Keep On Smiling

Oh man, if you told me five years ago that a European band by the name Rectal Smegma would blow me away when I would discover an album by them whose cover art depicts two nude pornographic actresses which appear to be on the set of some sort of unknown fetish theme, I would surely think you were kidding. I tend to stay away from the overly-flippant bands and the 'too-nasty' if you will, I was always got turned away from the kinds of bands that lack class a little too much I guess is the best way to put it? But if you'd kindly let me point out that the disc label for this album is literally a picture of a girl's gaping goatse-style asshole — fuck all that morality horse shit; we're going in deep.

Keep on Smiling is a goddamn brass-knuckles pummel to your senses as soon as the first track comes on. Anything you could possibly like about a Euro goregrind band since the 90s is done here in excellent form. It comes as no surprise Rectal Smegma were a common guest on Obscene Extreme when you take the moment to hear their tunes. Godlike snare and bass drum barrages that bring forth Regurgitate vibes to mind are probably the first thing you notice before the pitchshifted growls come in. The vocals are one thing I will definitely unpack more in a moment, but first I need to mention the only real fault that I found this album to have is some of the excruciatingly long or obnoxious samples that not even I can sit through most of the time.

With an album full of such amazing grinding riffs with the best drum-sound for this genre possible, you're eager to get into the next track fast, but sometimes that track merely doesn't come soon enough as you want it to and that's kind of un-fun. One particular sample of what sounds to be two girls defecating while discussing it in grave detail is without a doubt the worst fucking moment on this album, it's revolting, and of course it has to serve as the intro for the best song on the whole record; "Fat Grannies Are Cool". The band would actually later re-record this song, even they knew it was a banger.

On first listen the bass guitar sounds to be generally buried beneath the super buzz-drenched dominating guitar tone, but it's not a production problem that made this so as it mostly has to do with the stereo you're using. I've heard this album countless times in the last couple months and only after I played it on my home soundbar/subwoofer system instead of in my car that I realized that practically every note plucked by the brutal Dutch-Indian himself (Madhur) is clearly intelligible on a bass-sensitive sound system.

I think nows about the time I can really talk about the vocals in full detail, and here's where I need to just say it: frontman Yannic Ophorst is the most ideal thing you will ever find if the words "grindcore Chad" ever crossed your mind. I could go on with how super fucking charismatic the guy is, but his vocals, goddamn his vocals just take the cake. Since Last Days of Humanity have proven that the gurgly wet edited vocals of goregrind can definitely possess a form of personality, Ophorst just takes that concept and runs with it. Inhaled and exhaled growls all belted out beneath a pitchshifter never sounded so cool. And before you roll your eyes about how I'm complimenting pitchshifted vocals, I want to clear up a common misconception here about pitchshifting and those who believe it's just a no-talent tool for people who can't growl. Not everyone sounds good with a pitchshifter, this is simply a case where the vocalist's voice just happens to work very well with one. It's essentially the Auto-Tune of this genre; everyone always seems to have this misguided belief that Auto-Tune is only for people who can't sing, but actually have you ever heard a legitimately terrible singer with auto-tune sound as good as Cher or maybe even Bladee? Yeah, that's my point exactly. The sound of your natural voice still has a lot to do with the end result.

Don't expect to understand much of the lyrics said on the record (and I kind of doubt the band even used any), but you can almost decipher some of the things said by the record's final track "Bloody Ballsack" when the frontman for Dutch crust/grind band Jesus Cröst provides some really refreshing grindcore-style shrieks on an album of otherwise croaks and roars. I love guest feature vocals that actually provide some kind of style that the vocalist of the actual band can't do, and that's exactly what goes on during this record-closer.

There might be a couple things I've forgot to mention during the many runtimes I've spent with Keep On Smiling, but ultimately I kind of want to say that I feel like there's some kind of odd artistic merit to the music that also kept me coming back. The band definitely have a personality, and I feel like that may be part of why their music can be addicting to hear. The album is unfortunately relatively short; it's only 22 minutes and there's lots of samples, so out of estimate that could mean there might just barely be 17 - 18 minutes of actual tunes with those parts omitted. To me the samples and runtime were always the biggest cons of this album, but how can it bother you when literally everything else is just so fuckin fun.