Gupta's Top 10 Albums of 2013 (So Far)

Well, it's that time of year again. Well, not that time of year, but, y'know... that time of year. Not like that time of year, but like that...

It's halfway through the year, is what I'm saying. Christ, do I have to spoon-feed you everything?

#10: Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

The french duo dropped an album this year that serves as both a doozy and a complete curveball to their listeners. Random Access Memories is less of a bumpin' and bangin' house record, and more of a 70s funk rock  danceapollooza. It's got booty-shaking grooves, arm swaying synth, and tons of hooks that just seep into your brain and don't leave until your body is involuntarily shutting down from dancing so much.

#9: Hatebreed - The Divinity of Purpose

Gang vocals. Caveman riffs. Jamey Jasta yelling so hard about believing in yourself that you can feel his wiggerish arm movements guiding your bench presses, curls, and power squats through your earbuds at the gym. In short, it's a Hatebreed record, and I love it.

#8: Yattai - Fast Music Means Love

This is the band that kicked off my connections in the French grind and hardcore scene. These dudes have hooked me up with tons of sick bands and some great opportunities for the blog. But this isn't LinkedIn. This is a music blog. Yattai grind hard, and grind fast. Hard as nails riffs, gut churning vocals, and blistering drums make these 16 tracks hit you like a fully loaded semi. A must listen for grindheads.

#7: Clutch - Earth Rocker

Y'all know how much I love Clutch. This band can make anyone shake their booty with their huge grooves and pounding rhythms. Earth Rocker continues Clutch's straightforward American blues rock approach, and is definitely one of the most energetic and fastest paced albums they've put out. It'll have you boogying and singing into the night.

#6: Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge - 12 Reasons to Die

Awwww, yisss. Ghostface is back. Pairing up with multi-instrumentalist Adrian Younge, 12 Reasons to Die showcases an awesome supernatural mobster/ revenge story over top of some simplistic but effective production. Blending together some new and old styles of hip-hop make this album fresh to listen to over and over again.

#5: Rotten Sound - Species at War EP

Yeah, I know. It ain't a full length album. Whatever, call the police, I don't give a fuck. Species at War is the next logical step for Rotten Sound take after 2011's Cursed. What I mean by that is, they just re-released a shorted version of Cursed.

Oh, yeah. Also, it's about 10 times heavier. Aural decimation at it's finest.

#4: Nails - Abandon All Life

Nails' debut album, Unsilent Death. It was a quick, devastating blow to your ears of top-notch grind/ powerviolence/ hardcore. Abandon All Life shows Nails expanding on that sound with some longer, bonecrushing tracks alongside the usual blisteringly fast songs. Nails coupled up with Converge's Kurt Ballou, and holy shit, has Kurt turned this album into a fucking beast. Definitely one of the heaviest things I've heard in a long time.
I freakin' loved

#3: El-P & Killer Mike - Run the Jewels

Dang. Last year, both El-P and Killer Mike dropped freaking sweet albums, and while they've been working together for a while (El produced Mike's R.A.P. Music), it's been a while since they released an album together properly. Jewels showcases El's subwoofer-bumping beats and both dudes' impeccable flow and unfuckwithable lyricism, all wrapped up into one quick banger of an album.

#2: Corsair - Corsair

When I reviewed this album, I gave it a score of 5 out of 5. I said it was going to be album of the year. I was almost right. While Corsair is a freaking amazing slab of 70s-prog-meets-80s-NWoBHM, it did get out-shadowed. I'll talk about that in a second, though. To really understand how much I loved this album, I think you should just read my review. There isn't anything more to say than that, really.

#1: The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer

If this isn't your #1 album of 2013, I'm not sure if we can be friends anymore. One of Us is the Killer proves that Dillinger cannot make bad music. It's just not possible. Ben Weinman could have just whipped his dick out and slapped it against his guitar for 45 minutes while Greg Puciato rolled around on top of a bed of microphones, but it would still come out as some of the best music around. This album is completely mindblowing, and while the music and production are stellar as always, the thing I like more on Killer than any other Dillinger album is, is the pacing. Soft songs and melodic sections fly by and interrupt the usual cacophonous and face melting  Dillinger sound, making for a album that I could listen to front to back nonstop for days.

Looks like 2013 is shaping up to be a pretty awesome year! What are your favorite albums of the year so far? Let me know in the comments or on Facebook!

That's all for now, folks! Only 34 more days until I get to see Dillinger wreck shit live. Hnnnnnggggggghhh.

-DG

Album Review: Yattai - "Fast Music Means Love"

A couple weeks ago I reviewed Yattai's discography spanning compilation 50 Love Hymns for Grindheads, and I absolutely loved it. Yattai has got a new LP coming out early spring of this year called Fast Music Means Love. Let's dive straight into this bitch.

I'm not going to introduce the band again, because you can just click that link in the last paragraph and read the little blurb I made about them before I reviewed their compilation.

It's funny that, considering this is the band's first full length album (to my knowledge, at least) I wasn't concerned that the quality of their material would have deteriorated or that they would have thrown a complete curve ball at me. After powering through the 50 song compilation which consisted of around 7 years worth of material, I knew Yattai were really comfortable and consistent with their sound. Fast Music keeps along with the blasting chaos that we've come to know and love from these Angoulême based grinders.

