Ritual Sacrifice: Uhritoimitus - "EP Anthology" CD Review

    Uhritoimitus is a Finnish one-man noise-grind band solely made up of Tomi Salmela from multiple time blog alumns, Fading Trail. While at times Fading Trail had Salmela wearing several hats, Uhritoimitus is exclusively reliant on his multifaceted grindcore abilities and singular vision. Uhritoimitus combines noisecore, grindcore, murderous true crime, and all around general vice.  

    Formed in 2023, Uhritoimitus immediately released two EP's the same year, Uhritoimitus and Valtion Omaisuutta. Before the year was out, EveryDayHate Records and Esagoya Records teamed up to release both EP's as one compilation CD. 

    Before this review I had never heard of Uhritoimitus. It wasn't until our good friend, Andy at EveryDayHate Records dropped this release in my Email that I got my first listen to the band. I'm not sure if it was a proper submission for review or just something new (at the time) that he thought I might be interested in. Either way, I put it on the list and gave it a listen.    

    Uhritoimitus' guitarwork is a noisy cacophony of static and distortion. It's like deciding on Harrier jet as a guitar tone. The caustic and shrill tidal wave of blaring snow is intense and solid as a wall. It's hard to make out any real chords or semblance of melody—especially on the self-titled first EP. The guitar has a little more shape in the second EP when compared to its predecessor, but not by much. Things are a little more clear and you can see a shift towards a more conventional sounding grindcore. You can hear the churning higher, discordant notes surfacing above the crackling waves of distortion like the serpentine body of a snakelike leviathan. The fuzz of the guitar is like an inviting warm aggression. Both EP's wrangle the buzzing torrent of distortion and maneuver it into a driving and overly throttling weapon. 

    The bass is the anchor around the neck of the beast with its heavy and detuned low bottom. It has an almost gas powered generator, Mortician-esque sounding rumble. Surprisingly, the bass is fairly audible in the mix; which only adds to the squalling clamor and molds a lot of the riffs. 

    The drumming, like the guitar, is a bit difficult to sort out when it comes to the minutiae of it. The ceaseless pummeling and blasting speed is basically all you can hear. However, again like the guitar, the drums are more decipherable on Valtion Omaisuutta than the self-titled EP. Almost as if Salmela decided to highlight more of the musicianship over just the gnarliness of oppressive noise. 

    The band's vocals are a neopolitan trifecta of Tasmanian Devil blatherings: grating shrieks, spuming gutturals, and some belligerent midtone yells that run through the center. They are yet again another layer of the white noise that is Uhritoimitus. 

    In between songs, the band hemorrhages hissing, piercing, and feedbacking noise tracks complete with manipulated audio clips. It does a great job of stringing all the tracks together and thus creating a constant chaotic steamrolling listening experience. 

    Now, if any of the aforementioned attributes and accolades scared you off or didn't sound absolutely appetizing to you, then maybe you can listen to some trend hopping, pop pandering, hype-grind or d'jent or some shit like that. But for those of us who don't mind a blowtorch duct taped to a microphone trampled over by a stampede of blast beats, Uhritoimitus hits the spot real nice.

    As individual releases, Uhritoimitus and Valtion Omaisuutta are two stout and brutal EP's. Together on one compact disc, they are twenty-five tracks; twenty-two and a half minutes of hearty noise charred tinnitus-grind. 

FFO: Horornisdiphonevalley, Jardim De Flores, Subscum

Listen to the album: https://everydayhate.bandcamp.com/album/ep-anthology

Tweakers, Bogans & Blast Beats: Meth Leppard - "Gatekeepers" LP Review

    Adelaide's reigning grindcore standard-bearers of all things blast, Meth Leppard, once again unleash straight fucking Hell with their brand new LP, Gatekeepers. The last time we saw Meth Leppard on the blog was back in 2021 with the band's split EP with Infanticide. (That also happens to be the last record I reviewed that was not a submission from a band or label.) 

    2025's Gatekeepers is the band's first full-length since 2020's Woke LP. Woke was released into a literal world on fire. The Australian Black Summer brush fires tragically devastated forty-six million acres of the country, displaced almost a hundred thousand people, and killed a billion animals. The Covid pandemic global lockdowns had over thirty billion people in ninety countries sheltering in place and millions of others dead. The final years of Trump's first presidential term (big eye roll) were inflicting as much damage as they possibly could. And now, some five years later, Gatekeepers is released into a sickly familiar looking world.

    The guitar is very much at the forefront of Gatekeepers. Guitarist and vocalist, Ryan Cheesman's near-patented thrashing guitarwork is a ricocheting style that pinballs over the fretboard with as much ferocity as skilled talent. Riffs switch and turn like the furious gear shifting of a careening rally car. From starchy palm mutes to dark single string drills that warble like a death metal didgeridoo, songs are grab bags of high-octane, vicious refrain. 

