This is part 3 of our annual Missing Pieces series, when we cover stuff we dig that we missed upon initial release. Part 1 can be viewed here, and part 2 can be viewed here. Enjoy!
DEGENERATE SYNAPSE – BATTLE FOR THE MIND
released February 3; independent
Since each of us is a perfect, beautiful snowflake, there are nearly infinite ways someone might describe Degenerate Synapse. Nevertheless, I feel relatively confident saying that, even if you put ten thousand of us monkeys in front of ten thousand typewriters, we’d compose a pentameter-precise Hamlet sooner than any of us would describe Degenerate Synapse (and their debut LP Battle for the Mind) as “chill.” This Chicago quartet plays the sort of grind-heavy death metal that seemed much more prevalent in the early/mid-00s than it does now, but there’s nothing particularly anachronistic about Battle for the Mind. Still, if you get a little tingly-tangly in your dingly-danglies for Misery Index and Cephalic Carnage, early Willowtip standouts like Crowpath and Commit Suicide, or even Pig Destroyer circa Terrifyer, Degenerate Synapse is barking right up your tree. The album’s title track is a neat microcosm of the band’s many strengths, switching on a dime between stout, thrashy riffing, spidery, grinding fret runs, mosh-inciting breakdowns, a tastefully nasty solo from guitarist Stephan Jurgovan, and a lurching, spaced-out breakdown that culminates in a frenzied solo run from bassist Dylan Piskula. Each song is lockstep-tight, but the band peppers the brew liberally with unexpectedly deft touches, like the neatly ominous Hanneman-King harmonized lead on bass and guitar in the last few seconds of “Nauseous at the Altar.” The only real breathing room the band offers across these 27 minutes is the surprisingly lovely acoustic instrumental “Bizarre Ritual,” because the rest of Battle for the Mind is a supremely good time for getting down with filthy bad vibes. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]
CRIPPLE BASTARDS – LA TUA FOTO SUL MARMO
released June 12; F.O.A.D. Records
It’s been nearly eight years since the last full Cripple Bastards, with only a demo comp and a couple of splits in the interim – the band’s once-prodigious output has slowed considerably in the new millennium, but with it, with their move away from noisegrind into an amalgam of grindcore and death metal and modern hardcore, has come a greater power, a sharper attack. The addition of guitarist Der Kommisar in place of founding member Alberto The Crippler brought a greater emphasis on varied riff-craft, and albums like 2014’s utterly stellar Nero In Metastasi are all the better for it. (Though, it should be duly noted, that is not intended as a knock on Alberto – the band’s earlier, rawer material is also great, just with a different kind of intensity.)
Six songs in thirteen minutes is not a lot of time and space, but in true grindcore fashion, it’s plenty enough. The Bastards spend the first six seconds on a chiming, post-metally arpeggiated guitar bit before Raphael Saini lowers the hammer with a dense wall of blastbeats. Vocalist Guilio The Bastard snarls and growls atop it all, and Kommisar and bassist Schintu The Wretched cycle through a series of eminently catchy riffs that pull from various types of metal and punk, each one sporting world-sized hooks that latch right into your brain. “Vendicativo” and the title track are the EP’s centerpieces (literally and also musically), with riff after riff after riff after pissed-off riff… The former sports a hardcore middle-section that’s custom-made for moshpit madness, while the latter rides an epic drive that any thrash band would’ve killed to compose, complete with dashes of what almost approaches melody.
