Split My Bitch Up

This split takes four bands, covering the Australasian region, of various takes on grind and death metal; be it goregrind, porngrind, deathgrind, whatever. Title and artwork wise it definitely says it all, fitting in quite well with the lyrical themes of the contributing acts. I’d never heard either act before, so I wasn’t sure if it’d be quality material or not (splits like these contain arse-sucking bands way too often). It was with a bit of hesitation I pressed play.

First up is Australia’s Cuntscrape, going at it with March of the V.A.G. as an intro, basically just consisting a chugging riff and accompanying drumming with a weird-ass voice going “I don’t know what I’ve been told”… So it’s not until Vaginomicon we get to experience the band for real, and what we find is a base of North Americanized death metal riffing, but delivered in an easy-going goregrind manner. What I mean by easy-going is that it goes for the style of goregrind that’s not just überbrutal and over-the-top gory, but a bit more laidback, if you know what I mean. Vocally it definitely gets me thinking of Embalming Theatre, with somewhat of the same harsh and rough grunting voice, almost uneasy to the ear but spewing gore. It’s a bit like mixing said band with Rompeprop and churning it through the blender of Dead and Gut. The end-result is a humorous type of goregrind, filled with strange samples to enhance the not-so-damn-serious approach. Music wise it’s dead serious, but it’s also obvious the lads are just in for the good time, and they’re not trying to go somewhere with the band. I think they’re quite content with having a small core of underground fans.

As soon as Malaysia’s Goresluts take over with their Triple cums in bossa bukkake I notice an increase in both sound quality and volume, and that last part is quite annoying on splits. But what surprises me the most is the fact that this sounds extremely German in approach, and I can’t help but think of both Stillbirth and Boiler as this, yet again not-so-damn-serious, deathgrind goes by. This is actually a bit too easygoing for my taste, and the weird backup vocals in E.G.S, sounding like kid’s voice scrambled with toy noise, just makes it too unserious for me to fully enjoy it. It’s only when they really go at it with a full-on stampede of blazing blasting that I feel any real enjoyment, whereas the more chugging riffing and slower tempos comes way too close to the deathcore recipe. It’s just not my cup of tea.

Rezume from Indonesia on the other hand, that’s much more my kind of brutality. The vocals are a bit too gnarled piggy squeals, but musically it’s extremely slamming death metal. It’s a bit like Waking the Cadaver but with way less core and way more slam. They go at it in a manner that reminds me both of Russia’s current slam scene as it does of the North American one as well as the European one, in particular Germany. Cephalotripsy and Awaiting the Autopsy both come to mind. It’s gory-as-fuck, it’s insanely heavy and slamming, and when they blast they sure do blast. If they just went for a bit more variation in vocals, and mixed it lower (as it is now the vocals really dominate their sound way too heavily), and cleaned up the production these guys could really be on to something. It’s not the greatest slam death I’ve heard, but there’s definitely a lot of potential.

Now this is definitely something interesting. Japan’s Morbid Vision apparently recorded these tracks in one hour, having formed the band after an evening of heavy drinking. The members are said to have never met sober, and the line-up consists of folks from Zombie Ritual, Defiled, Disconformity, Fastkill and Detritum. Now I’m not familiar with all of them, but they’re death and thrash metal related. Morbid Vision displays a groovy and crude type of death metal, mixing both the South and the North American stylistics, but with vocals sounding innately drunk and gory. This isn’t my type of death metal, being focused too much on groove, but the riffing’s fast and slick and the blasting’s tight. The production on the other hand is rough, which isn’t all that surprising if it was recorded during a drunken stupor, but kudos for the good end-result under the circumstances. If you don’t want your death metal too damn brutal this is for you.

Split my bitch up definitely offers some quality metal, and despite being related in genre all acts have different approaches to the subject of gore (and porn in some cases). Not the most overly exciting split I’ve come across, mainly ‘cause two of the bands just aren’t my cup of tea. However none of them actually suck, so all in all it’s a good release.

Originally written for My Last Chapter