Head Hits Concrete "Thy Kingdom Come Undone" CD
[self-released]
45+ tracks of blistering grindcore from this furious Canadian act. I believe this is every track they've recorded to date, including their split 7" with Bodies Lay Broken, the "Hope, Fear & the Terror of Dreams" 7", the split 10" with My Minds Mine, the self-titled 7", the "Mitakuye Oyasin" demo, some covers, a few live tracks... you name it. For those unaware, this is some wildly discordant and chaotic material with tons of blasting drums and relentless screaming vocals alongside guitars and bass creating intense and caustic walls of cacophonous noise tied together chiefly by rhythm more than anything else. I will say that they sound very tight on CD as opposed to vinyl. You can tell that there's a specific method to the madness on vinyl, but the recordings are really balanced here as far as both ruggedness and clarity, so a lot of detail seeps through and gives you even more of an idea of just how fucking insane some of this stuff is. (Hell, even the damn live tracks sound fucking great!) It's rare for one of the tracks to break the one-minute mark, but the older material is a bit more streamlined as far as being easier to grasp. It's all blistering grind, there's still lots of speed and a biting sense of noisiness, but not so crazy. The tracks from the split with My Minds Mine are absolutely my favorites, especially the sick discordant melody used in the mighty "Mechanical Separation". The covers include "Cornered Rat" by Heresy and Crossed Out's "Lowlife", so... do the math. I think there are a few unlisted tracks towards the end of the disc before the demo, because there are some discrepancies with the number of tracks on the disc and the number on the tracklist, etc. Who knows? The layout looks great, including some subtle band photos, concrete textures, all of the lyrics to the original tracks, a collage of flyers, etc. Everything is also well organized and easy to read, providing recording information and whatnot for each of the sessions. As I've mentioned in the past I find this band's lyrics to be basically brilliant, generally sticking to quick, bitter political attacks with strong, tactful jabs of humor wrapped up in there. "We believe that we live in an age of information, that there has been an information explosion. In a narrow sense, this may be true and in many important ways just the opposite is true. We live in a moment of deep ignorance. When vital knowledge about who we are seems beyond our reach. An un-enlightenment. A cultural implosion. An age of missing information." Good stuff. For me this is a bit much to take in one sitting as it runs damn near 50 minutes total, but fuck it. It's cool to have all of this stuff in one place, and the band did a great job putting it together. I think this put me back $10 straight from the band, and it was worth it. Get to it... (7/10)
Running time - 50:00 (approximately), Tracks: 48
[Notable tracks: Dead Children, He Laughed, Fucking Stinking Pile of Shit, ...Of This Divide, Stabbed at Six, News at Eleven, The Pastor's Cock is in My Mouth (Hooray!), Mechanical Separation, Cancer of the Side of the Face, You Came Searching, Status Quo, Cataract, I Shi]
Head Hits Concrete - http://headhitsconcrete.n3.net

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