I’ve probably listened to this record 20 times and am just having trouble describing where my opinions lie. Doom of all types seems to be the next big thing, next to Black Metal. It is getting almost impossible when checking out new bands to separate the wheat from the chaff. The amount of press this project and album has been getting from big draw sites like MetalInjection, MetalSucks, ThePRP, etc. has blown expectations for this album out of the water. Hell, that’s how I originally became interested. I have to imagine this is all going to add up to a lot of fair-weather fans.

Originally tagged as Funeral Doom, which it really isn’t, it definitely doesn’t stand up to Thergothon or Esoteric. It feels more Death / Doom if you’re being a Genre Nazi, but not in a Hooded Menace way and it’s certainly no Winter. So where does this leave us with Stomach Earth?

Mr. Gunface wields his unquestionable riffing chops in a much different manner here. I expected some sort of amalgam of tech-craziness along with the slow pummeling typical of any Doom record. What I got was a not completely remarkable, yet unexpectedly decent Doom / Sludge album. A few songs are not all that memorable. “Watchers,” the second track is a near 7-minute slow burner with very little heat. The massive growls and slow tempo are all par for the course on an album like this, and the only part of this song I find myself perk up for is the sludgy pounding at 3:35.

A lot of the songs are like this. I feel like I’ve heard it before, and then wedged in amongst the rough is a diamond of a riff sharp enough to slice me out of the lull. The standout track here is “Haunted By The Living,” starting off full-bore with a massive and catchy Doom riff, as slow as can be. At 0:50 comes the coolest riff on the record, and it sort of sounds like it wouldn’t be an out of place breakdown on any The Red Chord album, and that isn’t meant as a jab. It’s an awesome, memorable, hummable, headbang-able riff that sounds like he’s hitting the instruments as hard as he can without breaking them. This record is chock full of haunting riffs inside of songs I just can’t completely get behind. Sixth track “Reaching The Threshold” is another dim fire, but this one has additional fuel. Slowly inching in until a thunder of the full ‘band’ hits, a huge riff repeatedly crashes until a slow lead adds ambiance and atmosphere. After another ambient bridge, at 6:30 is another highlight riff that crawls along to 8:30 where one of the best transitions between riffs in the whole genre can be found. Creative transitions can be hard, or unnecessary to pull off at this speed solely because you can just begin interjecting a new riff at any time when there’s 3 seconds between each drum beat, but Gunface did it impressively here.

Stomach Earth was a hard record for me to review. I’m not sure I wanted to like it from the get go. I tried to go into it without any preconceptions. After a few listens, I knew I didn’t dislike it. I still am not completely sold on it because of its missteps, but man can this dude write a crushing riff. The memorable stuff I’ve found myself humming all day, it’s that catchy. There’s some creativity here in a sometimes stagnant genre, but I wish there was more. If you’re a Doom fan, don’t not check this out because of the affiliation. I almost wish he would have pushed himself to add in some of that crazy technical flair, break up the structures a bit, and inject some venom. While a successful and fairly convincing stab at the genre was made here, with a few more outstanding moments I feel I could have been floored by this album.

Fea Jur grabs you right away with the complicated jazzy opener “Big Red Button.” Don’t expect power chords, 4/4 time or the verse-chorus formula anywhere. Lye By Mistake offers progressive metal fused with jazz and consistently beautiful and complex guitar work. This album liberally incorporates Zappa’s guitar-heavy opus Hot Rats, bits of The Dillinger Escape Plan and math metal and the experimental proclivities of of Sun Ra and Zappa collaborator Captain Beefheart. You’d think that list of influences would lead to boring music cranked out for a master’s thesis at the Berkley College of Music. But that’s not the case at all as this album kicks ass from beginning to end; you could play Fea Jur with the windows rolled down, no problem.

“The Condition” opens with mellow sounds you might hear in an upscale jazz club. Guitarist Josh Bauman then takes off with guitar work as the backing band punches out something that would have fit the 1950s Chess Records catalog. Lye By Mistake isn’t afraid to let the song breathe and open up before they come back with a chugging riff played with hardcore intensity. Then consider “Invincible Bad Ass,” where K.K. Downing riffs meet ethereal passages and later the prog-nightmare opening of “Vanguard to Nowhere”.

There are plenty of superlatives that could be used for this music. Let’s just say it takes guts, determination and talent to pull off an album like this. Lye By Mistake pushes metal past more boundaries and into the most unexpected places.

