...for Our Dead... / All Creatures Great and Eaten

Let's tackle another one of my all-time fav bands, the abrasive Nuclear Death. Pioneers in the fact that they featured a female vocalist while being a thoroughly inaccessible and extreme band early on, they did manage to secure a place in (underground) metal history, and deservedly so!

As stated, Nuclear Death's music is quite inaccessible, being a pretty harsh concoction of primordial death metal and savage grindcore elements, placing them somewhere between Autopsy, Repulsion, early Napalm Death and Blasphemy. Their short songs utilize blastbeat-driven freneticly raging parts being alternated with slow, Autopsy-like dirges, with the vitriolic harsh vocals of Lori Bravo holding it all together. The riffing is simple, opting more for impact than technical wizardry, and in combination with the raw production, it creates the perfect dissonant backdrop for the disturbing lyrics vomited forth by Lori. As a whole, this isn't the most listener friendly jam out there, but if you're on board with what Nuclear Death has to offer, you are treated to a certified original take on the early death/grind genre.

This LP is a compilation of a couple of old EP's by the band, and apart from the fact that the A-side sounds a little bit different from the B-side production-wise, there isn't a whole lot to point out. On both sides the band rips through their brand of abrasive and at times noisy death/grind, doing exactly that which I love about this act, delivering harsh, borderline disturbed underground metal. The B-side exhibits a more experimental side of the band, but the intensity is certainly there, be it in a weird but wonderful way. This is a band that has a genuinely unsettling atmosphere around it, and coupled with the relentless music on offer, they deliver awesome underground art, not for the faint at heart, as this compilation proves well enough.

This isn't the easiest act to get into, and the best point to start are their first two full lengths. Certainly not for anyone, I can imagine, but if you get through to the core of their matter, there's a world of abrasive delight waiting. Go check 'em out if you haven't already, because they kick ass!