Review Summary: Memories.
Mere 48 hours have passed since my relatively well-received review of Spoonful of Vicodin's charming compilation album and it's time to review another forgotten classic in the grindviolence genre, a split between two big names in contemporary music, Hatred Surge and Insect Warfare. Just so you all know, a split album is a music album which includes tracks by two or more separate artists.
Sometimes, you stumble upon an album so immersive and impactful, albums filled to the brim with so much personality and appeal bordering on mysticism, that you can't help but feel that you and the album are destined for each other and no one understands the album better than you, a bond that is both powerful and everlasting. Its sort of like Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, if they had been in a good movie. And that's the feeling I got when I listened to
Split yesterday for the second time.
The Hatred Surge side will be the centerpiece of this review, and for a damn good reason. Clocking in at like 3 minutes, the 6 songs present are the sonic definiton of hate and insanity. If you thought early Anal Cunt was the be-all and end-all of the noisecore genre, just wait til you listen to this. Deconstruction pales in comparison. Actually, most other grind performances pale in comparison. Except Terrorizer. And maybe Pig Destroyer.
The most striking feature the listener will notice are the vocals, especially the female ones. Bitches in grind omg no way! But they really work, hell, they make this album. The vocal trade-offs between the dude and the chick are crazy, no two ways about it. Imagine a really fucking pissed off Thom Yorke on steroids and you get close to what the female shrieks sound like. The vocals are muffled and buried deep in the mix so the lyrics are kind of not there most of the time. The lyrical content includes nihilism and hate, which deeply contrasts with bands of the more poetic side of this brutal genre, such as You and Him Call It Them and Genghis Throne.
Im going to avoid the usual riff talk because of the mixing of the album. The production marks the genre's final descent into incomprehensible, primitive, brutal noise. Even after 2 listens I can't make out a single riff or solo, everything just sort of melts together and you dont know whether to thrash or mosh or crush faggots. Still, from what I've been able to discern the riffs are cold, fast, brutal, unforgiving, monumental, filthy, noisy, unrelenting, aggressive, thrashy and overpowering, making the Hatred Surge side of this split essential to any riff lover.
The reason I haven't mentioned Insect Warfare side yet is that, apart from it being no Wormrot, there's not a whole lot to say about it. While the opener 'Negative Appeal' is one of the best songs they've ever recorded, the rest falls flat and doesnt reach the heights of At War with Grindcore or even World Extermination (a fact that is however not surprising because Insect Warfare were never that great at splits in the first place), playing a rather run-of-the-mill deathgrind. Their performance holds this album from a perfect score but their intriguing combination of guitar, bass, drums and vocals is still worth listening to.
To sum it up, the album is almost worth the mounds of hyperbolic claims it receives, mainly the Hatred Surge side so do yourself a favor and get this album now while the internet is still working. Dark times are upon us.
