Diabolical Conquest - Splendid! Another nice collection of hard-to-find Grind, this time featurin' Green Beret, gathered from the back-catalogue of the Alabama band by Prolapse Records, the infamous Australian label who also brought us fun compilations o' stuff by Undinism and Kryptosexual Cancroid. The title of this one is highly appropriate, seein' as this is idiosyncratic Grindcore/Powerviolence with zany ideas, absurd themes ‘n' quirky style. There are sixty tracks on this CD, so I think I'll try and keep this critique as short ‘n' as sweet as I can, rather than goin' into reams ‘n' reams o' detail about each individual song.
It's the very essence of noisy Comedygrind, but don't let that put you off, this isn't a group of red-eyed also-rans arsin' about in a garage usin' puerile humour and crap Gore song titles to conceal their lack of ability, inspiration and character. Instead, the band use generous splashes of tongue-in-cheek humour to liven up the muggy landscape. Their robust Grind groundwork o' coarse guitar, annihilative drum-prog, rabid vox and blisterin' tempos is offset with lots o' extremely twee electronic twiddle-twaddle, raucous outbursts of impractial racket, entertainin' samples and a comical delivery, plus there are steamin' great handfuls of silly, bright-red shrieks and hungry troll grunts everywhere! Out of Control encompasses eleven recordin' sessions and the element of ridiculousness is consistent throughout. Although it's vicious, blastulated and crushin', it's wacky, it's happy go lucky, it's over the top and it'll have you rollin' about the floor in fits o' unstoppable giggles! Hilarious highlights include a grindin' tribute to The Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, an upliftin' Spice Girls cover version and a track which contains a highly chucklesome Green Beret mock opera in its entirety. Imagine a gang o' fun fairy-tale ogres poppin' out o' their caves brandishin' knobbly clubs ‘n' bommy knockers, then gatherin' round to dance a merry jig and sing some very silly songs indeed. Bloody preposterous!
To form a forcible foundation, Green Beret take the speed-smitten rhythms and quick-fire vokill yammer of stuff ol' Cryptic Slaughter and DRI, then combine them with the hostile, ugly riffage of Terrorizer and early Death, callin' in at Slap-a-Ham to borrow a few bits o' Capitalist Casualties and Crossed Out, afore swathin' the whole thing in the unabashedly daft overtones of such novelty acts as Gronibard and Purulent Spermcanal. More than a few of the vokill patterns remind me of maybe Macabre and perhaps Gut as well, whilst the cranium-squelchin' barrage o' migrane-inducin' screams and monstrous, improvised din reminds me of classick Intestinal Disgorge and Dwarfophile.
Although we have almost a dozen different recorded works here, the production doesn't vary quite as much as I'd imagined; the guitar sound is dry, lo-fi and grainy and the drums sound cumbersome ‘n' mechanical while the searin' hot vokills and cheeze-laden synths cut right through the frizz, shove their way to the front and make an even bigger mess o' the whole thing.
f you're into stern, head-down Grindcore, then I strongly suggest you steer as clear possible of this compilation, ‘cause this is an extremely light-hearted escapade. Although it has the grindin' nerve to shear your head off, it also has enough asinine sentimentality to excoriate the enamel off of your molars. A quote from Chris Morris ought to wrap this up nicely. ‘If you've recently taken an emotional nose-dive into a deep hiberal gloom, then this might be just the philip you need'. Purely a fun thing.