Guess what? It’s officially 2026! Yay, right? Whether you like it or not, time is marching on, and whining about it won’t make it stop… just thinking of the new music to be released this year gives me a small bit of hope for the future.
Sunday morning finds me jamming the new album from grind bastard Kosuke Hashida called Moment of Silence. If you’ve been paying attention, he released Justifiable Homicide in 2024, Outrage in 2025, and now here we are with album number three. How is it? Jesus fucking Christ, hold onto your boobies because it’s another exercise in brutality.
14 songs in 16:19 minutes. Outrage was 20:12, and Justifiable Homicide was 16:55. These guys are not in the business of making long albums. Which is perfectly fine when the music is this nasty and brutal.
“The Cultist” gets the pit moving with a relentless approach. Keeping in line with those last couple of albums, A Moment of Silence is a certified raging bastard of a record. Blasting through “Mind Dead”, “Secularization” and “Left in Pieces” sees the band flexing their Lock Up muscles and decimating the population with some killer riffing, even if it is like three chords (maybe).
What I love about Grindcore is that it doesn’t take a lot to make a fantastic offering. These songs are like death by a thousand cuts, and with all the songs under the two-minute length (except for “Scorched Earth” which kisses the two-minute but stays at 1:59). Cheeky, very cheeky. Anyway, these songs are like fourteen angry hornets, but they’re all murder hornets. BAHAHA!
Despite the title, there isn’t a Moment of Silence here… see what I did there? “Damnation”, “201”, “Scorched Earth”, “Reason to Kill” and “Religious Reality” come out swinging for the middle of the album. Each of these songs is extremely catchy as well as being the epitome of brutality. This is a true Grindcore fan’s Grindcore album. Short and unapologetically fierce.
“Bleed Out”, “Slaughtered Again”, “Retaliation”, “Blood Boost”, and finally “Tokyo Calling” put a lid on the album in the most violent whirlwind imaginable. If you feel like you’ve been pounded into dust by A Moment of Silence, then Kosuke Hashida has done his job. I’ve already got early as fuck predictions for AOTY and the year is still young. So go pick it up, get brutalized, and then just ram your head into a wall. For you Napalm Death, Nasu,m, and Lock Up fans.