When discussing grindcore, I find myself overusing variations of the word “furious,” and there’s probably no band better suited to all of them than Cripple Bastards. These thirteen minutes are the sonic embodiment of anger, pieced together with utmost skill and regard for more than just the beatdown itself, with a notable reverence for creating something that is both unequivocally violent and vicious, but also a beatdown that the listener wants to inflict upon themselves time and time again. And that’s what’s happened – I was late catching up to La Tua Foto Sul Marmo, but it’s been in consistent rotation since, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]
RETORSION – ROSSZABB, MINT A HALÁL…
released January 19; independent
If you saw Retorsion’s name on a bill with Sulfuric Cautery this summer, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking the Hungarians were another turbo-ping blaster, perhaps a recent graduate from the Pulmonary Fibrosis school of pitch-shifted blurrrghhh. The art for Rosszabb, mint a halál…, Retorsion’s first full-length, doesn’t show its hand either, displaying a mummified corpse draped over a store counter or merch booth. (Methinks the artist Serus knows what it’s like to be punished after a show.) Ah, but you’d be wrong. You fool; you dolt. How could you let a dumbass writer lead you so astray? Nope, this quartet is a throwback to the maggot-rich coffins of early grindcore: Horrified, World Downfall, and the like. Rosszabb, mint a halál… sounds like it was playing tag with the other newly-limbed tadpoles that crawled out of the thrash and punk primordial pools. Like, no one is going to say that Retorsion has high sci-fi concepts or that it has the razor-sharp precision of an industrial robot arm armed with surgical knives. Again, nope, these wrecking ball grinders are fine with burning a ton of calories getting to the same short-distance point B. For instance, the songs plow forward with the inevitability of a nose tackle unconcerned with analytics and believes the job is only finished when everyone is on their asses. I love how the drums slap and thump instead of subscribing to the dainty dexterity of a playthrough video athlete. I love how the bass sounds like there’s something wrong with the bass amp. I love how the guitars are hellbent on finding every power chord on the fretboard before engaging in solos that are like hundreds of horses screaming as they meet their gluey fate in an ill-advised cavalry charge. Sick. I also love how the CD’s interior features a photo collage of the homies being homies alongside at least three snaps of cats. Hell yeah. Pet those cats, dudes. [SETH BUTTNAM]
SPIRITUAL LAW – SPIRITUAL LAW
released March 27; Discos Enfermos / Human Future Records / Broken Skull Records
Back in mid-July I threw down a tribute to the Crumbsucker’s 1988 sophomore full-length Beast On My Back, one of the most adventurous crossover records ever recorded. In preparation for that article, I spent the better part of the month prior completely submerging myself in as many classics from the off-shoot as my ears could handle. And as it happens, this debut from Bavaria’s Spiritual Law found its way into that mix.
Now, to be clear, I would NOT consider this Spiritual Law S/T launch to be crossover, even if I’d admit that it shows enough crossover appreciation to fit comfortably amidst a classic crossover playlist. Think of it more as… the straight-up hardcore album a band might release before allowing thrash and a touch of melody a slice of the raging pie. So, yes, it’s clearly more Victim In Pain than it is Cause for Alarm, and it also spends a fair amount of its rather brief but fucking deadly 18 minutes underscoring a deep understanding of classic D-beat. The vocals here are barrel-chested and furnaced, the riffs are loud enough to cracks bricks, and the drumming keeps everything muscling forward without ever coloring outside the lines—all of which whips. But if I had to hand out a single gold star for my favorite element (beyond the album’s excellent artwork, by Nathan Ward), it would go to the bass thiccness, because its presence up and down this relatively succinct assault hits with the strength of a nuclear-powered bulldozer on a seppuku run.
GET HAMMERED. [CAPTAIN]
CELLAR NOISE – PANIC LOVES TELLING LIES
released May 27; independent
There’s wonderful healing power in the simple normalization of emotional pain. The validating relatability of another’s experience can soothe and even motivate or, at the very least, remind us that we don’t suffer alone. And when that experience connects us through song it can be transformative.
Milan’s Cellar Noise makes modern heavy prog about that regular kind of suffering that can feel so mundane as to be meaningless, and the sharing of which feels like a trite kind of grousing, begging an eyeroll before compassion. And yet it also is actually mundane, so commonplace as to be a matter of fact. Then they make something more of it in the gentle recognition of its ubiquity, finding freedom in acceptance, strength in knowing one’s limits and therefore one’s potential.
Much of that sentiment, of course, comes from open, vulnerable lyrics, but they gather power from a musical approach that values the filigree of atmospheric prog as much as the fired forge of prog metal. And, while they share space with well known acts like Riverside, Porcupine Tree, and The Pineapple Thief, theirs is a voice all their own, even as it speaks of shared experience. [LONE WATIE]
LUREPLASM – LURIDYSIC HEIRLOOM
released March 13; Encephalic Productions
Report From The Sewer: Part 3
…I somehow survived ten full minutes of being sucked down into that whirlpool of piercing noise, disembodied voices and ugly crushing pressure. I’ve been shat out in a straight line of multiple tight coridors. Every inch is caked in gore and each brief section is separated by plasmatic waterfalls. There’s a gurgling suction quality to this portion that hints at the end of the line. I must crawl due to the bite-size nature of the passages but the brief sections urge speed and a willingness to harm oneself to escape, practically pulling your neck and twisting it forward. As I’m progressing, other-worldly emanations echo throughout like the cries of an alien ancestor buried alive and attempting to message to the skies for help. This system, however, is built of impenetrable suffering.
It only takes 20 minutes to sprint on hands and knees through the 16 portions of this final trial of the sewer, but I emerge coated in vital fluids and viscera. What I’ve discovered is a rotting, ichor-dripping heart at the center of Last Rites Kingdom, a sign that our home was built on the bones of brutality. Some of us may try to fight it, but a DNA test would surely tell us we were all born of the sewer and those few denying it are only delaying the inevitable. We came from here; we’ll return. The beating nucleus of this world is disgusting, yet enchanting in equal measure.
