Well, this came completely out of left field. There's this new band called Proctophobic, and they bill themselves as playing “blackened goregrind”. Blackened goregrind. I thought I would never see those two words paired together. This band has been playing since 2005 and they released their new EP, Castrate The Sky, on Torn Flesh Records, the same label that brought us one of my favorite albums, Gore Bash's “Gore Forever”. Will they hit two out of two? Let's find out!
After a somewhat slow start, we finally get to the music, and I must say it's quite a fresh take on the goregrind genre. They take your typical goregrind riffs and rhythms, then they mix it in with some black metal, then they immerse it in a cloudy production, and then they put some black metal rasps and goregrind gurgles on top of it. All of this is propped up with a nicely-programmed drum machine.
The riffs may not be original, but at least they're catchy and well-played. To me, these riffs sound like goregrind meat loaf baked in a black metal oven. (Man, I need to quit doing food similes and metaphors.) Another intriguing aspect would be the vocals. Is it just me, or are the vocals double-layered? You have your standard black metal rasps and croaks on top, but deep below that, you have some incredibly down-tuned gurgles.
The band also throws us for a loop with the song “Tiamat's Womb”. The song is completely acoustic. You can't get away with that on a goregrind album, unless you were doing it as a joke. The acoustics on this album are done with seriousness, and they manage to pull it off real well. This song is very warm and melodic, a nice breather set in the middle of a gore-filled battlefield. I wish more goregrind bands were this adventurous.
This album was quite strange, so I had to listen to it a couple times before I finally got used to it. I'm glad I did, because this album is great. The best part is that the band has put up this EP as a free download, so hurry up and download it you butt munchers!
http://www.archive.org/details/TFR370-Proctophobic-CastrateTheSky
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