Mumakil, Flies Will Starve

While Antigama’s Meteor was crisp, technical and pretty clean for the style, Mumakil’s Flies Will Starve is anything but. There’s nothing fancy here — no outside influences, no super clean production, no bullshit. These are 24 raw, aggressive songs (in just over 36 minutes) of unadulterated, stampeding grindcore. Plain. Fucking. Simple.

These Swiss heathens have spent the last four years honing their grinding craft to ugly perfection. Each song on Flies Will Starve hits fast and hard and with little care for your welfare after the fact. The guitars churn along like a self-aware wood chipper on the loose while new drummer Kevin Foley (Benighted) delivers some rabid blasts and tempered fills while vocalist Thomas lets loose with savage barks and growls. There’s a sense of urgency found within this album. It infects each song and in turn infects the listener creating a feeling of unease and the need to get moving wherever it is you’re listening to this album.

There are just too many great tracks on Flies Will Starve, but here a few choice ones that cannot be missed. Of course, album opener “Death From Below” sets the tone immediately with a strong left hook to your jaw right out of the gate — the band never really lets up from this point on. Mumakil keep the gas pedal floored through “War Therapist,” the sophisticatedly named “Fucktards Parade,” the absolutely brutalizing “Shit Reminders” and “Designed to Fail” which brings a slight reprieve to the torrential downpour of grind with some massive riffs.

“Get Exorcised” has some catchy guitar work as Jéjé works in some seriously chugging riffs. “Hailing Regression” if beefy as all get out and ready to stomp on your throat with ruthless rhythms and Thomas’ rabid vocals. Man, these dudes sound pissed the fuck off. “Wrong Turn” sounds like several Mumakils layered on top of one another — it’s a pretty damn dense track that has some serious weight behind it. “Let the World Burn” has a truck load of rumbling bass courtesy Benjamin Droz that helps drive the point of the song straight through the back of your skull.

If there’s one thing wrong with Flies Will Starve — and just about every grind album ever — is the repetition. The songs tend to blur together as there’s really not too much distinct variety between them. In Mumakil’s case it sort of works in their favor as the album presents itself as one massively cohesive flow of grinding mayhem. It can get a bit tedious at times, but diehards won’t find it too hard to head bang there way through all 36 minutes with ease.