Amputee play a super muddy and gurgling style of grindcore that sounds like the bastard child of Crossed Out and Last Days of Humanity. Everything is blown out, the vocals are anonymous gurgles that sound like Assuck blown through a wind tunnel and recorded with a cellphone, the guitars bleed into each song with a large dose of feedback and team up with the bass to become indistinguishable shields of noise that are powerfully heavy. When you do hear a riff they're awesome super metally chunks that rip right into you and would make Steve Heritage proud.
I'll admit I played this once or twice on 45rpm (it's a 33) to find myself puzzled as to which speed is actually the right one. I'm liking what I can hear, which at times is very little, I'm hopeful on upcoming releases they mix things a bit more clearer and cut out the atrocious amount of tape hiss (it sounds like my needle's pulling a cottonball with it).
Nimbus Terrifix on the other hand play a more punky style of d-beaty hardcore and still suffer the tape hiss from hell. Interesting contrast as Nimbus Terrifix employs a much more distinguishable old school punk bass and some hazy Black Flag/Dead Kennedys style riffs in between power-chord bursts. The strength of their side is the simple fact that they never let up and continually pummel you until the needle's done. The weakness, surprise, is the horrible production which constantly threatens the guitar out of the picture entirely.
Those of you that follow my blog should know how much I love shitty production, but this isn't shitty, it's poorly done. It's almost like the production was allowed a dinner plate's worth of space for every instrument and they gave a quarter of that room to tape hiss, a half to the vocals, and crammed the bass, drums and guitar into that last quarter. I like what the bands are doing, especially Amputee, I just want some better production next time.
3 comments:
haha. i had the same speed problem with amputee too. it sounds awesome either way. in fact i had to go back and rewrite my review when i realized i'd been listening to it wrong.
Personally the production values never hindered my enjoyment, but no harm can come from a bit of audio polishing. Ages ago I downloaded the Brutal Death st 7" which was recorded at the wrong speed, so when I finally got it low and behold I had always played it at the wrong speed, this went on for a long while until a friend pointed it out and had to go on discogs to check which was the right one.
That's awesome Andrew, I've heard of electronic records that say "spin at 33 or 45" maybe this is punk's answer?
Alex: that's really funny, I always worry about that stuff and think like an old man by saying "why can't these fools label their sides for fuck's sake."
I sometimes put on Coffins or sludge acts at 45rpm just for fun and I exclusively listen to Metallica 45's at 33 (sludgetallica) and it's much better.
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