If you’re just now catching up, well, we’re just now catching up. Seth Buttnam and I (plus one uninvited guest) are rounding up some of our favoritest grindcore (or grind-adjacent) releases of the past however many months, since we (read: I) have been slacking on the grindy blasty bits for a while. So without any further ado, let’s get grinding… [ANDREW EDMUNDS]
SULFURIC CAUTERY – CATASTROPHIC ANTIPHOSPHOLIPID
(September 18, 2026; Blast Addict)
Teased as Sulfuric Cautery’s homage to Last Days of Humanity’s masterpiece of ping, In Advanced Haemorrhaging Conditions, Catastrophic Antiphospholipid delivers upon expectations with some of the Los Angeles duo’s nastiest, fastest, and gooiest material. In a sense, it’s a return to the quick.
Last year’s Consummate Extirpation proved Derek Ramirez (guitars, vocals) and Isaac Horne (drums) could easily do brutal death metal, and those bruisers’ inclusion in Sulfuric’s recent setlists has been a treat for the sickos who desire the curative powers of the Suffo chug. Sick album; maybe its best album.
However, the band built its name on exceeding the redline, and this 7″ definitely does that, exploding forth with pure turbo ping miasma. Well, sort of. For one, Derek’s more technical approach to songwriting still shapes Sulfuric’s contours, with the fast shifts and nimble turns of a rally car driver who doesn’t care if they see the dawn; there are some stout big chungus riffs mixed into this pool of decay, but they fly by. For two, Horne’s blasting has rarely been this sustained, burning the calories with an invigorating clatter of snare hits, kicks, and cymbal smacks.
Impressive as always, and it’s another demonstration that, along with being some of the baddest grinders in the land, Sulfuric Cautery enjoys release-to-release variance as much as blasting violence. [SETH BUTTNAM]
SEX PRISONER – CAUTIONARY TALE
(July 11, 2026; To Live A Lie Records)
The good news is that there’s a Bandcamp link below, so none of you has to Google “Sex Prisoner Cautionary Tale” from your work computer… again. Please ask your respective HR and legal departments to express their thank-yous via the Patreon link on our homepage.
The REALLY good news is that, hey, what’s up… oh, yeah, there’s a new Sex Prisoner album. And it rules.
It’s been a while since the last one, but the EVEN MORE BETTER good news is that they don’t seem to have lost any steps. Cautionary Tale still rips some serious shit, to put it politely, because that’s what Sex Prisoner does. That’s what they did on Tannhauser Gate, all the way back to that split with ACxDC and the underrated Magnum Force. From the fist-swinging blast to the knuckle-dragging stomp, Sex Prisoner comes armed for the fight, and you gotta hand it to them for that…
All ridiculous smug twists of phrase aside, if you’re into the powerviolence world, then Cautionary Tale should give you all the appropriate goodtime feels. It’s a noticeable bit thicker in the production department, bigger and stouter without sacrificing the roughshod caveman anger that defines the band. Within the chaos, there are moments like the angular nods of “Los Cardinals,” or the brief almost-blackish strummed bits of the mid-album highlight “Glass Worms”; there are myriad floor-punching beatdown moments, brief bursts of speed punctuated by heavy, palm-muted chunks and feedback-soaked squalling, raw-throated screams offset with swinging hardcore grooves. Never content to linger at one tempo for long, in one feel for more than a verse or so, Cautionary Tale is built on ever-shifting sands, and one must walk without steady rhythm to avoid attracting the worms…
Powerviolence isn’t really a style known for sonic advancements, so if you’re a fan, you pretty much know what you’re getting here, for the most part – the question, of course, is does it squash your puny skull, and the answer, also of course, is yes. There’s little variation across these nearly twenty minutes – most of these songs don’t so much end as they just devolve into a moment a minute or so in, where the band stops and then some filtered noise bit swirls about until the band starts up again on the next track – but this is powerviolence, not prog rock.
You want a coda? You want a crescendo? Get a Gentle Giant record. You wanna get smacked in the noggin? Well, here’s your chance…
That’s good news for you. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]
ZERO SUM – DIE FAST LIVE!
