Earthburner – Stoned at Birth

I don’t think babies should be allowed to smoke marijuana. They can’t roll their own for a start…

NOT the Kyuss rip-off you might expect with a bandname and EP title like that.

Instead we get satisfyingly fearsome crusty, sludgy hardcore-inflected metal that draws from the same wellspring that nourishes great bands like Black Breath and Trap Them.

While these Ohioans (is that even a word? Google says yes, so that’s good enough for me) certainly share traits with some popular beat combos du jour, their take on this sound feels their own.

You Need to Hear: Antigama

Awesome music, rubbish imagery. If you can’t have both, it’s best to have it that way round.

Lean and spry, wiry and angular as all fuck, Antigama surgically devastate your eardrums with hail upon hail of viciously precise blows.

I can’t quite believe I was oblivious to their idiosyncratic math-grind assault until last week. Now I can’t go a day without feasting on their really rather groovy lightspeed-tom-roll-drenched skronk.

This month these mentalist Poles released their first record for three years, Stop the Chaos.

New Band: YOUWRETCH

Wordsearch! I got orc, crow and hero.

Galumphing about bandcamp like a drunken aardvark, I stumbled over this little beauty, the puzzlingly-titled YOUWRETCH.

They call themselves doom punk and while that sounds pretty cool, it’s not particularly apt.

I’m also not too sure why their bandcamp tags include “gloom”, “dark” and “grime”.

The lady doth protest too much.

YOUWRETCH may bellow and roar but ultimately the riffs, propelled by solid punky drumming, reach skyward .

EP pick Exhumed may kick off by getting its head down for a good, crusty thrash around on the floor. Yet once it’s got that out of its system, the riffs peal out, spiralling upwards for a uplifting and cathartic climax.

There’s as much chug as chime with a great mix of brute hardcore force and atmospherics and melody in a too-short four songs over eight minutes.

Check their bandcamp for a name your price download.

More D-beat Sir? Victims

Come on, give us a cuddle. Please?

It may be old news that I remain obsessed with Trap Them’s Darker Handcraft as the latest manifestation of my deep and visceral appreciation of the chunkier permutations of hardcore, crust and metal.

But I don’t want to completely suck the marrow from that record just yet so I’m prowling the streets for a similar fix of fierce metallic hardcore.