It’s Monday and Mondays suck, so let’s grind it out with Internal Rot’s Grieving Birth.
For those of you that aren’t me that didn’t’ miss out on last year’s incredible Hack Session (which I just listened to, and yes I know it’s a live recording but it still rules), you’d think that Internal Rot’s been away for a bit. No, they haven’t. They haven’t been cranking out release after release after release, but they have been prepping to grind out damn skulls down to a snortable powder with Grieving Birth.
The Melbourne, Australia three-piece grind unit has yet to disappoint. Having done splits with the mighty Mellow Harsher and Manhunt, the group is a spiked wrecking ball in the grindcore world. Their sound is the closest we’ve come to a second wave of Insect Warfare (though Deathtoll 80k has done some serious damage on that front too) and with Grieving Birth the band has no interest in letting up on that front. As Iron Lung Records says, “Do you grind? Because this fucking grinds.”
“Transmission” gets the album going and already the band is full-on chaos seconds in. There’s no time wasted, no futzing, putzing or strutting their shit. Internal Rot put the nose to the grindstone and keep on grinding. It’s a blizzard of blast beats that knows no remorse. “Unnegotiable Impact” hits even harder with a thicker, angrier blasts that carries the whole song with breakdowns that are really only variations on blast beats. And from here on the madness continues.
People uninitiated with this level of grindcore (or music for that matter) might wonder what’s with the atonality. The thing is bands like Internal Rot know how to mix things up and throw around their fast as hell sound because they’re so good at playing the genre. Great example: “Agonesiac” is a short song that blasts nonstop but switches itself up so often that things are never getting stale. Meanwhile “Harpooned” showcases more of that hardcore/punk that the genre is so attached to. However, the song still swings into pure old school grind. And then there’s “Chronic Bedlam” that’s flirting with hypergrind, I swear.
As far as grindcore goes, this is what it’s all about. Fast, loud and ugly. It never stagnates and manages to never relent for a single second either. Mental Hygiene is the record we’ve been needing from Internal Rot for awhile now. Finally, it has arrived, and goddamn is it good. Get grinding on this!
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