(What we have for you here is DGR‘s take on a new EP by the German band Sucking Leech, released in mid-October of this year and still ruining everything in its path.)
There’s a certain amount of filth to be expected from grind as a genre. For as much as we love the ultra-precise, teeth-shredding, and super-fast world wherein songs appear as musical flashpoints before exploding and then disappearing just as quickly, there is always a somewhat grosser side to that world. One wherein the slop of the music is part of the appeal and the plug-and-play aspect is taken quite literally, with recordings sounding like the band legitimately just plugged in their gear, only turned on the volume nob, and then proceeded to go to town for twelve or thirteen minutes bathed entirely in distortion and reverb.
It’s noisy and abrasive but that is also the point; you’re coming to it because the idea of the drums sounding like they’re falling out the back of a moving truck is enjoyable. The bands that comprise that world of grind aren’t just flinging their instruments around, and obviously the music can remain fairly conventional to the grind world, but it’s the barely contained and heavily constrained chaos that keeps things interesting.
It’s why Sucking Leech‘s Errordynamic EP in mid-October caught our eyes. Sounding like a cross-bred catastrophe of Napalm Death, Rotten Sound, and Pig Destroyer mid-fistfight, Sucking Leech don’t stray tremendously far from that chaotic and maddening world of grind, but for a four-piece manage to sound monstrous all the same.
Errordynamic‘s total run time is a little bit past thirteen and a half minutes, spread out across six songs. The two longest ones are both about two and a half minutes in length so you’ll have a pretty good sense just by running numbers alone what sort of cacophony you’re in for here.
Errordynamic is a lot of low-end heavy hammering with steel-melting guitar leads layered in on top of it. It’s a release that manages to sound as spur of the moment and storming as you might expect from the grind genre. Sucking Leech manage to capture the sort of musical anarchy and devil-may-care stylings very early on and they have a surprising amount to say for a band that could just as easily have spent thirteen minutes screeching over distortion.
Their chosen apocalypse to tackle is partly technological, partly political, and not too entirely impersonal on Errordynamic. They drag listeners through the doors of six different songs here with only a few of them caring enough to slow down for a handful of seconds. The rest of the time you’re getting tossed from grind progression to circle-pit riff and back.
Vocalist Stephan Ecker and guitarist/vocalist Johann Brunhuber tag-team their way across multiple songs, delivering a high yelp and throaty yell that is very understandable – a nice change of pace for a genre that can range anywhere from rapid-fire to the point of insanity to clogged toilet bowl – even when screaming about AI blinding the world, like in the song “As Mother Closed My Eyes”.
If you’ve followed the site for a while then you probably won’t be shocked to hear that Sucking Leech shares some DNA with the goofballs behind Genocide Generator. It’s hard to hear that sort of revved-up drill of a guitar rear its head in Errordynamic and not hear some of the more blistering moments on that other project’s two releases.
It’s wild to think that this is only the second EP Sucking Leech have to their name, instead favoring putting our five different albums that have all gotten progressively shorter as their career has gone on. So too has the subject matter gotten more serious over time, and even this EP may be the first time that a leech hasn’t been overtly referenced on the group’s cover art, either in title or as part of said artwork.
Maybe the band rcognized the power in songs like “Errordyanmic” or “Victim Of The System” and felt that there wasn’t much room to fuck around anymore. Both of those songs are exceedingly furious and leave little room to move, quickly closing the walls in on all sides in favor of sending each one screaming downhill in an out-of-control shopping cart. “Errordynamic” only seems a little slower than “Victim” before it because “DOT” in between is basically a minute and thirty of sonic-violence that’ll make anything seem tame around it. It’s the most grinding song on an EP that is constructed out of grind-staples.
Sucking Leech aren’t pushing hard on any boundaries with Errordynamic. They’re clearly having fun embracing the chaos and violence that’s inherent to the -core side of the grindcore genre and its plug-and-play nature. Songs here are written to be explosive and that is what they do; they’re big flashes of action that dissipate quickly and leave nothing but rubble behind.
While you can always argue that every year is a ‘good year for grind’ simply due to its million bands and easy-access nature, this year has been especially kind. Sucking Leech add Errordynamic to an already large pile and if you’re a fan of the fire raining from the heavens-esque distortion and fuzz that seemingly envelops the world, punctuated by drumming disguised as piston-fire machinery and with vocals that launch themselves from wall-to-wall, then you’ll be plenty set with Sucking Leech‘s Errordynamic EP.
https://suckingleech.bandcamp.com/album/errordynamic
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