God Mother – Obeveklig Review

Fast Rites: because sometimes brevity is fundamental.

Our beloved, or reviled depending on your opinion of puns, Andrew Edmunds has started an exceptional new column for us called Blast Rites. He has treated us to several phenomenal grind releases that you should be sure to read up on if you haven’t already. But, he’ll be the first to tell you that he prefers his grind to be smattered in gore and rooted in death metal more often than not. God Mother is here to remind you that there is more than one way to grind the skin off of a cat…or something like that.

The genre has expanded its scope pretty significantly over the past two decades. The tag can by aptly applied to the weird screeching madness of Homeskin that sounds like a pigstuck creature from The Mist or it can help describe ATKA, which sounds like a computer algorithm told to make a grindcore album out of the discography of The Dillinger Escape Plan. God Mother’s EP Obeveklig isn’t quite as out there as either of those two bands, but its origins lie more in Converge at their most hostile than they do in Napalm Death or Pig Destroyer.

The band’s obtuse nature is immediately apparent when the nine-minute release opens with a track that accounts for more than a third of its runtime. “Host Body” treats us to feedback and an ugly bass tone before eventually getting Dillinger weird for a stretch and later utilizing brief glimmers of groove to keep you locked in. “Teething” and “K_ttkrop” aim for a more atonal rhythmic assault for the former and the whirring death knell of a robot for the latter.

There are elements of punk laced throughout and naturally, those are most apparent on the closing track called “Di$ney Money.” There’s an upbeat circle-pit nature to the rhythm coupled with long-held guitar notes that the vocalist is screaming over like he’s sermonizing. Hell, there even seem to be maracas in a couple of parts.

There are no hard feelings if you’re a death grind or die kind of person, but if you don’t mind bands that sit on the fringe and play with the definition of the genre, God Mother might just be for you.