ENTRY 2
Magrudergrind - Magrudergrind
Genre: Grindcore, Powerviolence
So my friend showed me a song by these guys and while initially I was amused by their name the intense sludge and groove of the track quickly won my heart over as I was jamming in the back of a diner a bit to hard. beyond that I'm going into this more or less blind. I'm prepared for about 26 minutes of non stop in your face sludge and grind.
Track 1: The Protocols of Anti-Sound
Right off the bat I'm enthralled in nothing but pure distortion from guitars revving up. Holy **** this sounds great. I KNEW IT, pure ****ing sludge man. Possibly the simplest riff I've ever heard, but it does not matter. All right now we're in full throttle grind. This is absolutely powerful in every sense of the world. The riff is unrelenting and supremely heavy, when it gets too fast it never breaks in clarity.
Track 2: Pulverizing Hate Mongers
This definitely more on the punk. Heavy as all hell though. The riff is nowhere near as crushing unfortunately, at least the vocals have been completely kicking the entire time, and **** the drummer is kicking it.
Track 3: Rejecting The Militant Promise
Loving these near chromatic riffing on display here. Ooo and we're getting out of the low tones on the guitar on this one. More of the same kickass **** from the last two tracks as to be expected with a powerviolence record. And just like that the next track has started lmao.
Track 4: Assimilated Pollutants
Another 40 second track. Oh I'm loving the riff in the intro there. This one is the best so far, easily the guitar sounds like nothing I've ever heard before. And it's over.
Track 5: Abuse of Philanthropic Self Gain
These tracks are too damn short to review. What in the hell is this, jesus christ that kicked my ass, and the track hadn't even come in fully yet. Damn I see why people love this. Wish that was like 2 minutes longer, although I guess I'll be going back to this a lot.
Track 6: Fools of Contradiction
This one is about 1 minute long, so obviously that means punk time? Well either way that's what I'm getting. Love the d-beat energy in the first half of the track before it moves back into more familiar powervioence territory. Oh now I'm getting lectured about gentrification? Yeah alright bud.
Track 7: Heretics
That's just a fun sounding riff. I'm not sure how to describe this one beyond really fun grindcore. It feels very juvenile in a way, not even pure anger like kids who want to act angry, but are secretly having a really good time. That's the feeling I get on this one. GUYS THESE SONGS ARE NOT LONG ENOUGH FOR YOU TO JUSTIFY THESE 20 SECOND SAMPLES AT THE END OF YOUR TRACKS!
Track 8: Bridge Burner
Oh okay a 3 minute track les go. I believe this is the song that my friend showed me. Yes it is, I recognize that distortion intro anywhere. GOD ****ING DAMN this groove is out of this world man. If there's a track anyone takes away from this album let it be this one. There's some other tracks I think have been just as good, but wow this one gets you right away. I was half hoping the entire record would be like this, instead I got something just as good, but I am a little disappointed by the lack of groove on the rest of this because they are just so good at it. And the hook is god tier.
Track 9: Cranial Media Parasite
Oh **** is this half of the record gonna be groovier? If so sign me the **** up, oh never mind back into the fire. The discordant riff is absolutely killer though, makes me feel like I'm listening to Converge or something. NO YOU DID NOT JUST TAKE UP HALF OF THE TRACK WITH A SAMPLE!
Track 10: Excommunicated
More of the same really at least in the intro here. I do like the interplay between the two vocalists in the chorus to this one, that's kinda fun. This riff in the "breakdown" is pretty great despite how damn simple it is. Cool stuff going on in this track, but nothing hasn't been heard on the record already. That's not really a complaint don't worry.
Track 11: The Price of Living By Delinquent Ideals
Gotta love Spotify ads before your song will start. Stop. With. The. Damn. Samples. Please. Pure cacophony, despite how insane the music gets the production stays clear, big ups to the producer and studio engineer on this one. Oh that sludge riff is ungodly, that's just too ****ing much man. Great track. D U M B A S S S A M P L E S
Track 12: Built To Blast
Love the almost melodic opening riff. Felt almost like the intro to some sort of dark pop punk record. More spastic drumming and riffing as per usual. The mid section feels pretty uninspired, and the sample is so ****ing dumb jfc.
Track 13: Lyrical Ammunition For Scene Warfare
Back to the realllly short tracks. Alright more d-beat I see. Riff is pretty meh unfortunately. Just not much doing anything for me in this track, it simplifies what was already a really simple formula. Riffing near the end kind saves this one though.
Track 14: Rise and Fall of Empires Past
Easily the most grindcore of the tracklist so far. Nothing on this album has really felt true grindcore until now. It's also easily the shortest track on the album.
Track 15: Heavier Bombing
Huh so this starts with some sort of grindy hip-hop sample. Or... this is the whole track. So first half of the track is a powerviolence inspired piece of boom bap and then it just shoots into regular powerviolence. Okay and we have another boom bap track at the end... Yeah that was a bit confusing, the last little beat at the end was cool, but that was not structured well at all.
Track 16: Martyrs of the Shoah
Back to the mother****in groove, thank you Magrudergrind. not quite as damn powerful as Bridge Burner, but still damn good. Little fast for this style imo, but overall I love this one. It's also around 3 minutes, so there's a little bit more to chew on as this entire album should be. I still want to hear a band who only does the slow parts of death metal, grindcore, and powerviolence. Those sections are always my favorite parts of the respective genres.
Track 17: Untitled
So this seems to be a bit of dark ambient with lots of political samples flying by with very vague intention, although with the general politics of the album I can take a wild guess. I actually quite enjoy the ambience this track creates, much better than the sloppy samples places around the beginnings and ends of all the other tracks.
OVERALL
Despite some lackluster structuring and general idiocy in its political overtones. The music itself kicks so much ass none of those problems really matter. In fact the last track, one of the most blatantly political, was one of my favorites. I don't really care about motives if the music great, and the music IS great. I'll more than definitely check out more by these guys in the future.
7/10