Cut from the same heavily bearded and classically inspired cloth as 3 Inches of Blood and Skeletonwitch, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek, DDD’s mix of thrash, power metal, heavy metal and melodic death metal is hardly groundbreaking, but for some reason, as with their two previously mentioned bands, throw in some heavy handed synths (far more so than the debut), and even some Viking chants/choirs then lyrics about vast battles, winged beasts, the undead and of course sluts of battle, and you can’t help but grin and throw the horns.

The orchestral epic “The Second Coming” signals the arrival of the sophomore record with a grandiose sense of pomp before “Battle Upon the Artic Plains” trots into view with a majestic power metal gait and war horns and closes with some rousing choirs. “The Scorpion Gate” gallops with a killer melodic urgency before and austere closing few moments complete with Lord Byron -ish spoken words. By this point, I’m hooked and the rest of the album is a grin inducing ride into cheese land, but I have to admit, musically the band appears to have grown into their themes, with a far more advanced grasp of melody and structure as “Realm of Ancient Shadows” and “Born of Thunder” shows-just damn good, mid paced, epic power/heavy metal songs by any standard, just with Bryan Kemp delivering harsh blackened rasps. Granted, the sense of almost Bal-Sagoth like pomp and Rhapsody (of Fire) level of cheese can be overbearing, especially for a US band on Black Market Activities, but DDD really seem to have grown into their chosen style and themes without it sounding too forced, or simply like a metalcore band playing power metal with fantasy lyrics. Heck, there’s even some well done female vocals that grace “The Winged Panther” and penultimate track “Return of the Geishmal Undead” , with more rousing chants is just downright epic. Oh, and be sure to stick around for the drunken beer song “Battle Slut Drinking Song” for a good laugh.

The gauntlet has been thrown to metal heads who will no doubt hate this lot simply based on their metalcore backbone, gimmicky image, thong clad front man and almost piss taking lyrics, but personally serious or not, Battle Sluts is a damn fun metal record that all metal heads should give a try.

Of course, this is the expected mix of skittish, jagged off kilter chaos littered with crumbling grooves and harsh hardcore shouts and its done very well, with more than enough moments of speaker wilting heft amid the discordant caterwauling, but there’s not enough to keep me coming back or completely rip my face off like the aforementioned label mates.

Part of the hindrance is mostly non musical as the comedic interludes that litter the album (“T.R.O.U.B.L.E. (Intro Skit)”, “Top English (Midget Pool Skit)”, “Shot of Whiskey (Beginning of the End Barfight Skit)” and “Louisiana Dive Bar Massacre (Sawin’ Bones and Chuggin’ Brew Outro Skit)”) though break up the continual surge of spazzing down-tuned histrionics, might be funny to those in the band on in on the joke, otherwise serve as pointless voids of filler, so them there’s only 9 actual tracks of the frantic, bladder squeezing music.

Musically, TTDTE really aren’t to different from many of the bands plying this form of modern tech/grind/hardcore, granted they are not as annoying or grating but they also don’t really standout out as they seem to rely on their humor and self deprecating, trailer park imagery to make them stand out from the pack. That being said, tracks like “Carroll 14 Wosman 7”, “Nobody Eats Barbeque Two Days is a Row” and “Rollin’ and Tumblin’ on Satan’s Rotisserie” deliver short brutal bursts of earthy produced discordance that the kids will love.

On Animal, the age comparison with Decapitated is now added to musically by a larger technical death metal element. As with some of their peers, the ‘core’ side of things has been lessened in favor of a more complex yet structured form of angular vortexes, deeper vocals and more challenging musical delivery. Maybe it’s the addition of bassist Evan Brewer (of Prog metal act Reflux), or just the natural maturation of a bunch of angry teens to slightly more experienced musicians, but either way, Animal, is just that-feral, beastly and slathering at the jaws to tear your throat out.

After the brutal opening salvo of “Terror Storm”, which quickly and deftly cements some of the Decapitated/tech death metal comparisons, you can almost feel the band become more comfortable and confident as they flirt with an almost playful melody wrapping around the lurching “Tooth Grinder” or short lived solos on the title track and “Plunder Incorporated”. Otherwise, the 11 slabs of modern, grinding, jagged heft (with the exception of the rather needless bursts of “Evangelicult” and “Elucidation”), that’s neither mindlessly chaotic and screechy or reliant on breakdowns. Tracks like “Operating from the Ditch”, “You Cant Win”, “Progression in Defeat” and closer “A Passionate Journey” highlight a group of young men, who are skilled and confident, yet seem to be barely scratching the surface of their limits.

