Artist: Cripple Bastards
Album: Nero in metastasi
Source: Spotify
Pre-listening Notes: Old school grindcore from Italy. They've been around since the late 80's and have put out tons of albums, EP's, splits, and comp songs. And on my trips to Maryland Death Fest, they have been one of the most represented band merch wise walking around the fest. I caught a song or two when they played the one year, but they were playing inside and the heat was unbearable. So, after being a band for over 25 years, let's see how well they hold up to the other bands of the genre.
Initial Reaction: Nice crunchy, slow intro, which then breaks into blistering speed about a minute in and I'm reaching to turn the volume up. This is great! Blistering ferocity mixed with heavy crunch breakdowns. This is sort of the type of album I was hoping Menace was going to be the other day. Maybe now that I have something like this to listen to, I can go back and give that album a more fair shake. The song sped by so fast.
Random Thoughts: I'm pretty sure the lyrics are in Italian, but honestly I don't care. This second song rips and clocks in at just under a minute and the speed never lets up. I can't get over the intensity of some of this. Each track just starts and rips through songs that generally range between less than a minute to around two and a half minutes. There is a song that comes close to four minutes and another that tops nine, which I am curious to see what that's all about. But, so far this is just blistering grind with the occasional slow down for a breakdown. The vocals are fit in nicely and has a little bit of range from a growl to a more hardcorish yell. So many blast beats, and then a breakdown in the song Lapide Rimossa, that would fit just fine in any hardcore album. Some cool weird beats in the beginning of the song Occhi Trapiantati, which is the song that is close to four minutes. It slows it down a bit to start, with a more death metal growl in parts of the song. Things have taken a turn for the weird in the song Splendore E Tenebra, which has slowed things down significantly. After about a two minute intro, the song then kicks into a groove riff before throwing some fast parts in. It just keeps weaving back and forth and all of this song is just so heavy.
Final Reaction: Woah, I think it's safe to say I've found something I really love here. This record was exactly what I hoped to gain out of listening to an album a day for an entire year. I wanted to discover somethings that I would be going back to time and time again. This album, maybe even this band, is exactly that. I now have regrets of walking out after a couple songs that year in Baltimore. This is fast, loud, fast, heavy, fast and pretty great. This rips, smokes, slays, all the other buzz words being used for metal right now. The only gripe I would have had was the language barrier in the lyrics, but honestly I can hear his anger and hate seep through, even without actually knowing what he says. Once the opening track kicked in, I knew I was in for something special. I will not only be listening to this again, but I will be trying to work my way through the immense back catalog. If you've read this far, and you like the things I've described (grindcore, fast songs, heavy songs, growling/yelling, blast beats, any of this) do yourself a favor and listen to this album.
Final Grade: 9.0/10
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