Nothing makes me feel more foolish than when I sleep on releases, especially given that I'm expected to have my typey-little-fingers on the pulse of modern grindcore. However, The House of Grindcore gets a new follower or a new release submission virtually daily. And unfortunately, a lot of those submissions are added to a long roster where they sit idly until I can impartially get to them all. As I slowly make my way through them all, I occasionally come upon a release, sight unseen, that I hadn't even given a prior cursory listen and think, "Oh wow, this is amazing," and I immediately start rehashing that year's Top 10 list in my head. 2023's split between Civilian Thrower and Sangre De Idiotas might possibly be one of those records that had me questioning my ranking system. Thankfully, the end of year rankings are full-lengths only.
France's Civilian Thrower, besides having a name that sparks the imagination, are an absolutely prolific band that has released some fourteen records since their initial demo in 2021—all but one of which have been split EPs. The grindcore trio has splits with genre heavy hitters such as Convulsions and Morbid Angel Dust, as well as past blog alumni Proudhon, Mindcollapse, and Vile Species.
Civilian Thrower are an especially brutal and pulverizing form of grindcore. The band's combination of speed and weight makes for a highly aggressive collection of seven tracks on their side of the split here with Sangre De Idiotas.
Civilian Thrower's vocals are a tandem, wailing pair of high shrieks and gravelly low drags. They sound very similar to a possessed howler monkey armed with a blowtorch.
The drumwork has a calamitous precision to it. It switches up constantly, yet manages to juggle between multiple versions of fast sprints of steady snare strikes and even faster blast beat BPMs.
The guitarwork is tight loops that change tempo as much as the drums. Riffs have a kind of circular stammering signature style, as well as an unexpected punky bounce to them. Partnered with the drums, the guitar's flared style creates a punctuated syncopation within the songwriting. This is probably most overt in the track, "In Debt Welfare."
Sangre De Idiotas are a Slovakian drum and bass grindcore duo made up of members of Sangre De Cristo and Idiots Parade, so the band's name is as clever as it is pragmatic. Meeting Civilian Thrower on their level, Sangre De Idiotas are just as heavy, just as brutal, just as punishing. For a two-piece lacking a traditional guitar, Sangre De Idiotas are putting out an exceptional full sounding recording. Like I've said in recent reviews of drum and bass grindcore bands, the make-or-break is usually a balance between distortion and blast beat tempo.
Sangre De Idiotas are certainly not lacking in speed. The drumming is that European high energy, stop-and-go, popcorn snare that I love so much. It's incessant and blistering.
As for the bass, it finds a glorious line between enough distortion to cover the spread, as well as a clean audibleness that any grind bassist would be happy with in the studio. The bass tone itself is actually pretty gnarly. It's a tone that is teetering on a medium of growling aggression and bright springiness.
The band's vocals are fiery and low and very comparable to Civilian Thrower's. They are even-keeled barks of asphalt and rebar sung in-step with the bass' quick riffing.
Now, one of my favorite things about Sangre De Idiotas is their song titles. Their song titles are the length of the songs. As in, if the song is thirty-five seconds long then the name of that song is, "00.35." And I believe this is on all their releases throughout their entire discography. It certainly makes their Bandcamp page look exceptionally uniformed. However, this begs the question: what if there are two or more songs that end up being the same length? Which is which? Does the band purposely write each new additional song to be a new and unused duration of time? I mean, the confusion of a live setlist boggles the mind. Yet, Sangre De Idiotas make it work somehow. Although, I remember the setlists in my last band were chock-full of silly practice space nicknames and I don't think half of us knew the songs' actual titles. Perhaps Sangre De Idiotas have a tracklist of shorthand monikers that we are unaware of.
The seven inch split was co-released by grindcore benefactors: Nihilocus Records, Here And Now! Records, Psychocontrol Records, and SSGC Records, who actually submitted this split for review, (obviously a couple of years ago at this point.) Since then, both bands have been fairly industrious. Civilian Thrower has released eight splits since 2023, five of which were released just this year. Likewise, Sangre De Idiotas released a full-length and a split with Morbid Angel Dust in 2025.
As far as split mates, Civilian Thrower and Sangre De Idiotas are about as compatible as you can get. Both bands embody that crushing and ferocious style of grindcore: a burly mix, unrelenting blast beats, and antagonistic songwriting. Both bands play the same straightforward, charging form of grindcore, yet each band takes a different path to get there, and each band puts their own distinct style and spin on it. The mix on both sides of the split is a good quality and leans more towards a competent professionalism instead of a rougher, more down and dirty mix that the record could easily have had. This is the kind of record that goes down real easy and has a high replayability.
FFO: Nak'ay, PLF, Deliriant Nerve
Listen to the albums: https://civilianthrower.bandcamp.com/album/split-w-sangre-de-idiotas
