Blast Rites: Sulfuric Cautery – Killing Spree Review

If you’re one of those poor, unfortunate souls who can’t get into grindcore because “it’s just nonstop blasting and grunts” and “the songs fly by so fast it all blurs together,” then… well, Sulfuric Cautery is probably not for you. That’s okay – we can still be friends. But as far as reading this is concerned, you can turn back now – your princess is in another castle.

Now a decade into their hypergoregrinding run, Sulfuric Cautery has survived a cross-country move (from Dayton, OH, to Los Angeles) and an almost complete line-up overhaul (human tornado Isaac Horne remains behind the drums). Killing Spree is their third full-length, following up on the damned-near mandatory pairing of Chainsaws Clogged With The Underdeveloped Brain Matter Of Xenophobes in 2019 and Suffocating Feats Of Dehumanization in 2023. In addition to those, of course, there have been a barrage of splits and shorter releases, many of which were handily compiled into the Subsequent Torture Sessions release just a few months ago. They’re heavily influenced by Last Days Of Humanity (as we all should be, says the keyboard warrior wearing a Last Days Of Humanity shirt at this very moment), and that is to say that they’re fast, almost inhumanly so (see the human tornado comment above), and they’re filthy, and gurgly, and gross, and raw as hell, and they rule.

Killing Spree doesn’t change any of those attributes, thankfully – but it does both sharpen the band’s attack a bit, and devolve it in another manner. To the former point, the riffing and the writing is a noticeable bit more technical, with turn-on-a-dime stops and shifts often punctuated with syncopated, almost jazzy beats that very quickly turn back into hammering blasts. The arrangements are more intricate than the full-on poundings of previous releases. At nearly nine minutes, closing track “Millions Of Slobbering Rats Devouring Their Blasted Out Brains” is almost progressive, longer than most grindcore EPs on its own. More importantly than the technicality, though, is that Sulfuric Cautery continues to deliver a positively primal pummeling, twenty-one songs in twenty two-minutes. Sandwiched between the likes of “Disemboweled With Shit Stuck In Their Mouths” and “Slobbering Rats,” there’s much to love about the absolutely savage “Murder Suicide,” the curiously titled “Bourgeois Historiography,” and the almost (by relative standards) groovy title track.

To the latter point above, the production on Killing Spree is somehow even more harsh than those of its predecessors, the crusty ick rolled off to give the guitars a fuzzier, midrange-y bite. This is still raw – have no fear that Sulfuric Cautery has gone easy listening – but it’s a different raw, a harsher and noisier type of ugly. I do find myself wishing that the guitars had back some of that thick filthiness, but overall, the noisiness is not a dealbreaker, by any stretch.

As soon as I heard a new Sulfuric Cautery was coming, I’ve been biding my time, predicting that this would be one of the grindcore albums to beat in 2025. Now that it’s here, I’ll stand by that prediction. Alongside the likes of Trauma Bond, Type: Armor Unit, and Meth Leppard – each one a different type of madness, and yet each a grand grinding in its own right – Killing Spree simply kills, twenty-two minutes of relentless hyperblasting happiness, a little sharper, a little harsher, and a whole lot of hell yes.