Heavy Metal Ha-Ha (first of 2012!)

Some of the best music writing out there - or at least the most entertaining -  comes to me in the form of press releases about heavy metal (or super hard rock, grindcore, etc. It's a pretty wide field...of blood!).  From the names of the bands to the album and song titles to the descriptions of music that wants to rip your face off, it's a thesaurus of aggressive fun. Here then, my first HMHH entry of the new year, with two bands featured. (Both are excerpts, with my emphasis added.)

1. Following their first ever trek through Brazil with Aborted, California goregrind ministers EXHUMED will spray their blood overseas next month on the Grind Over Europe Tour 2012.

  

EXHUMED will be touring in support of All Guts, No Glory, issued earlier this year via Relapse Records. The band's first new record in almost eight years offers up 11 slaughter-filled tracts of soul-raping, grind-infused death metal that toppled an array of Year End lists including Decibel, Pitchfork, NPR.org, MetalSucks and Skulls N Bones.

[CPF NOTE: yes, you read that right – NPR. The socialist propaganda outfit covered Exhumed's show at Maryland Deathfest 2011.]

“… fans of dripping blood, gaping autopsies, and ravenous zombies will absolutely adore this record.” — Revolver 

“EXHUMED has aged like corpse putrefaction: that is indeed the highest compliment you can pay to one of 2011’s best records.” — Brave Words

And here’s a little something about another band, Toxic Holocaust:

"If The Exploited and Nuclear Assault had a kid, TOXIC HOLOCAUST would take its lunch money and toss it in the dumpster." -- Hails & Horns

“….sweetly redolent of thrash, d-beat, and raw sewage, the album simmers with tar-thick riffage, staggering breakdowns, and a corroded dose of self-loathing. — The Onion’s A.V. Club
Throw your devil horns, people!

Heavy Metal Ha-Ha

I love press releases touting very heavy rock music. Not because I listen to deathcore or grindcore or extreme metal or whatever the variations are, but because it has the most descriptive writing, and it's often unintentionally hilarious. Like this (emphasis added):

"NUNFUCKRITUAL's In Bondage To The Serpent crawls from the gutter like a diseased, decayed and decrepit corpse; a choking dirge; a hideous, malformed infestation of filthy underground metal that ignores trends, defies categorization and brings together some of the darkest, blackest, nastiest manifestations ever committed to tape. Degraded and corrupt, these six blasphemous conjurations call upon decades of extreme metal experience to devastating effect, resulting in an album so gross, rank and genuinely disturbing that it is the aural equivalent of being cannibalized by the leprous sisters Plague and Death. An insidious poison running through your veins, slowly devouring your life force, until nothing remains, but ruin. Obsidian incantations seethe with pure evil energy, summoning ancient deities to commit terrible atrocities against organized religion, a celebration of the ultimate triumph of mankind's dark side. Swarming, swirling and shimmering with mal-intent, In Bondage To The Serpent breaks new ground with its omnipresent, all-consuming evil vibe. This eerie, potent brew is, quite simply, a manifestation of pure, undiluted evil. Sickness never sounded so real..."

Damn. I just missed my mom's birthday...