Long Pig - Barren

Rating: 8.0

Country: Hungary

Release Date: 2008

Track list:
1. Barren 03:07
2. Another Spot in the Line 00:40
3. Amiss, Flight, Reentry 00:52
4. Leavening Barrel Influences 02:27
5. Psyche-Deconstructionism 02:29
6. Pectoral Riot 01:36
7. Almost Sorry 01:54
8. Times Sluring 05:11
9. Soon You'll Be Inanimate 01:08
10. Translating Stagnancy 03:24
11. Subjected in Orphanic Entity 01:11
12. Overcrowding 05:08
13. Leaden Silence 06:54

Band Website: Long Pig

Long Pig - Barren

Fehér Dávid - Guitar, Bass
Kiss 'Kisz' Gábor - Vocals
Vajsz Kornél - Vocals
Kutya - Drums

Sometime in the 90s, I remember a Britpop band called The Longpigs. When the style dried up around 1997, I think the band split up and one of ‘em began to pursue a solo career, so perhaps this is him? Unlikely, seein' as this is a very new Death/Grind band from Hungary, formed from the debris of Din Addict. Taking old skool Grind values then updatin' ‘em quite a bit with a modern Grind approach, they certainly struck a chord with me on Barren. It's like a large trip within which you can embark on thirteen mini excursions, so I suggest you plug this album into your ears, have a nice sit down and enjoy half an hour or so of displeasin' Grindcore scenery. Perhaps it was ‘cos partook of this release thru earphones whilst at my lokill public house beer-garden earlier this afternoon, the listenin' experience enhanced by a rare wave of hot weather, Guinness guzzlement and the surreptitious consumption of several conical paper-clad herbal tubes, that your reviewer derived much enjoyment from Long Pig.

The songs jolt you about the place through full-throttle earbash, mid-paced lurch and a few heavin', doom-infused sections, delivered by a performance that chooses from the grindin' palette in a grab-baggy sort of manner, givin' them a chaotic, disjointed feel that compliments the catchy heart of the different riffs. To do this sort o' thing, the guitars thrash, judder and shunt dirty ol' riffs into each other, galvanisin' it with a modernized, technical Grind coat, then underpinnin' the tangled mass with some intricate yet flowy percussion and corrosive bass-work, which clench the song-cores til dissonant fluids ooze all over the place, makin' for an infectious yet unpredictable thus memorable release. The vox add further discordance and disorientation, especially if you're readin' along with the lyrics, cos they guzzle down those lines and regurgitate them all over the songs in partially digested chunks of coarse guttural growls and chyme-soaked glottal screams. Although it's a good overall listen, the work does of course have its more tedious moments, where a sparse chordscape slowly ingests the flow with a lapse of inspiration, but this often adds much more clout to the blastulated, growl-packed bout of buzzsaw riffage that follows it. The album is rounded off very well with "Leaden Silence", which is a grotesque, slow-bubblin' number that drags you thru various stinkin' stages; first into portentous, lumberin' riffment, then face-first into highly viscous chug-sludge afore blastin' yer noggin to smithereens.

The composition has a more modern Grindcore kind of feel in comparison to the horde of old skool stuff lurkin' under the choppy surface of their choppy chops. So, behind the early 00s Relapse Grind sort of exterior of the arrangements, think Pig Destroyer, Cephalic Carnage and possibly a smudge of old Nasum, I could clearly hear bits of old Earache playin' style, such as classick Terrorizer, putrid old Carcass, early Napalm Death (especially in the vox), a bit o' Unseen Terror and even some Old Lady Drivers! There's a fair bit of Exit-13 here, with a few cupfuls of Blood slopped over it, and maybe a select few Agathocles bits, and Assuck too, but lobbed about the place til they're all misshapen, then slotted into the tunes.

Production is clear enough, but coated with enough fuzz and scum to keep it dirty enough to avoid clinical clickety-clackery, whilst clear enough to prevent loss of the more elaborate sections and points at which the sudden time changes link ‘em all together. Also worth mentionin' are the experiments with vox effects, which daub dense layers of cavernous reverb, disorientatin' flangement and I think also a wee bit of pitchshift somewhere too, all of which help the vox further obscurity, ominousness and otherworldlyness to the songs.

So, you like both traditional and modern Grind, the kind that has dynamic, cleverly written tunes but delivers them via a much more loose, old-skool type performance with a nostalgic quality, then get this.

June 18, 2008