Step Down

Death Toll 80k is an awesome grindcore outfit from Finland. I know Finland has awesome grindcore bands such as Rotten Sound and Feastem. Death Toll 80K should be up there with those bands I mentioned. Death Toll 80K sounds like they’re influenced by Napalm Death. I know Napalm Death has influenced several grindcore acts over the years. This is a really explosive album that goes by pretty quick. The songs aren’t that long. The longest song on here is Process. It’s common for grindcore bands to record songs that are short.

Step Down starts off with some guitar feedback noise and then the band goes bonkers. That’s what you’ll find on Panopticon and the rest of the songs. They really do go bonkers with the songs. The drum playing by Jori Sara-aho is amazing. He is relentless is on all of the songs. He blasts away like it’s nothing. He makes it sound so easy, but I know in reality that it’s not easy. He goes berserk on most of the songs found on Step Down. I love it when grindcore drummers go absolutely nuts on the songs. He slows down his drumming on Hydra and Silent Approval, but then he proceeds to go fast. I thought he was going to play slow all the way through on those songs. Of course, he’s going to play fast on the songs. His blasting is really impressive.

How about the guitar playing by Toni Kareinen? They’re pretty damn cool. He plays super fast. He performs power sounding riffs on Walls, Process, the title track, Trickle Down and Binary. Nice sounding pick slide in the song Binary. How are the vocals? The vocals are awesome. Oula Kerkelä is a super good vocalist. He has awesome sounding growl vocals. He also does these high pitch kind of vocals. He goes crazy with the high pitch kind of vocals on Trickle Down, there’s no growling vocals. I like the growling vocals a bit more than those high pitch kind of vocals. Unfortunately, the bass is drowned out. I guess it’s in there. I would like to know what’s going on with the bass. Oh well. What can you do? I’ve listened to many bands over the years that drown the bass. The other aspects are excellent.

This is one chaotic sounding grindcore album and I would say it’s explosive as well. If you like fast and furious sounding grindcore that gets chaotic and crazy, you will most likely enjoy it. I happen to enjoy grindcore that sounds chaotic and crazy. You won’t like it if you don’t like chaotic sounding grindcore songs that are short. This is a really wild grindcore album. This is definitely an awesome album from 2017.