Rounded out one of Kurt Ballou’s (Converge) beefier productions and some cool Paul Romano artwork, Animal is a rabid shot in the arm for tired modern American metal.

Either Metal Blade/ BMA have reached the bottom of the spazz/tech/grind barrel or this is some sort of Halloween joke. Chicago’s Dance Club Massacre play the now popular herky jerky, screamy, spazzy form of grindcore as plied by the likes of Destroyer Destroyer, Heavy Heavy Low Low, Arsonists Get All The Girls, labelmates The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, but the shtick here is the music is littered with 80’s horror film synths, samples and references. Apparently the fans have started calling it “Halloweencore”.

Samples and synths aside, this is your typical grating, angular heavy version of screamo dressed up as grindcore-every band with a myspace page and a Pig Destroyer album is doing it, and while the whole ‘horror’ element is an unusual twist, it comes across as horribly gimmicky and doesn’t change the fact this is completely annoying spazzcore with little to offer past the synths and horror gimmick.

You get the expected mix of squirly, screechy off kilter, chaotic riffs (“Meet Me In The Pub For A Shot Of Dignity”, “You Bring The Bitches, I’ll Bring The Dynamite”) and a few deep vocal backed breakdowns (“Wet Between the Thighs”, “The Duchess and the Cougar”,) and most of it is flocked with intermittent bursts of purposely spooky horror synths (i.e. “Devon Butler’s Dying Wishes”, You Know…You Kind Of Look Cute In The Dark”, “Murders Come With Smiles”, “Showdown in San Antonio”) which sound like they were pulled off a Walmart Halloween CD and make Cradle of Filth’s most cheesy moments look like Chopin. And of course those song titles……

This kind of music is starting to make me want to punch babies, and so far Dance Club Massacre, while not the worst offender I’ve heard this year, because they at least try something different, is still grating annoying and talentless.

Of course, if you’re satisfied by 10 short sharp stabs of lurching, staggering, stuttering hardcore metal, then The Dregs will appease you. However, beyond the heaving rage and atonal riffage and menace, there is little to separate Engineer from the pack, which is a shame because in the bands debut full length, Reproach, I thought the brothers Gorham had the potential to deliver something special.

The Jocko Randall (Ed Gein) production is noisy and burly, befitting the band’s caustic throes of tracks like “Scala Natura”, “The Iron Worker”, “Tremors”, “First Frost” and “the Thinning Cynic” and Bob Gorham has an impressive bellow, but in the 34 minute assault, there’s not much worth revisiting or remembering. “Hollow Vessel” and “Big Black Smile” initially hint at being a little more expansive and experimental, but eventually shift into just an expected but slower, more deliberate take on the band’s now exhaustive lope.

I kept waiting for the band to just take a slight tangent or inject something to invigorate their angry but predictable bursts of Tourretes-core, but it never happened and as a result The Dregs is another high energy, low recommendation release on a label that should be delivering far better stuff.

With former members of Bodies in the Gears of the Apparatus in its ranks, Orlando’s Khann is typically brief and spastic with its 19 (23 if you include hidden tracks) mostly sub 2–minute bursts of screeching, calamitous noise (“Himalayan Green”, “Cleanse”, “Volcanic Lungs pt 2”, “Apprehension”, “Ignorance”, “Charisma”, etc) and that will please most fans of the Nu-grind/hardcore/tech movement, and is certainly the least grating of all the recent examples of this style (Heavy Heavy Low Low, Destroyer Destroyer, Dance Club Massacre, etc).

But is the album longer tracks (longer being a still short 3 minutes al the way to a droning 9 minutes) that really got my attention. It starts with the fourth track, “Anodynic Spheres” where about 1:09 into the introspective show gazing post rock, Khann kick into a stunning, almost melodic black metal blast beat (the injection of sublime melody briefly appears in “Quarantined” and “Squall” also), before settling down into more dreamy instrumentation. It’s a real WOW moment that indicates this band is far more than just sheer noise. The second moment of chaos breaking depth is the post rock introspection of “Bird” which is as good as anything put out by the likes of The Ocean, Rosetta or Transmission0 this year and at 5 minutes, is a quicker listen. Then “Volcanic Lungs pt 1” is 6 minutes of crumbling, sludgy atonal heft while “Lament” lone moment of reprieve.

