Wormrot Releases "Erased Existence" from Forthcoming Disc "Dirge" // "Abuse" CD Review (Earache Records)

Singapore's grindcore band Wormrot have released another new track, "Erased Existence", from their forthcoming album, Dirge.



The band is kicking off their Dirge Across America tour next month in San Diego and the band will be touring cross-country through March and April. Tour dates are below and presumably a NYC date will be slotted sometime in early April.

Dirge Across America Tour Dates
Mar 03 - San Diego, CA - The Ruby Room
Mar 04 - Los Angeles, CA - The Blvd.
Mar 05 - Pomona, CA - The Glass House (Scion Rock Fest)
Mar 06 - Oakland, Ca - Hazmat Warehouse
Mar 07 - Sacramento, CA - On The Y
Mar 08 - Reno, NV - Ground Zero (House Show)
Mar 10 - Portland, OR - Red Room
Mar 11 - Seattle, WA - The Morgue
Mar 12 - Boise, ID - The Shredder
Mar 13 - Salt Lake City, UT - Raunch Records
Mar 14 - Cheyenne, WY - Ernie November (In-store)
Mar 15 - Denver, CO - Blast-O-Mat
Mar 17 - Austin, TX - Lipps Lounge
Mar 18 - Austin, TX - Lovejoys

w/TOMBS
Mar 22 - New Orleans, LA - Siberia
Mar 23 - Panama City, FL - C-Level
Mar 24 - Tampa, FL - Ransitions Art Gallery
Mar 25 - Miami, FL - Churchill's Pub
Mar 26 - Orlando, FL - Will's Pub
Mar 27 - Atlanta, GA - Archive Gallery
Mar 28 - Charlotte, NC - The Milestone
Mar 29 - Richmond, VA - Gallery 5
Mar 30 - Washington, DC - The Red Door
Mar 31 - Philadelphia, PA - Kung Fu Necktie
Apr 01 - Worcester, MA - Club Oasis
Apr 02 - Brockton, MA - O'Brien's Pub
-----------------------
Apr 05 - Peeksill, NY - Popeye's
Apr 07 - Cleveland, OH - Now That's Class
Apr 08 - Lansing, MI - Mac's Bar
Apr 09 - Chicago, IL - Memories
Apr 10 - Milwaukee, WI - Mad planet
Apr 12 - Columbia, MO - Sideshow
Apr 13 - Oklahoma City, OK - The Conservatory

The three members of Wormrot are Rasyid (guitar), Fitri (drums) and Arif (vocals) and the band’s debut CD Abuse came out last summer on Earache Records. Arif mixed and mastered the disc and (surprisingly, given the genre) gave the band a clean and balanced sound. The original 23-track disc has now been supplemented with a 34-track bonus disc entitled Extra Abuse which contains the band’s 2007 demo tracks, an Insect Warefare cover, the band’s two EPs from 2008 (“Dead” and the Wormrot tracks from a split with Diseptic along with a handful of previously unreleased tracks from 2009.

I’ve never been a huge grindcore fan as most artists in the genre seem to be going for aggressive power over song structure. I’m over-generalizing with this next comment but after listening to a ‘run of the mill’ grindcore disc with 15-20 one minute songs, I generally feel pummeled by the intensity but none of the songs ever seem to stick with me. What I mean by this is that when replaying the disc, I have no reason to drop on any individual tracks. Singapore-based grindcore trio Wormrot add some extra elements to the standard grindcore formula which makes this disc (and a number of songs within) stand out from the pack.

Where Wormrot breaks from the grindcore pack is that the band has more of a song-orientation that focuses on the guitar and vocal work. Rasyid breaks from the d-beat sound to play some thrash, groove and (almost) alt-rock riffs on various tracks. Arif’s vocals range from shout-along slogans to the cookie-monster growls and black metal screams and both he and Rasyid mix up their styles which keeps the disc sounding fresh and the tracks distinctive. Fitri predominately pounds the drums with a high-velocity blast beat but he too mixes things up with some offbeat fills and polyrhythmic beats. Fitri plays so hard that the band had to stop their show last year at Bowery Electric to fix the drum kit.



