Blast Rites: Deterioration / Traffic Death – Split

A few months back, I waxed poetic rambled semi-coherently about how much fun it is, as a grindcore fanboy, when a split comes along from two bands you love. That particular enthusiastic word-barrage was in regards to the Deterioration / Trucido split that snuck out at the end of 2022, and that one’s still a hell of a banger, if you’re so inclined… but that’s not the topic at hand today.

Today we’re going to talk about how I’ll be damned if Deterioration didn’t go and do it again.

This time, our Minnesotan heroes are splitting the savagery with Iowan crossover cretins Traffic Death, another favorite bunch of Midwestern malcontents for me, and one whose manic metal is a perfect foil for Deterioration’s raw-and-ripping grindcore. Opening with some “cautionary” drug dialogue from a classic Dragnet episode, Deterioration’s half is six songs in ten minutes, from the blistering “Hallucinogenic Disease” through the chopping stomp of “With Great Hatred And Violence” to the Wayne’s World-sampling “Weird White Eye For The Rest Of Your Life” and the closing cover of Warsore’s “Stop Posing And Kill Someone.” Each is exactly what any and every Deterioration fan wants – Jim Kahmann grunts and shrieks, churning out chunky downstroked riffs atop a frantic battery from his brother Joe. There are no surprises, no left turns, no experimentation; there is only Deterioration, classic slash-and-burn grindcore from a band that always delivers.

On the opposite side comes the crossover, as I mentioned above. Traffic Death’s frantic chattering thrash harks back to Pacific Northwestern punks The Accüsed, both in terms of their fast and frantic thrashing and Nate Phillips’ goblin-with-strep-throat snarl. and also in terms of their irreverent attitude and love for B-movie splatter. Bookended with two instrumental synth tracks tailor-made for any number of the direct-to-VHS movies of my youth, “Brain Eating Bacteria” bounces in with a bashing, rollicking for an almost epic-length four full minutes, winding up with a lengthy semi-shreddy solo from guitarist Corbin Richards. “I Don’t Feel Shit” and “Early Hours” make up for the excessive length of “Bacteria,” as neither cracks a full minute, both short and sharp shocks of pure energy, followed by the ripping “Mechanically Separated.” Also six songs in ten minutes (although two of the former and three-and-a-half of the latter are dedicated to those synth bits), Traffic Death’s half of this split is equally gnarly, just approaching the warp-speed tempos and punk-metal attitude from the other side of things. (Quite literally, actually, it turns out.)

So there’s the score, fellow fans of the fast and loud: Two great bands, ten inches of vinyl, twelve tracks, twenty minutes, unquantifiable fun. Physical copies are available at Traffic Death’s Bandcamp – digital copies available at the links above, of course. (I got lucky and scored one of the “die-hard” editions, which comes with that lovely album art screen-printed on a canvas pouch for the vinyl and sleeve.)

There’s not much else to say: Make your way on over to wherever you’d like to get yourself a listen. Turn it up. Let the nice bands knock your noggin off.