Synopsis: Punkrock grindcore that even hints at black metal…
I could only find their pic on their label site, so I am flying utterly blind, here, but I think what we have is some vicious South American grind so close to its roots it can almost go any of those three ways. It’s played with pure punk abandon and immediacy, recorded with a massive wall of guitar sound that denotes the best old deathgrind, and written with enough actual melody to hint at the blackness. One thing you can normally count on from our South American friends is that they play their shit close to the bone. No fucking around, very little pretense, just looking for the spurting blood and the rending tissue. And Bolesno Grinje is a band that rips, tears and plays so well you forget about genre, origin and really anything but whether all the gore they cover you in will cause an infection.
The songwriting is somewhere between the first Brutal Truth and a touch of Pig Destroyer. These are not 45 second blasts by any means, but fleshed out and fully realized compositions. They don’t rely on blasting much, instead going for the stepped up speed metal tempo of a Napalm Death. And this really works for the band, as their slashing guitars have room to breath and the melody gets a chance to get into your neck. The singer is a full roarer, and the band gangs without ever resorting to hardcore cliché’. The musicianship is not spectacular, but this is not technical music, so it’s appropriate.
The recording is a wall of sound, but not thick like Nasum. It’s a natural sounding record which lends an extra immediacy to the experience. Combined with the fleshed out writing this is how the band gets a little blackness in the mix. It’s a distorted, relentless sound that lets the group get the blood racing. But it’s mastered so that you can hear everything you need to. A paradoxically nifty trick.
The bottom line is that this is a record that spins through you like a shiruken thrown by the six million dollar man. It keeps your interest with varied songwriting and instantaneous performance. It doesn’t pander, it doesn’t pretend. It just kills shit. I don’t know what the hell else you can ask of a grind record.
