Rotten Sound "Exit" CD
[Willowtip]
It's been awhile since the last full-length from this Finnish outfit, and here they're back with a gritty slab of powerful grindcore containing 18 tracks in a little under a half-hour. Expect tons of speed with forceful midpaced breaks, extremely tight performances, and a snarling set of screaming vocals that shift towards growls at times and vary the vocal patterns quite often. Overall this material reminds me a lot of Nasum, but with a slightly dirtier sound. The guitar tone is pretty unique in its distortion texture, with a lot of bite and sort of a controlled messiness (definitely similar to the classic Sunlight sound, but not completely in that vein), while the distorted bass kind of blends in and the crisp percussion helps accent how tight the playing is across the board (the drumming is really good, too). It does have a little bit of space there where more low-end would help thicken things up, but it sounds pretty damn good as a whole. Most every song is less than two minutes, several under one, and only closer "The Weak" stretches on towards five minutes with milder tempos and more repetitive rhythms (not to mention a nice experimental noise passage for its final moments). As for the rest, "V.S.A." has a ridiculous breakdown that's significantly slower than most of the other riffs and is fucking awesome, "Mass Suicide" opens slower before plowing into one of the more memorable uses of speed on the disc, "Slay" is a brief midpaced instrumental that brings in some samples and a little bit of melody for an excellent change of pace that I'd love to hear the band explore further, "Western Cancer" drops an excellent chugging mosh break, "XXI" is another instrumental with lots of dark ambient sounds and punishingly slow chords, etc. The layout looks great and uses lots of grainy textures over images of a businessman with a bag over his head and a shotgun in his mouth, and the lyrics are the band's best yet - attacking serious topics covering a wide range of socio-political ills and life's general pains. "Blinded by the dominion, Drunken from the given throne, You make the rules to verify that people shall obey, Reign by tyranny, Crawling nationality, People are turning into disinterested slugs..." This is definitely a great record, but I'm not in complete agreement with the number of people touting it as one of the best grindcore albums of all time or anything. It's very solid through and through, even down to the lyrics and the presentation, but I kind of get worn out on all of the excessive speed, and the songwriting isn't quite consistently powerful enough to make up for that (the songs that mix up the tempos the most are always the ones that stand out). I do, however, think the band is getting better and better, and if they continue to expand on what they've done with this material they very well could end up blowing everyone out of the water with their next one. So, this is a damn good CD, but I think the band's future is what's really going to make some waves. (7/10)
Running time - 28:25, Tracks: 18
[Notable tracks: V.S.A., Mass Suicide, Slay, Western Cancer, The Weak]
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