Recommended for fans of: Full of Hell, Wake, Of Feather and Bone
I must admit that Grindcore is not a genre I tend to spend a lot of time with… although I do dip my toe into the filth every now and then (mostly when a band comes along who mixes in some of the ol’ Grind with other, equally metallic, elements).
Case in point, Portland, Oregon trio Tithe – aka Matt Eiseman (guitar/vocals), Alex Huddleston (bass/vocals), and Kevin Swartz (drums) – first caught my attention with the release of 2023’s Inverse Rapture, whose hideous Death/Black/Sludge/Grind hybrid ultimately earned them a place on my list of the year’s “Great” albums (which you can check out here, if you’re curious).
And with the group having just released their third album, Communion In Anguish, a few weeks ago now seemed like the perfect time to introduce you to (or remind you of) the group’s grindy greatness.
2020 – PENANCE
We often talk about bands taking no prisoners and going for the throat… but I’ll be damned if “A Single Rose” doesn’t go straight for the jugular with its instantly explosive barrage of bone-rattling blastbeats and scalding, scorched-earth guitars.
It’s not entirely without nuance, however, as the surging, stop-start mid-section and sludgy, dissonance-laced outro swiftly demonstrate, before the deathly churn ‘n’ burn of “Scum” – four-and-a-half minutes of chunky, charnel-house guitars and grimy, gut-wrenching grooves – showcases an alternate, though equally gnarly, side of the band’s sound.
“Mantra” then does its best to marry doomy melody and grinding intensity – even though 50% of all marriages end in divorce, and the other 50% in death – after which the chuggy stomp and chattering spasms of “Apostasy” make it clear that this is more than just a marriage of convenience.
The blackened blastery and raw, punky intensity of “Palindrome” make for a pretty much perfect match as well, with the addition of a dash of sludgy dissonance and a hefty helping of gargantuan groove towards the end of the track only helping sweeten the deal, while the punishing, panic-inducing assault of “Psychedelic Neurogenesis” (which, if you can believe, it, features an even more unhinged vocal performance than the rest of the record so far) eventually gives way towards a brooding outro of creeping, crawling, bad-trip vibes.
Almost last (but not almost-least) “Tetrahedron” is a two-minute burst of grind and groove that cuts right to the chase, setting up some welcome contrast with the doom-laden, slow-burning dissonance of seven-minute closer “Lullaby”, which takes its time setting the stage before finally erupting in one final crescendo of borderline chaos and bludgeoning catharsis.
2023 – INVERSE RAPTURE
Shorter, sharper, and significantly heavier, than its predecessor, Tithe‘s second album cuts away what little fat might have been left on the band’s lead-lined skeleton and replaces it with even more ugly, uncompromising muscle… as the massive, lurching guitars and dense, rumbling bass lines of in-your-face opener “Anthropogenic Annihilation” swiftly demonstrate.
At first doomy and dissonant, yet also eerily infectious despite – or, perhaps, because of – this, the title-track eventually develops into a veritable torrent of blistering, blackened venom and dervish-like, barely-controlled chaos that somehow manages to hold together for a full five minutes even as it constantly threatens to go flying apart at the seems, after which the savage discordace and finger-mangling Death Metal riffage of “Demon” somehow manage to find an extra gear and push things even further into the red.
Wisely the band then pull back from the brink (at least at first) with the lurching, sludgy crawl and harrowing, howling despair of “Parasite”, only to then jam their foot down even harder and put the pedal to the proverbial metal as the song accelerates wildly through a series of jarring, juddering twists and turns that jolt back and forth between hammering Blackened Death Metal and hellishly technical Grindcore as the track goes on.
The longest song on the album, “The Killing Tree” then teases you with a doomy, dirge-like intro (which also reappears at key points during the track’s extended run-time to allow for at least a momentary respite from the band’s brutalising assault) only to then challenge you to an auditory war of attrition via an almost unrelenting stream of dissonantly discordant riffs and rampaging blastbeats (which find Swartz absolutely pulverising every single part of his kit over the course of just under seven-and-a-half stunningly aggressive minutes).
“Luciferian Pathways of the Forked Tongue” then introduces, dare I say it, an unexpectedly haunting – yet still viscerally abrasive – sense of atmosphere into the proceedings, something which gives the song something of a more overtly Black Metal (or, at least, Blackened Grind) feel which pairs nicely with Eiseman and Huddlestone’s tortured Black/Death riffage, before the scathing, scalding, yet ultimately strangely seductive, strains of “Pseudologica Fantastica” bring the whole unforgiving affair to a suitably caustic close.
2025 – COMMUNION IN ANGUISH
A little more raw than their second album, yet not as endearlingly ramshackle as their debut, Communion In Anguish finds Tithe embracing their Death Metal side a little more – opener “Nostrum” showcasing both a more obvious influence from the crustier and more cavernous side of things as well as an extra emphasis on cruelly catchy dissonance and an even more aggressive vocal back-and-forth between Eiseman and Huddlestone – without sacrificing the genre-blurring belligerence which has become their trademark.
“At the Altar of Starving Children”, for example, combines churning Death Metal riffs and blazing Black Metal blastery with layers of infectiously discordant anti-melody and dissonantly sludgy grooves, all fused together with lashings of acidic, grind-inspired aggression, while the writhing bass-lines and scything tremolo guitars of “Ostiary” cut a vicious and uncompromising path through genre boundaries and stylistic tropes alike.
“The Fruits of Spiritual Apartheid” showcases some of the darkest, doomiest passages on the album, alongside some of the gnarliest, grindiest segments as well (along with arguably the most visceral and venomous vocal performance of the album so far) in a clever juxtaposition of simmering dread and seething ferocity that demonstrates there’s still a devilish method to the band’s dissonant madness… although the take-no-prisoners attack of “Infected Blood” definitely errs more towards the latter!
With “Shallow Grave of Karmic Retribution” – not only the longest song on the album but also the longest song of the band’s career thus far – Tithe lean even more heavily into the brooding, bruising Death/Doom side of things (something which they’ve really only hinted at in occasional passages before now, but which here they positively wallow in for several minutes) before finally unleashing themselves in a blistering barrage of twistedly technical riffs and equally lithe and limber bass lines, all topped off with a truly throat-rending array of screams and growls, screeches and howls, courtesy of their twin-vocal tag-team.
It all climaxes with the bone-jarring, flesh-ripping Blackened Death-Grind assault of “Burn the Throne of God”, whose occasional touches of dark, moody melody and subtly dissonant technicality provide only the barest hint of nuance or restraint in a song that is otherwise nothing but pounding riffs and pure, unrelenting rage.