While the band has a political bent (the disc opens with the spoken word snippet "Here's your Patriot Act! Here's your fucking abuse of power!" from student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, after being repeatedly tasered in the UCLA library ), they also have a wicked sense of humor. This humor comes out on tracks like the melodic “Fuck…I’m Drunk”, the groove-oriented “Overgrown Asshole” and a complete deconstruction of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Rich” (where the band lops three minutes off the original song).

Links:
Wormrot

Wormrot Continues N. American Tour // Show at The Acheron in Brooklyn on Oct. 3rd

After making their N. American debut earlier this month at a show at Bowery Electric, Singapore grindcore band Wormrot are playing a short run of tour dates across the Mid-Atlantic over the next week.

The band has been blogging about their first N. American tour for Invisible Oranges and a snippet from their tour diary is below.

"Things have been a bit rough lately. The drive from Denver to Albuquerque, New Mexico was around 8 – 9 hours. Upon reaching there, we had some burritos for a late lunch. It was a nice change of appetite coz we’ve been having pizzas almost everyday. Don’t get me wrong, pizzas are good, but everyday you kind of feel quite sick of it. Hehe… Anyway, the gig wasn’t as massive as the one in Denver. Turnout wasn’t as big as the place, but it was OK, I guess. The good thing is, some of the band members from Noisear came down for the gig. Was great to meet them. One of them played in a side band called The Laughing Dog. Man, they really kill!! Brutal band!!! It was an honor to meet some of the boys from Noisear and share the stage with The Laughing Dog. And guess what we had for dinner… Pizzas.

The next morning, we left the place at around 8:30am. Had our usual snappy Starbucks coffee with breakfast from Arby’s and head off to Oklahoma City for a gig at The Conservatory. Another long ass drive! What was supposed to be a 10 hours drive became 12 hours due to some complications on the highway in Amarillo, Texas. For the 1st time in our lives, we experienced real flood!!! The flood was so bad that some cars were covered in water. That totally sucks big time, man! We were damn lucky not to get stuck in the flood coz all the Wormrot boys can’t swim, for goodness sake!! Traffic was slow coz they had to block some parts of the road. And so we arrived late while the 1st band was playing. No bullshit, just load in and fucking play! Another small turnout for us considering the size of the place. LOL… But it was a fun gig. Sound system was good and the crowd was crazy, too. There was no place for us to sleep that night. so Mike h ad to drive to a hotel so that we can all have our beauty sleep. Oh yeah, the promoter did get us some food though. Pizzas."

Upcoming Tour Dates:
Sep 29 - Richmond, Virginia - The Triple
Sep 30 - Silver Spring, Maryland - Corpse Fortress
Oct 01 - Wilmington, Delaware - Mojo 13
Oct 02 - Bethlehem, Pennsylvania - The Hardbean Cafe
Oct 03 - Brooklyn, New York - Archeron
Oct 04 - Hartford, Connecticut - The Whitney House
Oct 05 - Philadelphia, PA - JR's Bar

The Brooklyn show is all ages and includes local bands Mutant Supremacy, Defeatist, Psychic Limb, and Curandera. The Acheron is located at 57 Waterbury Street in Bushwick.



Links:
Wormrot

The Boy Will Drown - Fetish CD Review (Earache Records)

The Boy Will Drown are a four-piece mathcore/death metal band based in Norwich/Colchester, UK who make music in a style similar to Dillinger Escape Plan (DEP), Psyopus and Car Bomb. The band made their recording debut in 2007 with an independent EP, which got them signed to Earache.

Fetish, which came out last month, is the band’s Earache debut. Even though there are ten tracks on the disc, it is hard to call Fetish a full-length as the band blasts through all ten tracks in under thirty minutes.

