Blast Rites: October Grind Spooktacular, Part One

To put it mildly, I’ve been a bit sidetracked this year, so I apologize to all zero of my readers for not keeping them informed on the state of grindcore as I see it. Thankfully, I have some conscientious compatriots who look out for my shortcomings, and to that end, my fellow grind aficionado Seth Buttnam stepped in to help me… err, well, shit, let’s be honest here: he deservedly shamed me into contributing to my own column, and here we are, writing up some of the best grind releases of the past ten months. So a hearty thanks to Seth, and let’s get blasting… [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

TRUCIDO – EPIPHANIC DELUSIONS OF A SPIRITUAL WARFARE

(February 14, 2026; Regurgitated Semen Records)

As I remember it, the only time I saw Dallas’s Trucido was at a venue partially lit by trashcan fires raging on the back patio. Was that actually the setting? To Elizabeth Loftus’s delight, I couldn’t tell you with any certainty; it was the second leg of an ambitious concert double-header that began with me at an all-day surf rock festival, so who knows what kind of “Misirlou” fatigue madness my damaged brain might’ve cooked up. Still, besides my alarm over my increasingly cratering memory and recall, I think the important thing is that Trucido was such a flamethrower of a band that a backyard with a B-movie dystopia vibe makes sense. The quartet’s second album, Epiphanic Delusions of a Spirtual Warfare [sic], is another burner, fitting seventeen songs into sixteen minutes. What’s fun is that, belying those measurements, I wouldn’t necessarily call these songs a blur. Swift and speedy? Absolutely. Bryan Fajardo — he of Cognizant, Noisear, and Barren Path, and formerly of Gridlink, Kill the Client, and PLF — is behind the kit, playing the kind of breakneck patterns that make other drummers comment “holy shit” on Instagram playthrough reels. But the string punishers — Irving Lopez on guitar and Eduardo Hoyos on bass — pummel these short tunes with death-metal-dense chonkiness. At the very least, it’s different than Lopez’s riffing in the angular Cognizant, instead favoring a more brain-smashed sort of immediacy, a bludgeoning that’s further aided by the force of Alejandro Ramirez’s bellow.

The following comparison will only make sense to, like, four people on Earth, but this is Last Rites, so I’m going to let it loose: Trucido is kind of like the Blastasfuk version of Texas grind.

Perhaps a better recommendation: Go set fire to a trash can. [SETH BUTTNAM]

DETERIORATION – OBSERVE / TARGET / ELIMINATE

(September 15, 2026; Shattered Dreams Productions)

“People like you are what’s wrong with the world today,” declares the sample that opens “Total Withdrawal.” And hey, I can’t argue with that. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day, they say, and this is one of my two for this particular sun cycle: Deterioration kicks ass, and Observe / Target / Eliminate is yet one more example of how and why. Observe, if you will, the swinging swagger of “Observe,” the maniacal bashing of “Silent Messaging,” the utterly blistering “Total Withdrawal”… Just the Kahmann brothers’ relentless sibling savagery, all blastbeats and raw-throated screaming, strangely catchy combinations of maniacal energy and ear-rending ugliness.

Run through with an array of sound samples from a film that I can’t identify (meaning: I Googled it, and I didn’t find it), Observe / Target / Eliminate is yet another (almost quite literally) smashing success from a band that, after three decades, shows absolutely no signs of wear and tear, just simply rocking through their impressively violent brand of raw and ripping grindcore. Twenty-one minutes of absolutely savage aggression, this one’s a no-brainer for anyone into straight-ahead grinding. No frills, no bullshit, no weaknesses.

Deterioration, kids – let’s hope they can do this forever. And let’s hope they put it up on Bandcamp, and physical product, as well. This is a must-own. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

TRIAGE – IN THE TRENCHES

(June 26, 2026; Rescued From Life Records)

Hello again, Bryan Fajardo. Our drummer of the hour is no stranger to this crew: Dallas’s Triage is basically Set for Extinction-era Kill the Client with Travis Thompkins traded in on bass. Unsurprisingly, the quartet is no stranger to ripping it up, blasting through 16 tracks in a very knowingly timed 19 minutes and 19 seconds — shout-out to the Treaty of Versailles. Whether Triage carries the Great War theme deeper than the title, cover, opening sample, and a closing rendition of “Taps” is to be found somewhere in singer Champ Morgan’s raging, almost blackened roar. Certainly, the band takes a different tack than some metal historians: Rather than the slow siege of trench warfare or suffocating fog of mustard gas, In the Trenches is more like hearing the whistle that sends you over the top, where you’re introduced to a hail of bullets turning men into mulch for no man’s land — less the finale of Blackadder, and more Mel Gibson getting torn apart in Gallipoli. To that end, Thompkins and guitarist Chris Richardson’s commitment to the quick riff is as impressive as Fajardo’s drum set-mounted Vickers gun. Appropriately, In the Trenches also sounds absolutely unhinged, as anything about a barbaric battle should, and even the Nasum-like punk riffs have a wild-eyed, warrish ferocity.

