Japanische Kampfhörspiele "Fertigmensch" CD
[Bastardized]
Raging grindcore from Germany that would actually be pretty fucking good were it not for a relatively thin recording with an unbalanced mix. The biggest problem is that the vocals are too far out front, so they feel separated from the music and dominate the mix a bit much. Second to that is the fact that the rhythm section lacks low-end big time, so everything comes off as very thin. There's no real density anywhere. I like the guitar sound for the most part, and I'm really not even that annoyed by the rigidity of the drum tones, but the mix needs a lot more oomph. I'd drop the vocals back in the mix, give the drums more resonance, up the bass, and maybe add crunch to the guitar distortion, but not too much. As for their songs, expect tons of blistering speed performed with perfect precision, some classic grind breakdowns, a few more quirky and almost rocked out areas, a decent amount of melody and wacky experimentation, with vocals that range from utterly nasty high screams to low growls and gang shouts. They open "Amokschlaf" with fucking sick dissonant riffs that are much slower than anything else on the disc, and the third track is an untitled instrumental with some total thrash riffs and fucked up time signatures going on. Some of the faster areas are more straightforward and generic, but overall what the band is doing isn't typical, because they're always throwing in oddball riffs and changes to spice it up. Shit, there are even some ultra groovy mosh parts (complete with hard panning) in "Verbrennt Euer Geld". The noisy textures that introduce the title track waste a lot of time and almost ruin an otherwise great piece of work, and the last track is a five-minute instrumental that's half metal and half programmed beats and weird dance-y nonsense, so that's a good seven minutes total that doesn't need to be on this EP, but other than that they're straight. I like the layout. It cuts to the chase, but there are lots of cool colors and textures, and the photos are whacked out... it's visually interesting. The text treatments are well handled, too. Everything's in German, song titles and lyrics, so I can't offer any insight there, but at least the artwork has a visual kick. I'd really be into this if the production offered more force. The writing is good, the performances are dead on, and they know what they're doing... all they need is a sound that will better represent their music. (6/10)
Running time - 21:36, Tracks: 7
[Notable tracks: Amokschlaf, Verbrennt Euer Geld]
Bastardized Recordings - http://www.bastardizedrecordings.de

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