Musically, Fast Music is just that: fast music. There are blast beats galore, million-mile-an-hour guitar riffs, and songs as short as 11 seconds on this album. The musicianship is as awesome as it ever has been with these guys, and they've managed to up the amount of catchy riffs and memorable passages without sacrificing their ear-crushing brutality. Unlike most grind bands that throw in catchier bits into their music, Yattai can make both the slower (I use that term loosely) and the cripplingly fast parts as memorable as all hell.

The production on Fast Music is much better than that on any of the releases featured on 50 Love Hymns. Everything sounds much clearer and more defined, but still has a raw edge to it. This album still has a claustrophobic, live sound much like their older material, with everything sounding like Yattai are grinding away right in front of you. That live element is something I really loved about their older material, and I'm really glad they were able to preserve it for this LP.

Bomb-Ass Tracks: Fuck the Faxe, Fast and Furious 3 (Angoulême Thrashcore), Everything but Friendship

On a Playlist With: Wormrot, Assück, Faxe

Overall Score

4.5

Yattai have done it again. Top notch grindcore for any fan of the genre. Fast Music Means Love is a complete overload of grinding blasts, ear wrenching vocals, and nauseating guitar riffs. Call me what you'd like, but I think Fast Music Means Love is going to be one of 2013's best grind albums.

Fast Music Means Love is going to come out on Douchebags Records, Underground Pollution Records, and like, a zillion other different labels. It's going to be a 1-sided LP with graffiti on the non-grooved side. Yeah, it's going to be bomb as fuck. Yattai has a Bandcamp page with some of their splits as well as this full length, and you can check out their Facebook page here.

That's all for now, folks! Keep on grinding in the free world.

-DG

Album Review: Yattai - "Fifty Love Hymns for Grindheads"

More grind! More grind! More grind! Again, we've got a band that harken back to the old days of Assück, Brutal Truth, and early Napalm Death where maniacal speed and crusty and filthy depravity came first. Considering grindcore is dominantly from the US and the UK, it's exciting to hear of a band from France that  can rumble with the best of them.

Yattai come from the Angoulême region of France, a commune known for it's rich history and forts, as well as it's comic festival. It seems like one of the most unlikely places to find a proper old school grind band, but alas, here they are, and here they are to stay. Fifty Love Hymns is set to be released later this year, and is a compilation of Yattai's complete discography from 2004 to 2011. This includes their early demos, a whole slew of splits and split EPs, and a bunch of unreleased tracks as well.

These four dudes got together with the sole intention of grinding, and not only do they grind hard, but you can tell they have a blast doing it, too. The recordings all translate their intense live energy perfectly. I don't know how they've done it (especially over the many previous releases that make up this album), but everything sounds like you're right in the thick of the pit, thrashing away two feet in front of the band in some dark, dingy hole-in-the-wall bar. Yattai seem like the kind of band I really need to see live sometime.

There's honestly not too much to say about Fifty Love Hymns for Grindheads. It's a grind album for grind fans. It's literally right there in the title. If you like breakneck speeds and heavy as fuck music, there's no fucking around here: you'll love this. Singapore's Wormrot is another band that is really comparable to Yattai, with both bands' vocalists sounding pretty similar in tone, but Yattai's vocalist deserves commendation for his ridiculously low guttural vocals. They're on par with John motherfucking Gallagher of Dying Fetus. Yeah. They're absolutely awesome.

There are some pretty cool and original riffs that crop up on Fifty Love Hymns, showing a wide range of influences from doom, to crust punk, to old school DIY powerviolence. It's nice to see a grind band that really shows it's hardcore and punk influences, because too many bands are focusing on the metal, but hardcore and powerviolence is where grindcore really all started all those years ago.

The only critiques I have of Fifty Love Hymns don't really hold any weight, because they're properties that come with this album being a discography-spanning compilation. Firstly, I found that listening to it all in one go is absolutely exhausting. It clocks in at over an hour in length, which is anywhere from 2 to 4 times the usual grind album's length. If you listen to it two (or three) of the compiled releases at a time, it's a much more manageable and enjoyable experience. But the point of this album is to contain this massive amount of material all in one package rather than to behave like a studio album. Secondly, the production across the entire album changes from release to release, but obviously that's because a song from 2004 wouldn't sound like a song from 2011, even if it was written and recorded by the same people.

Bomb-Ass Tracks: 1 2 3 4, Evil Daniel Style, Hachis

On a Playlist With: Assück, Wormrot, Brutal Truth

Overall Score

4.0

Yattai are grinders have been going strong and I can only assume will continue to go on strong. With Fifty Love Hymns for Grindheads chronicling the almost 10 years they've been around, their over the top energy and love for the genre are what really show you what underground grindcore is all about.

Fifty Love Hymns for Grindheads is going to be coming out on Inhuman Homicide Records, Obskure Sombre Records, and Teriak Records with a tentative release date set in late spring of this year. Yattai has a Bandcamp page with some of their splits as well as a full length, and you can check out their Facebook page here.

That's all for now, folks!

-DG