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Release Date: 2004 Record Label: Last House On The Right/Vomit Noise Productions Track list: Band Website: Mortuary Hacking Session
Release Date: 2004 Record Label :Last House On The Right/Vomit Noise Productions Track list: Band Website: Gruesome Malady
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Mortuary Hacking Session/Gruesome Malady - Split
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Mortuary Hacking Session: Samantha - Guitars, Vocals |
Gruesome Malady: Vikram Bhat - Drums, Vocals |
This is quite an old release now, but worthy of attention nonetheless. I was already fairly familiar with both acts afore receiving this fun lil' split, having acquired both the gnarled ‘n' knobbly Goregrind anomaly Infected with Virulent Seed by Gruesome Malady, and the putrefacient grooves of Mortuary Hacking Session full-length, Delightful Carvings, so I had a good idea of what kind o' rottenness to expect…
I thought I'd slipped in the wrong CD to begin with, seein' as the MHS side opened with Tropicalia by renowned eclectic nutter, Beck, I thought I'd picked out my trusty ol' copy of Mutations by accident. I hadn't, of course, because it was just part of the intro! Silly me. The four songs on offer here are highly enjoyable, steeped in Grindrock groooove, all-out blast and positively revolting vokills, with enough refreshin' lil' twists ‘n' turns to keep things interesting. Much of this sounds akin to …Carvings, grindin' along in the same loose ‘n' unpredictable manner with catchy, grime-covered guitars and glottal vokills, afore cruelly annulling the groove with caustic blastin' ‘n' scornful snarlin'. Seeing as they're rough ‘n' unsophisticated, plenty of grimy Grind spirit runs through the arrangements. The songs clatter along brusquely, each finding a good balance of honed catchiness and spontaneous din. Whilst the riffs are indubitably groovy, they seem more focussed on flowing, rhythmic progressions than bulldozin' bludgeon. The vokills range includes damp ‘n' reekin' guttural growls to hideous shrieks, with the lead sound somewhere in the middle, with much of the lyrical-splatter recited via raw-throated glottal-throttle.
Although Witter plays additional guitar on two out of the four songs, the material as a whole is strongly reminiscent of Decomposing Serenity, in that momentary hooks pierce the volatile, grindin' frenzy, often showing a perceptible fondness for Classic Rock/Heavy Metal and Punk as well as conventional Goregrind. I daresay you could liken chunks o' this to any Blood Duster favourite, maybe Str8 Outta Nortcote, taking some of its Grindrock sensibilities and burying them much further beneath strident, lo-fi discord, perhaps in the manner of something along the lines of CSSO. Maybe. Elsewhere, the band add swirly keyboards, dabblin' in samples here ‘n' there. It might be the fact that MHS are an all-female band that led me to makin' the comparison, but their kind of dishevelled, snotty swagger leaves a noxious trail similar to that of Smell the Magic by gender bendin', tampon-throwin' sweeties, L7. Some of the muffled string clunkin' sounds a bit like somethin' from Babes in Toyland classick Spanking Machine, while other chuggin', syncopated riffchrome ‘n' crude bass-twangle recalls such comical Nu-Metal as All Is Not Well-era Tura Satana, and, inescapably, Kittie. Although female musicians are not completely unheard of in Goregrind, it's always appealin' to hear splat-laden vokills or putrid Gore-riffs performed by a lady, true of this release and enhanced by its wide variety of quaint interpretations and novel arrangements. They've managed to forge their own distinctive Slackergrind sound, as it were, having assembled a festerin' combo o' Splatter/Gore and Riotgrrl, as well as addin' synth ‘n' samples ‘n', of course, the Beck intro. In contrast to this inebriated, clumsy clatter, the drums, which seem to be programmed, give the tracks a bit of a clinical, unsettling feel.
The production is basic, but its fuzzed-up, grainy sound manages to complement the charmin', haphazard compositions, bringing out the earthiness of the clenched riff-grit, whilst turning the fast parts into a blisterin' torrent of jarrin', blastulated noise.
An entertaining recordin', with the band hollowin' out a more personalised, idiosyncratic niche, afore stuffin' it up with all manner of different disjointed, ruptured bits.
It's time for Gruesome Malady to take over, and slap a steamin' kidney dishful o' incomprehensibly contortuplicated innards into the lap of the listener. After tryin' to unravel the gelatinous gut-heap that was constituted their debut effort, I knew what kind of audio-adicopere to expect; befuddlin' structural repugnance, based around incessant solo string squall, underpinned by malformed blast patterns, daubed in liquescent vokill gunge. This filth is Goregrind in the sense that gruesome surgical imagery, medical/patho themes, extremely rotten vokills w/foul fx come as standard, but it shuns other conventions such as driving rhythmic crunch and exuberant slam-hooks, optin' instead to fill it with widdle, and if any memorable Gore morsel should pop out, it's always shredded in seconds by solo-string gibberish. With regard to performance and production, the guitarwork is exceptional, using a multitude of juttin', bizarre licks, scum-caked scales and piercing, excoriating solos, all snugly enveloped in a cavernous ‘n' clinical sound that matches the distant, murky feel of the ‘tunes'. However, these lads seem to have overlooked songwriting a bit, leavin' digestible arrangements to collect dust in the cupboard most of the time, which ends up undermining their undeniable flair for fretwork. The vokill delivery and timing seems slightly more rounded ‘n' refined than on the debut, but their tone ‘n' texture remains the same; pitchshifted ‘n' putrefacient.
‘Cause of their near constant high frequencies, reverb-drenched production and volatile, claustrophobic atmosphere, an obvious and rather lazy comparison would be Reek of Putrefaction, but Gruesome Malady can bear far more similarities to those medical maestros of malodorous monochrome, Lymphatic Phlegm, or the putrid odes of unabashed Carcass-worship act, Pathologist. However, their songwriting methods differ from both of these bands, in that they do not employ the rigid ‘n' interchangeable, colourless structures of the former, nor the reverential Reek… replication of the latter, instead taking an atypical and eccentric technical approach that recalls a few ambitiously convoluted Brutal Death/Grind bands, an example being the oft-underrated Turkish act Cenotaph. It sounds a bit like an amalgamation of the tortuous ‘n' incongruous grab-bag compositions of Puked Genital Purulency with the menacing atmosphere and shrill dissonance of follow-up Pseudo-Verminal Cadaverium, sometimes taking a similar abnormal, anomalous approach to that of Cenotaph side-project, Drain of Impurity, or that employed by short-lived French outfit, Petrified, on their Layers of Despair release. Elsewhere, a few bits ‘n' bobs can be likened to the Mexican Gore-mud of old Disgorge, when Gruesome Malady amputate the most grotesque structural disfigurements before submergin' em deep in their own corrosive complexities.
Although it's filled with elaborate ideas ‘n' intricate phrases, all delivered with expertise and produced with a flair for inducin' a truly putrid atmos, they're expressed through jumbled ‘n' cluttered arrangements. Unquestionable Gore-virtuosos, but their song-writing needs a lot o'untanglin' and de-junkin' before the material can truly please my frayed inner ear.
May 20th, 2007
    
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