Here's a huge and totally underground compilation CD-R containing 24 tracks and well over an hour of metal compliments of the Paranoize camp.? Initially I was thinking all of the bands would be from Paranoize's home base of Louisiana (many are), but a cursory glance at the tracklist proves that's not the case, and the collection is actually international in scope.? First up is some competent but rather uneventful brutal death metal from Seventh Gate that has a decent mix of tempos and riffing styles with hints at grindcore, followed by the extremely weird Encompass and Stalemate's brand of metal - including weird keyboards and some sort of additional stringed instrumentation alongside harsh vocal screams and bashing percussion.? I'm not even sure if they're using a guitar in there or not!?? Germany's Bloodred Bacteria drops one crossover hardcore rager that suffers from an unnatural sounding recording that doesn't do their energetic songwriting any justice at all, while Billy Dirt Culture (Alaska) drops two tracks of potentially interesting material that sounds like it was recorded live.? The songs are a mix of punishing dissonant sludge and noise rock or something, but the recording is so insufferable that I can't really take it.? The band name is also pretty weak, but the songs do seem to have some bright spots that could warrant another look at these guys at some point.? Hostile Apostle contributes the seven-minute "Commanche", which is a pretty slick instrumental piece that runs the gamut of rhythmic and winding math rock styles complete with fluid clean breaks, energetic tempos contrasted by ultra slow passages, a few crunchy power chords, and a really fluid drum performance that catches my ear.? It's a little lengthy for what it offers, but I'd like to hear more from this band for sure.? Also intriguing is Bug, from Austria, which kind of sounds like a rawer and more unhinged Knut or something.? The vocals are totally fucked up with filthy textures, and the music rumbles along from pounding sludge to chaotic picking patterns and hints of dissonance.? Suppression drops two quick tracks of their quirky and uncategorizable bass/drums mania with shouted vocals under lots of warbled effects, Goatsblood (Canada) offers up some brutal sludge/doom in "Sign Flapping Finger Pointer", while The Pallbearers crank out a little over a minute of straightforward hardcore/punk.? Blueprint for Disaster then throws down two quick blasts of thrash metal tinged grind, with the Suplecs rockin' out with six minutes of surprisingly interesting sludge. It's a little too long in my opinion, and the singing needs a hint of work, but the riffs are solid and the vocals have a great wealth of potential, as this is a damn catchy tune with a shocking amount of blatant melody (to an almost pop-punk degree) blended with rather heavy and fuzzed out sludge. Suburban Terror Project plays a style similar to Bug's brand of stuttered and rhythmic heaviness accented by plenty of frantic bite, Eat a Bag of Dicks are an oddball unit of Gwar-like metal riffs and quirky hardcore/grindcore weirdness, Low Drag is another melodic and rocked out sludge act that has a different sound from the norm and makes tactful use of groove which is actually pretty cool, with Demise kind of sounding like "Chaos A.D." era Sepultura with a little more groove and experimentation - which I like in this case. Dulac Swade opens it back up with two tracks of creative hardcore/punk with bits of rock ?n' roll that is impressively unique considering the foundation they're building from, Catholicon makes a return to brutal and detuned death metal with some added atmospherics, and Hanging Rotten ends things off with textbook Eyehategod worship in "Mongoloid" - so expect slow ?n' grimy riffing with lots of grit, some samples, and harsh vocals. Sadly the packaging is pretty terrible. The CD-R comes in a xeroxed sleeve with minimal artwork, plain looking text, and that's that. You get the tracklist, contact information for most of the bands, and lots of black ink. Cheap, sure, but a better layout would really make this more of an intriguing affair. I was honestly expecting most of these bands to completely suck since the artwork is so weak. Instead there are actually an astounding number of promising acts on here. There are definitely a handful that hold back the overall quality, but none of these bands are terrible, and Bobby at Paranoize is probably way the fuck ahead of the curve in citing some of these bands as ones to watch. I'm not sure how well some of these bands might stand up on their own outside of this setting, namely some of the groovier acts like Demise, but I'd still be truly interesting in hearing a lot of these bands develop, so... this is a solid sampler. Crude, but nicely done.
[Paranoize]
Running time - 77:14, Tracks: 24
[Notable tracks: Hostile Apostle, Bug, Goatsblood, The Pallbearers, Suplecs, Low Drag, Demise, Dulac Swade]
Paranoize - http://www.geocities.com/paranoize/
