Jan Pelser really gets carried away and lays out some grinding, winding carnage which really goes on a garrotting mission and neatly decapitates all around it.
There is certainly a noticeable amount of technicality on display here but it is kept at just the right levels without a hint of things turning into a wankfest. The other good thing is that this is old style death and grind and other purists sick to the back teeth of the newcorebreed have nothing to worry about here. All in all this provides a great 42 minute muscle flexing workout, which as I currently write this is no doubt going down in a bruising storm at Deathfeast Open Air. It might be a case of doing what it says on the coffin but with Grind Inc doing it, any other way would just be daft!
http://www.myspace.com/grindinc666
http://www.bastardizedrecordings.de