    The guitar tone is rich and distinctive. Unlike Woke—which had an underlying howl in the distortion and throughout the record—Gatekeepers' tone is crisp and vivid. It's a sound more reminiscent of Meth Leppard's most recent split with Axis Of Despair, if anything. If you actually dig in and listen, the layers of depth in the guitarwork are impressive on a technical level. 

    While a majority of the record's guitarwork is pure needling brutality, there are some moments of subtlety. Opening titular track, "Gatekeepers," ends with an almost orchestral, melodic outro that adds an additional level to the album's composition. Likewise, the final track, "Idiocracy," ends the album with murky, mid-tempo, trumpeting peels that give a hint at a sophisticated metal element. 

    Cheesman's vocals are those bursts of low monosyllabic propane breathing roars that have been stock and standard for the band for the better part of a decade. The vocals are given plenty of space to seethe, yet seem to be obscured partially behind the guitar in the mix. 

    And as always, the famously bearded Kieran Murray provides the record with another impressive percussive performance. His laser focused, ultra tight style of drumming is not only on par with Cheesman's fretboard freneticism, but his heavy ballistic bombardment of blast beats obviously creates an intense sense of mass and momentum. The breakneck speed of the double kick pedal and tom rolls is absolutely pulverizing. They sound like a jackhammer fucked a typewriter. Even though the palpitating snare is omnipresent throughout, Murray does hit the brakes occasionally allowing stomping, mid-tempo hardcore mosh beats to add that extra layer of depth. The second half of "Mind-Ctrl-Alt-Delete" is a relatively simple beat, yet when paired with Cheesman's chugging riffs, it is absolutely crushing. 

    The album cover art suggests a more mature layout concept for the band. While the usual cheekiness of the album's song titles implies that the band is still taking the piss out of the modern sociopolitical struggles and follies of western culture, the weightiness of Gatekeepers' cover image might convey something else. The absence of art from frequent collaborator and illustrator, Jasper Swerts is surprising. Swerts' dystopian crust punk pointillistic designs have graced many album covers and t-shirts within the grindcore scene over the past few decades; and usually depict the political clusterfuck that bands like Meth Leppard typically write about. However, Gatekeepers' cover art is a hauntingly stark surrealistic visage of a child with his head being both anatomically destroyed as well as depicting the ruin and rubble of a decimated urbanscape. The obvious allusions to the current genocide in Gaza are palpable. Other interpretations such as the psychological effects of modern technology on developing minds, or the moral corruption of the youth via the rise of fascism and totalitarianism, or the doomed future that awaits the coming generation due to current environmental neglect are all up for grabs. 

   Gatekeepers is exactly what you would expect from one of the world's most premiere grindcore bands. The fifteen minute full-length is already mandatory listening. Meth Leppard's thrash laced, riff worship cannonry mounted on the treads of blitzkrieg-styled blast beats and micro-milling drumwork put the band in the higher echelon of grindcore acts. They never stay in one place too long and really keep the listener on their toes in a genre that might not generally lend itself to too much unpredictability. 

    The Australian two piece seemingly can do no wrong as far as writing and performing. The fact that you read this entire review should have been a waste of your time. You should have been streaming Gatekeepers online as soon as it dropped. You should have already pre-ordered the vinyl. You should already know all the songs and already have scratched the band's logo onto the cover of your Trapper Keeper.

    Meth Leppard are currently balls deep into their European tour with Travølta and are performing at the world famous annual Obscene Extreme music festival in the Czech Republic this week! The single sided vinyl LP of Gatekeepers is currently available for pre-order on Here And Now! Records and Psychocontrol Records.

FFO: PLF, The Kill, Shit Life

Listen to the album: https://methleppard666.bandcamp.com/album/gatekeepers

Split Level Housing: Merked/Kageneko Split Cassette Tape Review

    

    Have you ever seen that movie, The Proposition? The 2005 film starring Guy Pearce and written by Nick Cave is basically an Australian Western set in the 1880's and is based around a gang of outlaw brothers wanted by local law enforcement. Anyways, eldest brother and gang leader, Arthur—played by actor Danny Huston—has a tense and violent confrontation with Police Sergeant Lawrence. The sergeant offers to help Huston's character by providing him with what he thinks is unknown intel that he hopes will better his increasingly dire circumstance. "I can help you," begs Sergeant Lawrence. Huston's Arthur replies in kind by repeatedly saying, "Help your fucking self," while stomping the man's head in. "Help your fucking self." That's what I think of every time I listen to Oakland, California's Merked. "Help. Your. Fucking. Self." 

     Merked are back on the blog with one of their many splits that they have released in the last couple of years. Most of which, if not all, are in line for future reviews courtesy of Enemy Of The Goat Records and their generous submissions. The three-piece have not deviated much since we last heard from them and their 2022 Murk-Mob full-length. Their sludgy, hardcore glazed grindcore/powerviolence remains just as heavy and antagonistically cold-hearted.

