[Artwork by Vicky “Liddo” Morales]
In a soak-your-underwear sweaty, tetanus-to-the-touch warehouse in the middle of Skid Row, Raw Addict played its first show. Weeks earlier, drummer Isaac made the irresistible sales pitch, stating that the multinational band connecting grind lifers was perhaps his favorite project — no small talk from someone with his distinguished discography of blast-addicted degeneracy. So, a handful of dedicated reprobates, along with a pack of Lord of the Flies children who wanted to bruise each other in the pit in between balloon hits, found themselves in a place that, under previous ownership, had been raided by the police, or so the ask-a-punk lore goes. Grime of all kinds, you say? Hard to ask for a better setting. Raw Addict made the most of it. Isaac blasted, Joe riffed and roared, and Vicky screeched while hip-checking people in front of the stage. (1. Because everyone in the band is listed on the records mononymously, I’ll stick with that since I am a man of the sickos. 2. Matt Rose, from Mephitic Corpse, played bass and is now in the band full-time…I think.) Nearly eight years since its first demo, when the fabled Sulfuric Cautery and Archagathus collabo became a recorded reality, here was the band tearing it up, proving it was even deadlier when all of the members were under one roof. And then, zzzzzzzpt, the power went out. Raw Addict was too much for the power grid.
Raw Addict is a lot in general. Recorded in 2019, although not released until 2025, Swarm Decomposition, the band’s debut full-length, overpowered the senses by keeping it OGier, scuzzier, and deathlier than an exhumed corpse, spewing the kind of classically noisome grind that sloshes around rotted coffins. It had the aura of an Agathocles demo, the flavor profile of a sewer. Apparently, it was too tidy. “This album was recorded back in 2019, immediately after Swarm Decomposition,” the Bandcamp liner notes for Raw Addict’s newest LP, Compulsion, state, “largely because the recording for that album was pretty for our standards and we wanted to follow it up with something dirtier and true to the spirit of the band.” The resulting document, then, is even more spirited, even scuzzier, but not quite as deathly, “embod[ying] raw crusty grindcore at its ugliest and angriest, with a few of the sickest Joe DM riffs thrown in as a treat.” You want a death metal treat? Beg.
Speaking of small but big differences, Compulsion also benefits from its “ugliest and angriest” brutishness. If Swarm Decomposition was a blunt instrument that crushed craniums better than an off-the-rails Midsommar cosplay, Compulsion is the mean maniac doing the swinging. It sees red like the most red-ass reliever running from the bullpen to rattle bones in the rhubarb. All of that ugly anger spills over everything, making Compulsion sound more like a melee than a carefully composed album.
Right, while it’s obvious everyone has supreme musical skills, as evident in other projects, tech grind this is not. Even when Raw Addict slows down, such as on “Blackened Ribcage,” the promised death metal bonbon, where Joe Altered States a riff that already dragged its knuckles, you can feel the band tensing itself to take off again, like a feral dog just waiting to get unclipped from the leash.
Compulsion maintains the sensation of sprinting through its 18 minutes, which is a good thing or a bad thing depending on your grind desires. Good: It’s thrilling, kinetic, like a subway car hurtling past a stop because it lost its brakes. Bad: The 17 tracks run together into a single, homogeneous experience. There’s something of a rise and fall throughout, not to mention an ongoing escalation of hostilities that provides a through line. Still, you won’t be blamed if it takes a few replays to realize that you have the album on repeat — your attention isn’t exactly demanded. In that case, Compulsion works better on vinyl because of the enforced side breaks. (It also sounds way better on vinyl, much like Mephitic Corpse’s Sickness Attracts Sickness, which I maintain is the only way to listen to that album.) If you want something that tells a story, a Prowler in the Yard or Inalienable Dreamless, this ain’t it. If you want something that’ll eviscerate your smoke break, take an inhale of that dart so deep that your brain goes zzzzzzzpt and enjoy.
Of course, I’ve got to say, Raw Addict’s true domain is the stage. In a sense, Compulsion is an exceedingly brutal promo for future tour stops, an infomercial for people who’d probably buy Faces of Death keepsakes on QVC. The visceralness of the blast is as important as the riffs, which is something that the band itself recognizes: “ONLY TO BE LISTENED TO AT EXTREME VOLUMES,” the Blast Addict Bandcamp pointed out. So, turning Compulsion up is a must, a way to capture the Maxell ad qualities of what Raw Addict offers. But adding iconic, echoic, and even tactile memory to the equation is an, ahem, EXTREME SUGGESTION. The second time I saw Raw Addict was at a punk house with a working outhouse in the middle of the patio. It had plumbing! It didn’t have lights! You’d have to turn on your phone’s flashlight lest you earn the name “Pissboy” for the rest of your show-going life. All the while, a thick cloud of tobacco and weed wafted in through the vents. “This is perfect,” I thought, the right setting for a grind show. I was right. Inside the dark space where one could stand on decaying couches to get a better view, Raw Addict ripped. And, wouldn’t you know it, I can still feel that when Compulsion plays.
