(William Smith is the vocalist for Buckshot Facelift and a Long Island band named Artificial Brain that I wrote about twice early last fall — here and here. He also writes a very entertaining blog called Vitos Squid Stop and Death Metal Museum. I asked him late last year if he would write something for NCS . . . and this is it!  Part 2 of this post will appear tomorrow.)

After reading a lot of people’s best of 2011 lists, I realized I have a lot of catching up to do and am in no position to judge what the best albums of 2011 were. On that note,  I’ve  looked through my collection and dusted off  5 albums each that were recorded or released ten and twenty years ago, respectively.  Some under-rated gems that maybe you overlooked or weren’t around for – either way, they deserve a second go around now that they’ve aged a little and can be seen in the context of history. They have all earned a special place in my collection – here I’ll share with you why.  In the words of Pyrexia – where were you?

CLASS OF 2002 (10 year anniversary)

1.   Genital Grinder – self-titled cd (Adipocere Records)

The cover art is the type of amateurish cartoony obscenity that seemed popular with French bands of the time and depicts exactly what you’d expect from a band named after my favorite Carcass song. The song titles are all over the place between English, French, and acronyms, giving the overall first impression that this is some type of typical loose-knit noisecore operation at best. Instead what you get is airtight “spacey” sounding Death Metal in the Florida tradition, with outstandingly deep and guttural vocals. What makes things interesting is how GG frequently shrug off the atmosphere set by their stoic and relentless metal assaults with low-brow toilet grind humor similar to Viscera or Gut. Definitely for fans of the old Czech band, Hermaphrodit, if anyone remembers them. Continue reading »