At what stage does a band become an “institution”? I mean that word in the sense that a band becomes semi-legendary, and a real cornerstone in the genre or sub-genre that they inhabit? These Finns have been about since 1993, and have produced six albums and …well, I gave up on counting, but a lot of Eps since that time. While I haven’t bought every one of their releases, I have a couple of their old albums in my collection, and thought I knew them pretty well.
Well, in a genre like Grindcore, which can – let’s be brutally honest here – sound a bit samey from time to time, I didn’t expect Rotten Sound to sound so…bloody vital and relevant. This is a really, really good album, that takes the expected grind tropes and dares to throw in some much-needed variety and confidence into the song-writing. Don’t get me wrong – there are only tracks that last longer than two and half minutes, and only one that manages to break the four-minute barrier, among the sixteen songs here, but along the furious, spittle-inflected savage grinding (and there is plenty of that here), there are some excellent influences from death metal and rock (yes! Rock!). Take “Time For The Fix”, which takes the amphetamine-freak gonzoid fury of grind and manages to marry it to the bottom-end blues-grunt of later-period Entombed. “Cannon Fodder” comes out of the traps like some long-lost crossover thrash number being played while under the influence of prodigious amounts of Special Brew. There’s plenty of variety here in terms of tempo, so while there are some extremely rapid, whippet-with-it’s-arse-on-fire numbers, there are also plenty of brooding, rumbling numbers too.
It’s essentially an album of short, sharp blasts of noise, which contain an impressive amount of musical motifs, before disappearing again before the brain can adapt to any pattern or predictable melody. To that end, this is the perfect album to have on heavy repeat (which it has been, for me). There’s also an unmistakeable hint or three, particularly in the production, guitar and particularly bass sound of the classic Earache records sound of around 92-94. That’s great by me, as I bloody love that sound, especially when combined with sharp, clever songs as Rotten Sound have here. “Abuse to Suffer” may well just be 2016’s answer to “Apex Predator”. It’s clever, well written, brutal and massively catchy. Excellent stuff all round then.
(8.5/10 Chris Davison)
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