Social Chaos hail from São Paulo, Brazil and are genre veterans with over twenty years experience under their belts and almost more than two dozen releases in their discography plus several compilation album contributions. In short, these guys are no light-weights and know what they're doing. Social Chaos play a form of grindcore that is equal parts grind, thrash metal, and old school crust. Right from the start the band opens the split with a Slayer-esque riff intro leading into probably the band's catchiest song, "Seeds Of Hate." This opening death-grind banger is a heavy paced blitz that showcases both the band's grindcore and more mid-tempo metallic crustcore influences. Influences that are an amalgam of bands such as Slayer, Napalm Death, Disrupt, Brutal Truth and Bolt Thrower—or as we call them in Texas, War Master. But Social Chaos' crust roots run very deep within their sound, regardless of the genre mix. Track "Fabrica De Destruição" is an almost straight blistering grind number, while their next song, "Manipulated Life," could easily be a late era Warcollapse jam.
Before we go further, I think it's important to note the not entirely unheard of, but pretty unorthodox track listing and the split arrangement amongst the bands. In Chaos We Vomit has a somewhat Petrarchan (ABBA) style track split. Meaning track one is Social Chaos and tracks two and three are Bestial Vomit, trading back and forth in this manner—one-two-one-two-one. Repeated almost similarly on the reverse side. Again, this is not foreign for split releases and I've played and seen live split sets that saw bands trading songs for songs. This could arguably be considered a truer version of a split or the most evenly compromised considering the disproportionate number of song contributions from each band, but as a reviewer, it initially made for a difficult critique before eventually differentiating who's who. Social Chaos' five total tracks are more pronounced in the track listing with their comparatively well-rounded and warmer sound in regard to Bestial Vomit's rough and strident eight blastings. This record is both sides of Napalm Death's Scum LP mixed together.
Bestial Vomit—surprisingly a deceptively common band name—are a noise-grind unit based out of Italy since 2003. I don't know too much about them other than they have over a dozen releases including splits with some heavy hitters such as Proletar, Archagathus and Agathocles. The band plays a noisy, wild-eyed and raw version of grindcore. I think the noise identifier comes mainly from some of the band's past releases that contained more of a harsh and grating form of distortion and feedback. On this split the noise is mainly in respects to the very lo-fi production quality, although their last two songs venture into being more, unraveled. Their tracks sound like grindcore played through a clock radio. The guitar is shrill and staticky, the bass guitar is nonexistent and the drums are distant and seem to come and go depending on the song's tempo. For instance, the snare drum can be overshadowed by the hi-hats, especially during the blast beats. Think all treble and no bass. And I'm almost certain that this is an absolutely artistic choice as the rest of the band's discography is similar to varying degrees. They take the creed of "noise not music" to the nth degree and throw it in your face. Posers need not apply.
FFO: Napalm Death, Ratos de Porão, Brutal Truth, Misanthropic Noise
Listen to the bands: https://everydayhate.bandcamp.com/album/in-chaos-we-vomit
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