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No point in denying this, but a lot of my appreciation for this album stems from nostalgia. Back in my early teens I was totally into thrash metal, death metal and fast hardcore punk, mostly through cassettes given to me by older friends and what I could muster in the second hand record store. Most of this was fast, raw and thoroughly underground stuff, and I loved that to shreds. And checking those boxes is this album by Malicious Grind.

You could shove this one between releases by Righteous Pigs, Filthy Christians, Bloodcum (US), Wehrmacht, Dead Horse and Cryptic Slaughter, and it would fit in gracefully. The tempo is primarily high, fired on by a manic thrashing hardcore beat and simple grinding riffing, with shouted punk vocals on top. The songs may be as simple as the riffs are, but in this, they are highly effective bursts of energy that owe as much to hardcore punk as it does to gruff thrash metal. Try to imagine a cross between old US hardcore bands such as Siege, Millions of Dead Cops, Septic Death and early Verbal Abuse, with the first albums of Sacrifice (CAN), Kreator, Venom and Slayer. It's highly volatile, octane fueled music, mostly devoid of melody, but dammit, this does it for me so hard! And while the production may be as inornate as the music is, it is equally effective. Perhaps on the unpolished side with the vocals being too much up front, still the instruments are all pretty much in balance. Even with the production on the gruffer side, this album still sounds as frantic and energetic as your grandpa the day he discovered Viagra.

There are not a lot of things that bug me on this album, but I wish they left off the spoken word samples (that's almost 30 years worth of spoken samples I've shat on by now. Impressive, right?). The goofy, corny humour that surfaces here and there is also not really my bag, but in this they do not differ from acts like S.O.D. and Nuclear Assault, so it's not that of a nuissance. And as a final: in the person of Ingrid, the band had a female bassist/singer, but her vocal parts are limited to providing backings, except for "Stupid Cops", where she takes lead, and it sound awesome! I wish the band had done more with that.

This is a fine example of what the hardcore/thrash/crossover scene had to offer back then, and what a blast it is! With all the current interest in 80's metal and hardcore, I feel Malicious Grind deserves some more recognition, for sure. They probably were (and still are) an insider tip, but in my opinion both the band and this album are certainly worth the effort of exploring.