Friday, May 04, 2012

Gods of Chaos: March into Perdition (2012)

Grindcore . . . I think

Every now and again I'll get an album in some genre I'm not terribly familiar with. Grindcore, for instance, as in the case of March into Perdition by Croatia's Gods of Chaos. When I get these albums, I'm afraid I won't have much to say, or I'll miss some connection that's obvious to fans of the genre and come across as ill-informed as I actually am.

So maybe this will come out sounding stupid. But it seems to me Gods of Chaos have created something unique here, combining grindcore with a strong flavor of modern US black metal.


My only "brilliant" analogy here is that they sound like the grindcore equivalent of Krallice. But after I came up with that, I found out that Krallice's Colin Martson produced it, so maybe it's not so brilliant after all. It's easy enough to see that influence. The vocals are simply psychotic black metal screeches, more or less. Plenty of the riffs have that high, weird, dissonant Krallice quality to them, and many are played in a tremolo style. They also pile on some weird uses of feedback.

The songs don't run by at the bewildering pace of, say, Gridlink. Considering how strange the music is, it can be just as wild. And honestly, who can resist a song titled "Grinning with an Erection at the Gallows"?



The Verdict: I am emphatically not an expert in grindcore, but I can guarantee I've never heard anything like Gods of Chaos. I give March into Perdition 4 out of 5 stars.

The Path Less Traveled Records

4 comments:

  1. I think the Krallice comparison is spot on. I think this brand of guitar playing might just be more suited to short songs. Plus, lumping this with grind is less offensive to kvlt black metal. I'm not really a fan of the vocals, though.

    If you don't know much about grind, I highly recommend you get yourself a copy of Napalm Death's Scum. I think most would agree that it's the most essential grind album.

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  2. Not to belittle Scum's place in the grindcore pantheon, but there are a lot of more recent, not to mention relevant, acts far more adept at doing what people commonly consider 'grindcore' these days. Insect Warfare and Wormrot both serve as excellent primers, and for grind that doesnt really sound like grind, Id check out Total Fucking Destruction.

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  3. I'm fairly well familiar with Wormrot, having both of their free releases from last year. Checking my grind tag here, I see Wölfe, Dead Neanderthals, Blood Freak, Gridlink, Rotten Sound, and The Secret, among many others. I'm not a total grind . . . uh, grindtard, I guess.

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  4. i'm a proud grindtard!
    i've got this one sitting in my queue but haven't spent much time with it. but you've intrigued me. hearing it with your outside ears makes me want to go back and really sit down with it.

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