Nunslaughter / Sloth

“God Has Lied”, which opens this split, is a typical Nunslaughter song. It's followed by “Hornets in the Chapel”, another typical Nunslaughter song. For those unfamiliar, that means simple hardcore song structures with quick, dirty deathrash riffing, pounding drums and old-school vocals. No frills, no bullshit. With such rigidity in style, small differences become significant. On the first track, drummer Jim Sadist's monster bellows contrast with Don of the Dead's higher-pitched growls, and Reaper uses simple vibrato to give the riffs some menace. Sadist goes with a more strained, though still mostly decipherable, delivery for the second song, which features a brief, foreboding bridge and samples of a buzzing hornet swarm.

Sloth's reputation precedes them, by which I mean everyone hates them. Releasing avalanches of digital-only singles consisting of aimless noise with shots of porn used as covers will do that to a band. Were I to hear the tracks from this split without knowledge of the band's questionable output, I'd never guess they were universally despised. The noise of these tracks is in the tradition of Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers and the Melvins' more experimental songs rather than the static soundscapes typical of the harsher and/or artsier side of the genre. In other words, they actually rock, albeit in an unorthodox way. Bass—loud, proud and staccato—tears through the veil of thin, fuzzy guitar. Vocals are obnoxious in the best punk tradition, but always intelligible so we don't miss out on lines like “I love nerds and I love ninjas” and “I wish you would use your ninja skills to get rid of Franco Nero's moustache” (no members are credited, but this is Denise “The Link” Kaveliski, aka Neecie). All three of their songs are short, with the final one just an instrumental reworking of the first, though they ratchet up the chaos by adding in some pinging percussion notes that seem to be played at random (could be steel drum or another instrument so rarely used in metal that I have trouble identifying it).

Like so many of these 7” splits, the songs are also available elsewhere. There are numerous live versions of “God Has Lied” and a couple re-recordings, but the version contained here is only available on the Грехи Отца compilation. Currently, this split is the only place to find “Hornets in the Chapel”. Expect both songs to show up on a future volume of The Devils Congeries (it was a four year gap between the last two so that could take awhile). Aside from “Nerdinja (Reprise)” which is exclusive to this release, Sloth's contributions are contained on The Musikzimmer LP comp. At the time of this writing, used copies are affordable, though it's vinyl-only. Whatever the availability of the music, releases like this split are primarily collector's items. In this regard, Hell's Headbangers' reissue delivers. It's a picture disc with the artwork from the original 2007 release from Wicked Witch Records: a crude ninja doodle on Sloth's side and a scratchboard gargoyle on Nunslaughter's. It comes with an insert bearing the artwork from the alternate (and now rare) version of the original press: a comic style cartoon from Dutch illustrator and Human Alert frontman Roel Smit depicting a satisfied ninja-sloth hanging over the decapitated, dismembered, impaled and shurikened corpses of nuns. Good stuff all around.