9 minute Closer (not including 4 tracks of silence), “The Lone Hum”, is only about ½ song and ½ throwaway random noise, so ends the album on a bit of a sour note, but on the whole a pretty convincing affair that successfully melds abrasive and pensive with impressive results.

The band still plies a form of chaotic, angular, dissonant metalcore with a hefty low end and dual vocals (though not as guttural as Sean Vandergrift), but the band’s spastic sound is now rife with experimentation and a more cerebral approach that isn’t as immediately heavy as the debut EP and takes even more time to absorb. Where the debut was a completely devastating wall of sound, Delenda is more chaotic and discordant and throws in far more ‘clean’ segues both musically and vocally. Will Jackson’s singing voice is utilized more than the music to present more peaceful moments amid the jagged and layered fusion of turbulent, unpredictable noise and surprising, buried harmonies. The thing is though, it often sounds a bit disjointed and forced.

Relying far less on the breakdown Delenda stutters and squeals with more eclectic abandon, far more so than the EP and the conceptual backdrop allows for more tangents such as opener “Acknowledgment” and most notably the cringe inducing “Ghosts Over Japan”. There are a few brief moments of concentrated girth such as “Soft Green Fields (Expired Terra Coffins)”, “Oracles and Doorsteps” and “The Crusher” but they don’t last long before being expunged by the band’s distorted cacophony or a unexpected tangent. For example, the subtle melody and clean climax of “A Piece of History Written in English” cries to be fleshed out and developed more, but instead, the track is cut short and dives into the dissonant screech of “Dark Waters of Thought”, which in turn has its own promising melody lines cut short. It’s almost frustrating.

At their best, (“Oracles and Doorsteps”, “The Crusher”, “These Lights Above Us”) FASSW are a dizzyingly skilled band, but a their worst (“For Those Once Lost”, “Ghosts Over Japan”, the ovrwrought “Mourning For Mourning”) FASSW are directionless and over ambitious and the dichotomous end result is that I’ve been giving albums by Nights Like These, The Demonstration and Harlots far more attention than Delenda. Which is a shame as potentially, FASSW have the ability to be really, really special, if they would just settle down a bit.

Delenda is still a solid record, definitely for fans of the genre, but Blackmarket Activities/Metal Blade’s press sheet sums it up perfectly; “Delenda is ready to be heard by the world…lets hope the world understands”. I am not sure they will….

After the well received debut Shut it Down on Tribunal, Metal Blade saw that the ‘barely legal to buy a beer’ group were on the verge of being huge, the problem is other bands this year have already released albums just as good in the same genre. Between the Buried and Me, Embrace the End, The Taste of Blood, Winds of Plague, Antagony, The Red Chord, Ion Dissonance, etc; All have released solid death/tech/core styled albums, and those releases have stolen a little of Animosity’s thunder.

That being said, Empires is still a stout album and skillwise, a markedly improved album from these kids. It’s got a lumbering Zach Ohren production (who is becoming the marquee genre producer on these shores and seems to be the American Tue Madsen), some gigantic grooves, plenty of tight, squealing discordance and earthy, deathly vocals. The problem is, it never quite peaks. Its complexity is never as fetal position inducing as Ion Dissonance and it’s not quite as ball droppingly heavy as Embrace the End or the Taste of Blood. It’s plenty good enough in both categories, but annoyingly, never steps it up to truly memorable.

Opener ‘Thieves’ pretty much lays the groundwork for the entire album with rumbling riffs, machine gun percussion and hefty vocal interplay, but then the album almost becomes one long slugfest with no defining moments above and beyond its tenacity. In fact, I was surprised to look at my CD player and see ‘track 3′ displayed, I still thought I was listening to ‘Thieves’. The only slight hint of character in the continually pummeling tracks is the very slight presence of a Soilent Green-ish Southern vibe to some of the grooves and solos (‘Commoditism’, ‘Holy Shackles’, ‘Empires’, ‘Plutocracy’) and the opening thrash salvo of ‘Life Advocate’. Other wise, Animosity are force feeding you vast amounts of sonic chaos. Tracks like ‘Manhunt’, ‘The Black Page’ and ‘Shut it Down’ are frayed, tightly strung beatings of impressive proportions in small doses.

Unfortunately, Empires ends too quickly, just as its finding its groove, a slight sign of the band’s relative youth. Kinda like a young kid having sex for the first time; eager and willing but a little to fast and immediate. Still, Animosity have a bright future as they are still one of the genre’s most talented acts, they just need a little more focus above and beyond sheer force