VISION OF TERROR: “DEMO 2026”

(Here’s DGR’s review of the debut demo from a pulverizing U.S./Canada grind band called Vision of Terror. It will take you more time to read the review than to listen to the demo. But you should read the review anyway, ‘cuz it’s fun.)

You’d think by this point the idea of reviewing a grindcore release and giving it the same sort of treatment we would give to a full album would cease to be funny, but never let it be said that we aren’t a bunch of children trapped in aging and frail bodies. Because, the idea is still funny – especially if we can double up on said humor by reviewing a demo as well – given that grindcore is one of the battle-hardened genres that’ve gone through the ritual scarification required to be the musical equivalent of an auditory tantrum.

The fact that the songs are short, usually three to four parts total, and generally speaking reflect a tremendous amount of passion but not a lot of technique, is one of the defining marks of a major root of the grindcore tree. That idea has been part of the genre’s virulent strain since the very beginning, like a DNA marker that allows us to figure out that someone had sex with a hippo four hundred years ago and that is why you now have to deal with a weeks-long coughing fit.

No matter what gets added to it, whether it’s the NCS-fave hardcore punk or even melodeath riffwork that in combination tends to result in the sort of manic and explosive material accredited to modern day grind groups like Rotten Sound, you are always guaranteed that short burst of energy and head-spinning drumming by the time you’re done. If it doesn’t sound like the band are racing against the time it takes for the venue to cut power to the stage, then what’re we even accomplishing?

Vision of Terror is a multinational project with musicians spread between the US and Canada with a few interesting credits to their respective names. Given the plug-and-play nature of grind as a whole it isn’t too shocking to see resumes stretching off into space like a Star Wars introductory crawl, and sometimes it can seem as if these groups are all thrown into a tumble dryer and whatever spills out first in combination becomes the newest project. We wouldn’t be lying if we say that sometimes it sounds like that too, although in true grindcore fashion that specific sound may be the eventual goal.

Vision Of Terror are promising a full-length release by the end of the year, so again, doubling up on our comedy act here – reviewing a late January of this year release in its embryonic demo form because we happened to absorb it into our collective ‘to cover’ archives is even more fitting.

Demo 2026 is three songs clocking in at about four minutes worth of music. The three songs present range between one minute and ten seconds and a hair over two minutes, but never care to waste anyone’s time in regards to moving forward. The music presented by Vision of Terror is propulsive and sounds like an accidental ignition of rocket fuel. Demo 2026 is the definition of forced velocity in combination with the traditional tank beat to make sure that there’s a more purposeful ignition of a circle-pit while they are playing. Plus, it does help to break up the ‘drumkit falling down the side of a building’ assault that backs most of the music here.

“Collateral Mortality” is about as punk rock as can get with the drums moved way, way, way up front. The constant beating of the snare and vocals running in tandem is as if you have the band in the backseat of your car while the guitars are in the next bus over going the opposite direction. “Collateral Mortality” wears the grindcore guise of being ephemeral and cuts its own throat before the song can move into anything resembling dynamics. It is all high gear and no care for anything other than enveloping people in a wall of feedback and distortion.

“Bottom Line” performs the same act in even shorter confines – because who the fuck has time for nine more seconds of the shit that the first song had for you? Vision Of Terror are portraying themselves as a never-stopping band in every sense. The two minutes of “Tracked”, even though they’re in similar plug-and-play and then ‘rip cord out and run’ songwriting style, are an artistic indulgence by comparison – otherwise how else can you explain the usage of different cymbals and a rhythm segment that isn’t entirely wall-to-wall chaos with a blastbeat behind it?

One day, many years from now, we in the extreme metal scene will have a very fun discussion in regards to grindcore and how we’ve adapted and adopted it over the years. Whether it has been allowed to mutate into differing forms or made wholly death metal in everything but song length, grind on its own has an insane number of genre descriptions that can feel like you’re delineating between different iterations of how sloppy a specific song sounds. In other situations it is literally just the subject matter – the music within is about as tank-shell-rattling as the guys screaming about social injustice, except whatever group may be on the dissection table that day is more obsessed with gore and porn.

That it has been syncretized and crossbred with brutal death and slam segments has resulted in a genre that is as vast and permeable as one can imagine. Those discussions will be fun and imaginably will be like trying to pin down specific energies on a quantum mechanic scale. It will be like how some fighting videogames have described it, it doesn’t exist until it has been observed, then it is allowed to continue.

Will that be the case for Vision of Terror? No. Vision Of Terror is a bunch of noisy bullshit perfectly fitting for the middle of the afternoon/early-evening grind festival. It’s a collection of really loud noise on a solid-as-concrete demo that promises to make an absolute bear of an album that will probably clock in at an ambitious fifteen minutes.

https://blastaddict.bandcamp.com/album/demo-2026