"Arrrggh! My groin!"
-George C. Scott, in 'Man Getting Hit by Football'
The Simpsons, 1995
After an extraordinarily taxing and toilsome summer, time has been tight and money even tighter. My small family's eagerly anticipated meager beach vacation was truncated by the first tropical storm of the year. The money pit that is my car has grown vast and cavernous. Then there are the trials and tribulations of finally trying to produce and monetize my art by selling them at local markets and bazaars, only to barely cover the overhead. Yet, for some reason, not soon to be revealed to me, the air conditioning system in my house has decided to fail us. It was explained to me by the sweaty, mournful faced repairman that the unit was old, out of date and no longer complied with current EPA standards. The cost for gutting, remodeling and replacing is starkly and wholly devastating, to say the least. The financial hit is unexpected and crippling. And with the Texas temperatures tipping over a hundred degrees this entire week, it's safe to say that air conditioning is a mandatory necessity. Despite doing so several times in my life, you never quite get used to sleeping in a ninety degree, stagnantly dead house.
However, since I have been given the time to sit here in my sweating, wilting home and watch the men walk back and forth with pieces of what was once my attic, I think about how things could be worse. (Catastrophizing is probably the thing I do best in this life.) I can't help but think of places like Arizona. Arizona's current weekend forecast places their summertime highs at one hundred thirteen degrees. They also have had claims back in 2018 of car tail lights melting and polypropylene trash bins liquefying in 2021. Both of which turned out to be unfounded social media rumors. Nevertheless, Arizona is hot. While not being officially ranked as hotter than Texas, Arizona is plenty hot and currently hotter than the Lone Star State this week. For the sake of my kid who still insists that she needs a hoodie and a blanket right now, I'm at least glad we don't live in Arizona.
That sweet heat of the Arizona desert is home to a flamed kissed creature in the form of a grind-violence band named Groin. Groin is, relatively speaking, a newer band, dropping their first release entitled Greatest Hits via Bandcamp in 2020. But the nine song debut EP was as scorching as the Sonoran Desert. The mix of hardcore and chugging grind riffs over beat downs and blast beats give the band a heavy edge over the more straightforward power violence bands. The EP combined the brooding death-violence elements of bands like Weekend Nachos with the ballistics of Shitbrains.
In 2022 the band released their second EP, a thirteen track self-titled seven-inch. This release runs along the same lines as Greatest Hits with its blistering blast beats and trash can melting high pitched screams saddled next to caveman barked grunt-fueled power violence. There is of course the usual improvement in songwriting and production, as these sorts of things chronologically go.
Like the last episode of this blog, the good people of Inglorious Moshers Records have not only combined these two EP's into a twenty-two track discography CD that was subsequently released in 2023, but also afforded me with a copy for review consideration. Like probably many of you, I saw that highly recognizable art of a mustachioed, Walter White-esque gentleman, bleached out in high contrast white with the logo G-R-O-I-N stamped across his bald forehead. But even still, I slept on the whole thing. I wasn't so much oblivious to the band's existence, but I didn't really listen to them until this review. The downside of reviewing releases non-stop is not always having time to listen to multiple new releases; choosing to instead remain hyperfocused on the review at hand.
Inglorious Moshers Records' Groin discography, entitled Greatest Hits To The Groin—a title that might cause confusion given the clever name of Groin's first release—compiles each of the band's first two releases. Starting with the more recent self-titled EP.
Vocalist Lois Ferre is an amazing vocalist that proves that his vocal performance is just as scathing as the Arizona asphalt. Compared to Greatest Hits, Groin has less of the high/low juxtaposition and more of a gradient array of shaded vocals. The power violence barks, screeching highs, searing roars and a fiery mix of all the above are all up for grabs. I really like the sustainability and fluidity of Ferre's vocals. Groin's lyrics seem to range from the political to the despondent to the absurd. So there's a lot of rage and a lot of fun being had.
Like I said, there's noticeable improvements in sound, but Groin is definitely more riff focused and more aggressive. Guitarist Austin Kelly—who also fills in on bass during recording sessions, keeping the band's lineup chiefly a three piece through the years—is the reigning songwriter. His playing style is a feedback seeped, drilling squall of low-fi distortion that tears through hardcore thrashings and breaks down into power violence sludged stomps.
Kelly's writing accomplice is drummer Josh Goodwin. Goodwin is the grind-violence tempo keeper and displays the assorted beats you might imagine a grindcore or power violence band might have. Goodwin's speed and smoothness when blasting is what really solidifies the grindcore elements. The power violence aspects are your standard-fare of slow plotting beats, hardcore mid tempo beats and two-step bounces that—given the band's particular brutality—are maybe part mince, part hardcore. Groin champion speed and intensity over everything.
Groin is my favorite type of band—a torrid and searing grind-violence act with speedy blast beats, face melting vocals and blaring guitars. This only compounds my guilt over the fact that I slept on this band for so long. As a band, Groin can draw plenty of comparisons to bands such as Endless Swarm, ACxDC, Weekend Nachos, The Afternoon Gentlemen, Beg, Gets Worse, Magrudergrind and so forth. Yet, Groin have made their niche in the genre by releasing great songs almost from the start, cultivating a great sound and doing it well. I appreciate the band's speed on the snare, the scathing vocals and their mix of grindcore and power violence. I realize the redundancy of all of that, but I just love what Groin is doing here.
While not included in the discography, this summer Groin released their first full-length album, Paid In Flesh. The new twenty track record is a further piece of evidence of the band's growth and ferocity. Paid In Flesh has even more meat on its bones when compared to Groin. The bulkier mix and punctuated snare tone makes for quite an exceptional release. I hear big similarities to Magrudergrind, specifically Magrudergrind's 2009 self-titled LP. The guitar and vocal tones are very comparable. Completionists be sure to grab Paid In Flesh and Greatest Hits To The Groin to cement your grindcore collection
Inglorious Moshers Records is doing a great job of packaging up early releases of up-and-coming bands, that might be on hard to find cassette tapes or just available as Bandcamp downloads, and making them more accessible on compact disc. I remember how stoked I was to find the Lycanthrophy discography CD back in the day. Now I'm stoked to find Groin and their Arizona flame grilled grind-violence.
FFO: Magrudergrind, The Afternoon Gentlemen, Endless Swarm
Listen to the album: https://ingloriousmoshers.bandcamp.com/album/greatest-hits-in-the-groin
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