(February 2, 2026; Bandcamp and independent cassette)
If you’re ancient enough to have grown up directly amidst music’s heated scheme to become more and More and EVEN MORE extreme, then perhaps you, like me, eventually found yourself getting dragged kicking and screaming into notably ‘cleaner’ and ‘more sophisticated’ forms of extreme off-shoots you generally would have preferred to remain… filthy.
Thing is, now that I’ve finally learned the super secret decrepitude handshake, I actually find myself not only enjoying but often favoring the more progressive and technical realms of extreme music today. I still love and cherish the dirty dawgs and classic rippers, make no mistake, but mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Borg, and I have assimilated and maybe even evolved?? [third eye chakra wink]
Then I hear a release like Die Fast Live! from Nashville, TN’s ZERO SUM and I remember that some things—some fucking things, gosh fucking dangit—are just meant to stay LOUD, RAW AND FAST ENOUGH TO kill Kill KILLLLLL on sight! Suddenly, I’m transported back to the early ‘90s and endless hours spent exploring terrifically raw fastcore, thrashcore, powerviolence and nearly any and everyfuckingthing a label like Slap-A-Ham Records could touch. You want a 15-minute lesson on how to flip over your boss’s desk and subsequently crash through the fucking window to sprint ferociously down the dirty GD street like a freshly liberated Siberian tiger with a taste for capitalist pig blllllooooooooood? Cram Die Fast Live! into your ear canals and FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO FIGHT. [CAPTAIN]
GROIN / AJAL – SPLIT
(April 17, 2026; No Time Records)
Along with Merc’s No One Leaves This Room, covered in the first of these Spooktaculars, No Time Records’ other recent release of note is this 7″ pairing of Arizona’s Groin and Kazakhstan’s AJAL. Groin has become one of my powerviolence favorites purely because it does what all bands should do: go hard as hell. It doesn’t hurt that the trio is a little grindier than its counterparts, too, ending up with something like Rotten Sound sonics applied to the rapid core riff shifts of any of the Chris Dodge bands — not a huge grind surprise since one of these pissed-off people is also in High on Formaldehyde.
AJAL is more of a true grinder in the orthodox sense, not straying far from the original recipe of equal parts grind and punk seasoning; after the blasts, “Qadağalau” even has something like a Sick of it All riff in there. Multiple listens help the material bloom, differentiating it from, like, Morgue Breath, which has arisen from the same grindcore soil.
Cool stuff. [SETH BUTTNAM]
WHORESNATION / NAK’AY – SPLIT
(June 17, 2026; LIXIVIAT)
I got a 108-year-old house, and man, I do not like going in the attic. Because I swear the spiders up there look like that one – they’re ancient, almost Lovecraftian. They’re huge. They’re … probably armor-plated. I dunno. I don’t stick around long enough to find out.
The point is, them bastards look like they’ll f?!k you up.
So it’s fitting that one adorns the cover of this, a split pairing of two utterly crushing death/grind monsters, France’s Whoresnation and Indiana’s Nak’ay. Both bands have released some killers over the past few years, like Dearth and Closed Doors / Open Veins, each grand examples of cacophonous death metal and savage grindcore spun up to positively devastating levels. Up first for this one, Whoresnation rips through the first half of these seventeen minutes,with Pibe’s low guttural vocals and the blown-out, gnarled, and purely chaotic combination of Lopin, Anto, and Tonio beneath. Jagged edges of riffs poke out from amongst the blastbeats; rhythms and directions shift on a hairpin turn, all of it fast, all of it furious. It’s hard to pick highlights from seven minutes of relentless anger, so… let’s just say “all of it.” (Although the almost mechanized opening groove of “Mächefer” before it upshifts back to blasting, and then leads into the closing Terrorizer cover, “Storm Of Stress” is a nice sign-off, no doubt.)
