Human Error

There is a thread here on Metal Archives about the naissance of the blast beats technique and there are a lot of comments about the early grincore and hardcore/punk movements that surely contributed in creating this bestial form of tempo, which nowadays seems to be abused with so many bands. All this speech is just to introduce you one of the bands that utilized this technique at the beginning, when all seemed so pure and sincere.

The year 1987 was revolutionary for the extreme scene with bands like Napalm Death, Sarcofago and others and these Unseen Terror are a part of that scene. A scene that was changing the way of playing metal. The story is quite simple: two guys, heavily influenced by thrash metal and hardcore, decided to form a band that could include inside all the elements of the two genres and somehow they invented a genre or, better, helped it to become revolutionary. The principal influences were Repulsion, Slayer and Insanity.

These two guys were Mitch Dickinson and Shane Embury, yes the famous bass player of Napalm Death, Lock Up and so on. Unfortunately the unluckiness was a constant shadow for this band, that never had a constant bass player. When the Earache offered them to record an album, the problem was easily solved: Mitch played all the instruments and Shane was behind the drums. To sum up all their sound and influences, we can say that here we find a perfect blend of hardcore and hyper fast, but never chaotic, grind.

This little, historical piece of metal was recorded only on vinyl but in 2001, after 14 years, Earache decided to put it on CD format, for the happiness of the collectors. Talking about the various tracks, here we can find the classic hyper devastating detonations that last for few seconds like “Nermal” and “Odie’s Revenge” and better structured pieces of burning death/thrash like the “Unseen Terror” track and “Death Sentence”. The production is extremely clear for the instruments and far better than the one in albums by early Napalm Death or Defecation.

What really astonishes the listener is the guitars distortion. They have a fuzz distortion with lot of treble inside and influences that go from Hellhammer to thrash metal and the before cited Repulsion. Also the Shane’s way of playing the drums is incredible. The blast beats are quite precise and they are mostly early hardcore inspired for the fast alternation of the beats between the snare and the bass drum. The drums sound is woody, clear cut and really pounding. The level of violence is always high but sometimes these musicians can be also very funny, thanks to songs dedicated to Garfield, the funny cat.

The other tracks are mostly about the social and politics problems. A peculiarity of the early grindcore bands. The simple up tempo by the drums are made to mosh against the stage for the Helhammerish alternation of the snare-bass beats. The vocals are incredibly personal for the genre because they are not on annoying screams, but they always keep a low and quite rough tonality that is very inspired by Tom G. Warrior but lower here. The songs run after each other in fast succession without leaving us a second to relax.

It’s useless to say how much an album like this could beat easily “Scum” or “Purity Dilution” and you can hear it by yourselves by buying it. Surely worth more than just a simple, fast listen. It’s a small piece of history and deserves your attention.