    The bayside Merked boys, much like the previous blog episode featuring Malicious Algorithm, are at the forefront of California's modern era of rough and ready, no bullshit grindcore. While not being as lo-fi as their peers in Malicious Algorithm, Merked still have that heavy, low end mix. The band's usual wall of noise accented by feedbacking highs and quick bass gulps is in full force. That deep creak of the bass guitar that was so lovingly commented on back on Murk-Mob has seemingly bled over into the guitar on this release. The tone of the guitars has been generally consistent throughout the Merked discography, but I am going to lean on the opinion that they are slightly more woolly here. 

    Just as burly, the standard Merked vocal fare of low, slurred gutturals and squawking highs are suggestive of being a shave more viscous, as well. Or perhaps just more smooth, maybe? Like the uneven tooth on a turning gear that is inevitably worn smooth; free from any previous grating—flush. 

    Merked's songwriting style is still that tumbling, asymmetrical powerviolence. Songs are heavy and fast, yet manage to roll with a kind of Fibonacci bounding. I'm assuming this is in large thanks to the drumming, although I'm not entirely sure how to specifically pinpoint it. Songs are explosive bursts of blast beats that fire off and on in-between hardcore potholes. This time around, Merked skip out on the overt sludge influences that were so prevalent in Murk-Mob in favor of more traditional hardcore. Songs like, "Abuse," "Got what's Coming," and "Gray Death" are among the "slower" songs, but they manage to fall easily within the heavy mosh inducing hardcore than any sort of sludge or sludge-violence. And as always Merked's side is chock-full of movie sound clips, plenty of violent squelching cinematic foley work, and lyrics that are lacking in any sort of pity or empathy for the lazy-minded and morally weak. 

    Overall, Merked's side of this split is still in the vein of the band's well established style of grindcore and that of California's rising pocket of grime-violence. All tracks are under a minute long, leaving songs fairly streamlined and lean. The heavy, oblong mix keeps things brutal and loose. The band's cadence is unique and revolves like a tumbleweed of barbed wire sparking across the concrete. Honestly, the structure of the songs reminded me a lot of my last band. A few of the vocal patterns and drum fills triggered my practice space spidey-sense and I instinctually prepared myself for the upcoming chord changes that never came.  

    On the flipside of the cassette, Kageneko is a one-man death-grind band from either Seattle, Washington or Kitsault, British Columbia (depending on who you ask.) This is the first time that I have heard of Kageneko and I did my best to scrounge up some of the scarce information that is out there on the band—as contentious as it may be. The man behind the moniker is a member of the noise-grind band, Asmodexia. He plays all the instruments himself, including vocal duties and the programming of the drums. Kageneko released a demo entitled Ichiban on Soundcloud in 2020. In late 2023 Kageneko released Siamese Twin Cobra—a split with Mississippi noise-grind outfit, Boiled Tongue. Finally, Kageneko appeared on this split with Merked in the summer of 2023. 

    

    The band's split with Merked offers seven tracks of ruinously heavy blasting. Kageneko's straightforward approach to grindcore represents a singular, pummeling focus. The dark growl of the guitar distortion ties in well with the low-pitched vibes of the tape as a whole. If nothing else, the downtune guitar is a menacing storm of noise and a big presence in the songs. The death metal styled vocals are just as low as the guitar; almost bordering on goregrind without getting too regurgitative sounding. The programmed drums mainly alternate between blast beats and rapid fire double bass hammering.

    There is an obvious Japanese themed aesthetic as well as major musical influences from bands like Assück and Insect Warfare. In my opinion, Kageneko has a lot of similarities to the Texas Gulf Coast grind scene. Bands like PLF, Noisy Neighbors, Apocalyptic Noise Syndicate and Ganglion pair well with the Pacific Northwest's, Kageneko, despite an almost two thousand mile transcontinental gap. 

    Come for the Merked, stay for Kageneko is essentially the deal with this tape. Like me, I'm sure a lot of people will learn about Kageneko here for the first time. The band's mix of brutal death metal and ferocious grindcore should be enough to satiate any self-respecting grindcore enthusiast. Honestly, the band reminds me of a stripped down, synthetic, Oops! All Gutturals version of Insect Warfare. 

    The only real criticism I could see anyone complaining about might be the use of programmed drums. I know a lot of purists, or whoever, lose their minds over drum machines and drum triggers, but I have never been that judgmental over such things. Although the programmed drums are noticeable, I don't think they are detracting or distracting. Either way, Kageneko are more than capable of standing on their own and are well deserving of being taken seriously.

FFO: Choke, Malicious Algorithm, Insect Warfare, Fuck... I'm Dead

Listen to the album: https://getmerked.bandcamp.com/album/merked-kageneko-split