There appears to be a pool of swirling bodies made from the ground up bits of the weak, eager to burst to the surface like Old Faithful. I am jotting my final notes here and chucking the journal into the pool in the hopes that it may one day fire up through latrine shafts of the Last Rites Castle where our brethren too comfortably defecate. They must learn of what I’ve borne witness to. It’s coming for us all…we all float down here. [SPENCER HOTZ]
MORK – MONOLITT
released June 19; Peaceville Records
Norwegian black metal project Mork started out as a simple nod to the genre’s second wave. Since its debut record Isebakke in 2013, head honcho Thomas Eriksen has carved out somewhat of a niche. And while you can still tell he comes from the school of that Scandinavian scene, Mork, nowadays, relies on catchiness and organized songwriting more than anything else. His new record, Monolitt, released back in June, certainly emphasizes that.
There’s a Slayer thrashiness and groove to the songs, especially on “Under Vekten Av Verden,” that sounds downright evil. However, you also have tracks like “Ødelagt” that are reminiscent of a more traditional black metal sound, but with some chunky palm-muted riffs and breakdowns sprinkled in just for the hell of it. Eriksen is also a fan of the old school given the intro on “Inn I En Annen Strære,” that grants us an epic heavy metal build-up and addicting tremolo melodies.
While Mork continues to experiment by throwing various pieces of heavy metal history into the music, Eriksen still manages to keep it a black metal project at its core. The necro vocals are still there, and the cloth of Darkthrone is still interwoven, perhaps more than ever considering the trajectory from black metal to a smorgasbord of sound.
I’ve always dug Mork, but more and more as time goes on. I think Monolitt is Eriksen’s best release to date. And that’s saying a lot. Killer stuff. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]
LEX LEGION – LEX LEGION
released June 12; MNRK Heavy
I have been openly anticipating a new King Diamond record every year dating back to 2019 via Last Rites’ annual Most Anticipated Albums Of… articles, but in truth I’ve been anticipating new KD material probably since around 2010—three years post Give Me Your Soul… Please, which seems like a equitable gap between albums for an ‘active’ band. Clearly, King Diamond has been on a different schedule, and despite the fact that I remain fully aware that a fair stretch of those gap years presented some rather difficult health challenges for King, I think most fans would agree that… Things have gotten out of hand.
Would matters be helped if there was a little more transparency concerning obstacles? At this point, I don’t think so. But our side of the fence probably would benefit if folks in the King Diamond camp would stop teasing fans every year with dubious claims along the lines of “things are progressing nicely!” Yes, King has a remarkable discography in the rearview and obviously doesn’t owe us a thing, but holy crap have a lot of fans been scrambling for that tenner on a string being pulled down the sidewalk for a long time. Brass tacks: Andy LaRocque apparently had eight pre-production songs done, dusted and submitted back in 2022, King accepted three of the five (with plans to fill out the remaining songs mostly on his lonesome), and now Andy has left the project (amicably) to focus his attention on a brand new project, Lex Legion.
Not exactly news to anyone reading these words, but Lex Legion involves four of the five members responsible for 1988’s masterful “Them”: Andy, Pete Blakk (guitar), Mikkey Dee (drums) and Hal Patino (bass), with Pagan’s Mind vocalist Nils K. Rue capping things off behind the mic. Regarding the latter, anyone with a bit of PM familiarity knows why Nils was selected (AHEM), and various claims of “avoiding a copycat label” notwithstanding, this debut very much does come across as: 1) A more stripped down interpretation of classic King Diamond (how could it not??), and 2) A rather loud illustration to, um, anyone out there paying attention that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
Does Lex Legion actually sound like a King Diamond album, though? Again, it’s nearly impossible to NOT draw such a conclusion, given the context, the players involved and Nils’ uncanny ability to hit those highest of high notes (he is a wonderful vocalist—full stop). The record does, however, purposely sidestep most anything to do with being overly dramatic / theatrical or pushing a ‘concept album’ angle and instead opts to favor… simply rocking? In that way, it’s probably most reminiscent of, say, side A from A Spider’s Lullabye. Difficult to complain about that.
Speaking truthfully, it’s taken me a good amount of time to finally find the opportunity to sit with the album for extended spins, and I have since walked away with the following understanding: Lex Legion is rather good, and that’s great! The record didn’t need to be an outright world-beater, it just needed to get out there and deliver something familiar that a shit-load of people have been waiting to hear over the course of the last two decades. The result is basically 35 minutes of rockin’ King Diamond-inspired heaviness with all the delectable melody and siren wailing we’ve been craving, and it just so happens to get stronger and stronger as the album hustles along. So, yes, as of right now I find myself very contented, hungry for more, and eager to see footage of the band powering through these songs from the stage. Boom: mission accomplished.
Can’t wait to hear what they come up with next. [CAPTAIN]
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