Guitarless grindcore?!? It’s a crazy idea! It can’t work. You’re mad to suggest otherwise! These are things that the monocle-wearing nay-sayer and metal purist in your head is probably shouting at your synapsis when presented with the concept of a grindcore band who shun axes for synths and circuitry. Ignore him. His head is about to erupt into a fountain of hamburger, blood and spinal fluid as soon as you hit play on the
Bloodsportswear EP, the latest release from Melbourne’s electro-Cronenberg cacophony,
ESP Mayhem. Bastardizing logos and synths dusted with a crunchy coat of particularized glass and dried blood, are just the first layer of diseased scales and flacking cariogenic veneer that you encounter when scraping the surface of this leaky, battery-powered beasty. What first drew me to the band was the cover for
Bloodsportswear. Illustrated by Robert Parish, it depicts a tumorous, brand endorsed, bio-mecha with its piolet standing nearby at the ready. A visage of grotesquery falling somewhere between an Evangelion and Tersuo’s final terrible form. I would have bought it for that image alone, but the more I listened to ESP Mayhem, the more I realized that there was something truly unique and terrible happening deep within its guts and gears. It’s brutal, fast, efficient, and surprisingly intelligent. Somehow this techno-dystopian, maniacal mechanical convergence of electronic music and grindcore has demonstrated that metal music has not yet collapsed into a mediocrity. A small comfort because this gang of outrageous oscillating outlaws may be the harbinger of the singularity that will ultimately expunge humankind from the Earth. We had a good run. It is the machine’s time now.
Grab a copy of
Bloodsportswear from Nerve Alter Records,
here.
