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
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