Very few grindcore bands have lived as long, or have been as influential, or have remained as true to the genre’s roots as Italy’s Cripple Bastards. In this year, they celebrate their 30th anniversary, and one way in which they’re doing that is through the release of a monster box set of music that in itself has been years in the making. Entitled The Outside World, it’s a collection worth investigating by any die-hard grind fanatic, not only as a historical “document” but also because the music has remained relevant and powerful straight up through today. And at the end of this post we have streams of a couple of songs to prove that.

The discography of Cripple Bastards includes a vast number of singles and EPs (the reason for which we’ll come to in a moment), and this box set includes all of them in one place — every single non-album track, including those which appeared on compilations, that the band has recorded since 1988. Equally significant, the recordings have been retrieved from their original archived sources (the original reels, DAT tapes, etc.) and remastered to provide maximum sound quality.

The box set also includes a lot of other rare and previously unreleased material, including songs from a 2003 studio session, rare demos, and live tracks. All told, the collection includes 362 tracks (!) housed in five LPs and two CDs, accompanied by a lyrics book and a photos book. Continue reading »