This brutal little offering turned up on deadline day but it was one that was pretty easy to sink the teeth into, so it was up for a quick evisceration to make this batch of reviews. It is hardly a case of rocket science from these Spaniards as they play zombie infatuated grindcore and after all, unless you live in a retarded world (spurred on by Hollywood remakes) one aspect of this moves incredibly slowly and the other somewhat faster. Although having been around since 2003 this is Nashgul (which is possibly the sound a Spanish zombie makes when it bites you) are only just releasing this (translated as) ‘The Day After The End Of Humanity’ as a debut album. They do have plenty of splits behind them, as is the way of the honest grind band as well as a best of compilation so you may have encountered them before.
This is not grind of the blink and you miss a few songs variety and the album has 19 tracks in just under 27 minutes giving you a bit of time to lick those festering wounds. The title track is a nice apocalyptic intro with samples of humanities demise before ‘Horofobia’ piles in kicking and screaming. You can tick the Napalm Death and Repulsion boxes quite happily but I do find this diverse with some songs sung in Spanish and others in English vocals are low and incredibly gruff at times and really do sound like unintelligible living dead speak; the same vocalist Santi is also on hand to launch out some higher parts too. As we splatter onwards ‘Cremated Remains’ gets some English as well as some nice crusty guitar dissing with room for a few grooves to breathe amongst the mental ferocious parts of the song. It also climaxes with a great Dawn Of The Dead sample, which is fully approved of. ‘La Plaga’ is certainly at the punk end of things too and cadaverous vocals spur this one forward until a solid battery of drums sees contagion completely overtaking any humanity left.
As any fan of end of world cinema knows its not just zombies roaming about in post nuclear holocaust flicks. The band also pay homage to some other great films. The half way mark sees an instrumental which should need no introduction by name as ‘Mad Max II’ and the Road Warrior is acknowledged by some down-tuned, stoned out guitar blues. The speed belts back in for another character from the wasteland ‘Snake Plissken’ with lyrics recounting the plot of ‘Escape From New York.’ After a sample that is kind of given away no matter what your knowledge of Spanish is, we are back with the living dead on ‘El Dis De Los Muertos.’ This is actually slow for a while with really nasty gargled vocals before flesh is sniffed and the chow down is feasted on in all its gory glory.
This is not the most original album you will ever hear but there is actually a surprising amount of diversity to be found. It is also a splatter movies wet dream of an album (blood, not spunk I hasten to add) and there is geek fun aplenty to be found within its bowels. So in conclusion the best thing I can say is ‘El Dia Despues Al Fin De La Humanidad’ does exactly what it says as it rips off your skin!
http://www.myspace.com/nashgul
http://www.myspace.com/poweritupofficial
