Rotten Cold (Austria) starts off this split with seven tracks of death/grind that, while suffering from some minor production problems, actually displays what I feel is very forceful songwriting. Expect lots of moderately paced riffing, really tasteful uses of speed, and quick songs that don't fuck around at all, along with raging vocals that are right on the line between growling and yelling (and some sickeningly textured high screams, too). "Detoxify" stands out the most, what with its slow intro and the inclusion of a few George W. Bush samples, suggesting a potentially intelligent lyrical message. But the sheer force of "Here to Hate You Again" is the real winner here. As for the sound, the drums are too rigid and bring forth a few falters in the playing, and there's no real bass presence, but the vocals and guitars sound fairly good. I think cranking the bass would help a lot, as would dropping the vocals back in with the guitars, but I've heard far worse, so... Monolith, also from Austria, follows with another seven songs, and after a fairly boring clean instrumental they churn out brief bursts of totally raw grindcore that sounds like it could have some sludge and Japanese punk influences going on as well. The vocals sway from insane cackling screams to utterly horrendous singing notes that make no sense to me at all. Although, with song titles like "Flying Dog" and "Heather Makes Me Crazy", you can only expect so much. They have some good riffs, but the performances are too sloppy and nothing really catches my interest so much. The production is terrible, too. The drums sound good, but the guitars are too thin and have a strange sheen over the distortion, and the bass tone is very defined, which stands out fairly well, but it does need more low-end to really add to the core of the rhythm section. The vocals are distorted as well, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. I don't know, it's a mess. Honestly, the layout is fucking terrible on this thing. I don't mind so much that everything was printed from a home computer, it's not that cool to see a one-sided "booklet", but the print quality is decent. However the random layering of imagery, excessive coloring of fonts, plain typefaces, and pasted band photos just create a completely haphazard and inconsistent appearance. No lyrics are included, just song titles and minimal band information. Rotten Cold has a lot of potential, but Monolith pretty much sucks it up on this one. With a better recording they could be tolerable, but not here... they just work to make Rotten Cold sound that much better.
[self-released]
Running time - 30:16, Tracks: 14
[Notable tracks: Here to Hate You Again, Detoxify, Flying Dog]
Monolith - http://go.to/monolithcolony/
