ninehertz

This is a cool split from the excellent Circus of the Macabre label, of two unknown bands to me – one, Suture, from Malmo; the other Question Everything from Stoke on Trent, so no excuses for not knowing them – I’ll be correcting that in full having heard this.

I listen to Suture’s side first and am immediately impressed. Crusty hardcore but nice and slow to really appeal to my doom core, the obliterating attacks of the instruments push it towards powerviolence, but there's some harshest end sludge here too. It’s the second time I've mentioned Corrupted in a powerviolence record recently, so feel phony for doing so again, but like Give Over recently this really does bend towards the Japanese masters in its desperate slower elements.

There are common moments of static scarred noise, others where the harsh vocals become almost black metal they’re so demonic, but always with a d-beat propulsion applied to powerviolence crust. It’s a wild ride.

Question Everything equally set their stall out from the off, equally winning me over. There are rabid, barking vocals over absolute manic speed blast beats – it is so fast and loud it becomes a chaotic wall of noise, uneasy to pick out what’s going on, but that quickly becomes its charm. For the next few tracks it is all out powerviolence sense assault, occasionally with industrial elements.

It gets better and better – different, unexpected elements added into the potent concoction. Not Connected, Try Again? creates some space and light and builds into something that feels slightly emotionally charged, like a screamo/grind surprise pairing you didn’t realise you needed (until now), and across the last three tracks there is a faintly detectable sense of melody beneath the pure grinding splurge.

This is exactly what split hardcore records should do – an introduction to two bands that I’ll impatiently follow in future, and an excellent record standing on its own.