(DGR continues to dig back into the earlier months of this year in search of gems previously overlooked at NCS, and found another in the debut EP of Texas-based Terror Corpse. Below is his vivid review of this sonic maelstrom.)
The union of death and grind has been fruitful for decades now. The deathgrind genre is one where the artist has had more capability to define what the music is than the listener does; over the years it has become a field wherein any death metal group with a taste for hardcore punk riffs or the classic circle pit grind guitar parts could find themselves standing side by side with groups for whom “slop” is the definitive way to describe their music, their peers within the sphere doing just the same, creating chaotic hybrids of unrelenting death metal that just happens to be very abbreviated.
The genre’s one unifying aspect as it has gone through its many mutations and transitions since the initial fusions began has been that the music is immensely abrasive. Terror Corpse is a union of Houston, Texas based musicians whose resumes delve deep into the death and grind underground (a block of Terror Corpse‘s lineup hails from the Necrofier crew). Their newest EP Systems Of Apocalypse will easily rank up there as one of the most chaotic, heaviest, and noisiest releases out this year, perfectly assembled for the deathgrind-loving ghouls of the heavy metal world.
Systems Of Apocalypse is a sub-eighteen-minute EP with eight songs on it, constructed out of some classic death metal riffs slamming face first into grindcore’s hankering for chaos and destruction. This is an EP that tears through its alotted time on every song, with guitar parts falling out of the sky as if tossed from helicopters and screaming the whole way down.
System Of Apocalypse is backed by a rhythm segment that is long-tenured in the death metal and grind world. The destruction behind the kit comes naturally, laying somewhere between depth charges being detonated and strip-mining via explosive inside of a quarry. This results in an agile and ambling creature of an EP that is as ugly as they could possibly construct.
The vocals especially are of the brutally low variety with enough gurgle backed on each line that they dance on the line of disgusting like the world’s strangest America’s Got Talent act. They’re impressive too, given that they’re laid atop a musical hellstorm yet may be one of the most distinct and defining things about Terror Corpse‘s newest EP. You’ll walk away after two songs acting as if you fell into a concert festival’s septic trough.
Systems Of Apocalypse is of a class of grind releases conceived to be as wreckless as can get. At under eighteen minutes it feels strange breaking out specific songs because it rarely sounds like the band themselves were aiming for a fully distinct song cutoff point each time one wraps up. Instead, they’re following the path of the classic grind-trope of taking one, maybe two, particular subsections and forcing them together at high impact and then deciding after that initial blast wave dies down that “yes, this is a fair enough stopping point.”
This is why not a single song bothers clearing the three-minute mark, and the two that get close (“Create/Destroy” and “Systems”) may as well be doom-tracks by comparison – though the screeching black metal and kvlt-death metal riff work that weaves its way into the center of them adds to the consistent sawing noise that Terror Corpse is going for here.
They are just as often trading glancing blows with the idea of descending fully into static-wash with just how much utter sound they’re throwing forward, but you wouldn’t be able to wear the grind name proudly if the chaos-factor wasn’t off the charts by song three. Where Systems Of Apocalypse tempers it down they are delving just as hard into death metal’s groove – at high speed – and muddier, sewage-dwelling rhythms that allow vocalist Hector to bellow low enough to shake the dust off the ceiling rafters.
Systems Of Apocalypse is a monstrous release all the same. It hails from a type of grind that just as quickly burns itself to ash as it ignites its own funeral pyre in the first place. Terror Corpse are already well-practiced in making music of both boiling and fetid water as they are infernal burning, so unifying this particular batch of musicians was almost fated to result in something of a musical maelstrom.
The ubiquity of grind lends itself to groups just hammering out death metal flamethrowers in song form and calling it before all of the extremity is made dull. Thus, for a little under eighteen minutes you’re letting wave after wave of sound knock you over again and again. It is like having a house brought down atop you, having it rebuilt and reset, only to have it brought down again, and chalking that up as an enjoyable experience.
Systems Of Apocalypse is a gargantuan debut of an EP for this newly fused grind grouping. It is sub-surface dwelling and monstrous as can get and one that flattens any mountains that lie before it, and then burns everything left in its wake.
https://terrorcorpse.bandcamp.com/album/systems-of-apocalypse