Like Whoresnation, Nak’ay has become a go-to in this (ancient, spider-filled) house, and their seven minutes uphold their place as such. The production on this half is a little more dry, a little edgier than the cavernous depth of Whoresnation’s half, but that’s hardly a detriment. (If anything, it allows the guitars to cut through a little more.) The overall attack is similar – heavy as hell, deceptively techy death/grind riffery propelled by blastbeats and anger, the depth of the arrangements sometimes buried within the maelstrom of their own design. Working in almost an entirely new line-up over the past few years, it’s good to hear that this newest Nak’ay hasn’t lost an ounce of energy. (And if… I mean, once you’re hooked on Nak’ay’s brand of brutality, there’s a wonderful compilation from EveryDayHate that provides one-stop shopping at an unduly generous price that will catch you up – kick them some cash; they’re worth it.)
Two absolutely ripping bands across fourteen songs in right at seventeen minutes. It’ll kick your ass all the way into the attic and back. Watch out for the spiders. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]
CYSTOBLASTOSIS / TRIPAS SANGRIENTAS / BODILY STEW – DECOMPOSITION FASCINATION
(September 4. 2026; Bandcamp)
Three shades of the same sickness. Cystoblastosis, Bodily Stew, and Tripas Sangrientas all call California home (although Cystoblastosis is by way of Russia), and each plies a goregrind trade I’ve come to think of as uniquely SoCal: blasts mixed with half-time mince beats that drive guitars and guttural/pitch-shifted vocals that hit a frequency low enough to loosen one’s bowels.
All bands tune that formula to their own ends, but the sonic identity is as authentically Southland as a Del Taco stoner burrito and hating the Giants. Granted, perhaps it’s because I live here and see these types of bands on the regular that I’m prone to push for that provenance; there could be a bunch of Archagathus-influenced dorks in Toledo doing the same thing. Who knows: I’m not going to research it; I am not a journalist. But for the sake of this blurb, let’s just roll with it and do the requisite roll call with identifying superlatives. Cystoblastosis is most mince, Tripas Sangrientas is most toilet, and Bodily Stew is most death metal.
Now, if we could only get this three-parter released on something that’s not a tape, the worst physical format. [SETH BUTTNAM]
TRAFFIC DEATH – BACKROADS AND STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
(September 18, 2026; Mortville Noise)
Why do you hate fun?
Oh, what’s that you say? You don’t hate fun? Oh, well, I want to believe you, I really do…
But if you like fun so much, Mr. and/or Ms. Funpants McFunnerson… well, then, why aren’t you listening to Traffic Death right now? *
Forgive me. Sometimes I get a little carried away in my dedication to all things fun and semi-grindy. But that’s the thing about these Iowan crossover goofballs – they make such a gleeful and riffy chaos, it’s just exactly that…
Opening with an Ohio State Highway Patrol PSA, “Speed Trap” drops into a quick melo-thrash guitar part that’s a pure fist-in-the-air epic moment, the kind of riff that a hundred Wacken-at-2PM bands would kill for to get the hungover, sunburnt punters a-circlin’. Then Nate Phillips’ Blaine-Cook-esque snarl drops in and it’s pure Accüsed-style frantic punk-metal to go. From the swaggering “The Visitor” through the grindcore-short “Self-Pist” and the space rock excursion “Von Neumann Probe” to the doomy riff of “Only So Many Tomorrows” and the savage, snarling follow-up “You Own The Road,” Backroads And Strange Encounters is raw punk-fueled, splatter-punk crossover madness, in the best possible manner. (And yes, the band’s the penchant for 80s-VHS soundtrack moments does crop up, yet again, in “Essential Saltes.”)
I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for this middle ground between hardcore and thrash, but Traffic Death checks all the boxes – they’re energetic; they’re loud; they’re ugly (musically), and trashy, and hilarious, and… yes, they are immensely fun. Don’t think too hard about it. Just turn it on, turn it up, and turn it loose.
* If you are listening to Traffic Death right now, then forgive me for assuming differently, but if you really, truly ARE listening to Traffic Death right now, then hell, yes, my friend, you are getting it right. So right. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]