War is hell. [SETH BUTTNAM]

GETS WORSE – NO BONES

(July 30, 2026; Bandcamp)

So here’s the thing I think you should know about me, or at least, I think so, maybe: I think you should know that I think too much. I think about things all day long, and all night, too, and then I think, “I’m probably thinking about that more than I should,” and then I think about that for, like, weeks and weeks. I think, I think, I think… my thoughts like water down a drain. I think, and I think, and then, thinking about it now, from my first thought ‘til whenever, I think it just gets worse…

And here’s the thing about Gets Worse, I think: You don’t gotta think about this. At all.

No bones about it: No Bones is raw-as-hell powerviolence, to the damn point from the second it drops the hammer. Reduced now to bass and drums, Gets Worse is still just simply tearing shit up like it’s their damn job. (Maybe it is their job, I dunno. Good work, if you can get it. Are they hiring? Let’s think about that for an hour or ten.)

But seriously, folks: No Bones is seventeen songs in, like, fifteen minutes… It’s duelling vocals, shifting tempos from blast to trudge. It’s unstoppable energy; it’s palpable anger, and it’s not missing the guitars it’s lacking. Sure, it’s important to note that No Bones is not dumb, mind you, not in the least – it’s just not really directed towards the thinking bits. It’s not immediately cerebral, no – but it’s undeniably visceral. It tickles a part of the brain buried so deep that you aren’t really thinking, you’re just reacting. And that’s the point; It’s fight or flight, lizard brain, so what says ye when the fury comes crashing down around us? Because when it comes to this type of rawboned wrecking, it doesn’t often get much better than Gets Worse.

I think I love it, so what are you so afraid of? [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

SULFURIC CAUTERY / TOLERANCE – SPLIT

(May 29. 2026; Bandcamp)

Sulfuric Cautery’s side is a bit of a throwback to the band’s punkier hypergoregrind beginnings, pushing the pinging pace to Foetopsy speeds under a guitar tone that sounds like you’re stuck in an orgy between jet engines. The 10 tracks are of interest to Sulfuric historians, too, since these are some of guitarist/vocalist Derek Ramirez’s earliest recordings with the band. The general tempo is fast, faster than fast, and then even faster than that.

Tolerance, on the other hand, opens its side with a chug crusher. Even at its quickest, like the ludicrous-speed “War Criminal Scum,” the Finnish band goes all out for sheer density, to the point that the blasts are like four NFL nose tackles tap-dancing on your chest. The guitar tone is also absurdly oppressive, bathed in a noisy, grimy grit that festival goregrinders aiming to fill arenas typically lack, filling in the sonic spectrum like a flash flood around the drums and pitch-shifted vocals. Heftier than the line for XXXL shirts at a Crowbar show, Tolerance is that real-deal grossness.

Someone please break some international shipping laws and import this hazardous material LP into the States. [SETH BUTTNAM]

WORLD PEACE – FOR NO MAN SHALL SEE ME AND LIVE

(May 1, 2026; Bandcamp)

Would you dedicate seven minutes towards World Peace? Well, you should, you selfish bastard. But seriously, this two-bass trio is one of the funnest, darkest, crushingest, most exhilarating purveyors of powerviolence around.

Don’t believe me? Take it from them, in unsubtle code: Right there, on the album cover, it says: “Ten songs / 6:35.” That means this: For No Man Shall See Me And Live doesn’t waste time, or breath, or energy, although it expends an incredible amount more of the latter in those sub-seven minutes than it does of the first two. Vicious and snarling, pounding and gnarly, these two bass guitars hammer the riffs home while the drums hammer everything else, through short burst of pure anger after shorter burst of pure anger. Some swagger, some just blast away; some let air come in, only to push it all out of the room with the very next track. “Bastard Sons Of Noah,” “Land Of Plenty,” “In Anticipation Of The Final Reward,” all are highbrow thoughts rooted in knuckle-dragging crushing violence, filthy and flattening, feedback-laden and fuzzed-out, purely pummeling and powerful. Alliterative music-blogger nonsense aside, World Peace is what you and every beauty pageant contestant for the last forty years has been wishing for, and For No Man Shall See Me And Live is proof that we may only achieve that through serious powerviolence. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

MERC – NO ONE LEAVES THIS ROOM

(June 13, 2026; No Time Records)

North Carolina’s Merc has been merking sound systems for a couple of years, doing a loud-and-low take on powerviolence. They’re a bit like the Bay’s World Peace in that sense, since devotion to crush is half the battle; a few of the bassy thwangs sound like the moment before a dam collapses.

No One Leaves This Room, though, also features the band’s strongest songwriting. While Merc primarily magnifies the mayhem in the mosh pit, it has a real sense of rise and fall that gives these songs a flow that makes for good listening, not just a soundtrack to crowd-killing. The songs are also subtly diverse: “Firewood Frame,” for instance, opens with a tricky, near-tech riff that explodes into blasts that eventually give way to hardcore, including a Hatebreed-quality breakdown. [SETH BUTTNAM]

Thanks, Seth. We’ll do it again next week. Stay tuned.