This is pretty brutal stuff as the vocals are roared and growled over DEP-styled guitar histrionics, a locked bass groove and breakneck drumming. While a lot of the music on this disc is similar in nature, there are melodies buried within each of the songs and, coupling this with a number of tempo changes and stops/starts, the disc stays interesting after repeated listening. There are even some twangy/country guitar-outros on two of the songs ("Josef Fritzl" and "Elisabeth Fritzl") that sounds like they are being broadcast from a battered AM radio.

The tracks streaming on The Boy Will Drown’s MySpace profile are a good starting point for the band’s music. “Deep Throat” is the opening track on the CD and it hits like a locomotive. “Joesf Fritzel” comes across like multiple songs crammed into one and really shows what the band is capable musically. “Suis La Luna” is the last track on the disc and it breaks down mid-song into some low-key melodic guitar work.

The Boy Will Drown are currently touring around the UK and here are the upcoming tour dates.

01 Aug 2008 - Peterborough, UK - The Park

02 Aug 2008 - Leeds, UK - Rios

03 Aug 2008, Liverpool, UK - Barfly/Carling Academy

04 Aug 2008, Birmingham, UK - Barfly

05 Aug 2008, Barnsley, UK - Archers

06 Aug 2008, Lowestoft, UK - Seabreeze

07 Aug 2008, Nottingham, UK - Junktion7

08 Aug 2008, Grimsby, UK - Matrix Club

09 Aug 2008, Bury St. Edmunds, UK - Pot Black

10 Aug 2008, London, UK - Camden Barfly

12 Aug 2008, Stoke On Trent, UK - The Glebe

13 Aug 2008, Bath, UK - The Porter Butt

15 Aug 2008, Poole, UK - Summer Slam, Mr C's

Insect Warfare - World Extermination CD Review (Earache)

DOWNLOAD: Insect Warfare - "Necessary Death" (MP3)

Next month, Earache is reissuing the debut full-length, World Extermination, from Texas grind-core kings Insect Warfare.

World Extermination originally came out in 2007 and the band seemed to be gaining a strong following. They toured around the world in the first half of 2008 and followed that by abruptly breaking up. There is obviously some back story as "TRUST NO ONE. FUCK SCENES. FUCK LEECHES. FUCK BACKSTABBERS. FUCK YOU." is the message posted on the band's MySpace profile.

Musically, Insect Warfare plays straight-forward grindcore in the style of early Napalm Death. World Extermination's twenty tracks are brutal blast that are all about one minute in length and the whole disc clocks in at just under twenty-five minutes. This disc doesn't disappoint and has everything that you would expect from a grindcore band - snarled, guttural vocals, squalling guitars and pummeling blast beats. In an interview last year with Free Press Houston, guitarist Beau Beasley said “[a] lot of people say we’re not breaking any ground which is OK by me. I want to keep it primitive, simplistic, more barbaric” and that is exactly what you have here.

Similar to other grindcore bands, you aren't going to pick up on the band's lyrical themes from just listening to this disc. Beau Beasley isn't part of the anarcho-punk movement but writes about more personal concerns. He said "I play music as a direct result of things in my life. I don’t care about politics or animal rights...this is just normal stuff – feeling like a loser, lonely, frustrated…I’m not anyone special this is just the way I deal with it.” This outlook helps explain songs like "Evolved Into Obliteration", "Internet Era Alienation" and "Mass Communication Mindf*ck".

World Extermination comes out March 2nd on Earache Records.

Links:
Insect Warfare's Website

Bathtub Shitters & Navicon Torture Technologies Play NorthSix On Nov. 22

Japanese grind-core Bathtub Shitters are playing Northsix on Wed., Nov 22nd. along with ID, Navicon Torture Technologies, Defeatist and Negativehate.

Bathtub Shitters are one of those bands that has to be seen to be believed. As you would guess (or maybe not), most of their songs focus on an obsession about sh*t, toilets along with anything and everything else related to these items. The band's music has a good high-voltage energy and Masato Henmarer Morimoto can rival Butthole Surfers' Gibby Hayes for "the most demented vocalist" award.

It looks like a fun show and tickets are only $8.00.