Rotten Sound, Napalm

Don’t even bother buckling in for the latest from Rotten Sound. Napalm will tear through your core with the unbridled ferocity of a charging rhino. For a six song EP, this disc packs a nasty punch comprised of three new tracks and three Napalm Death covers (hence the homage to Scum era cover art).

The first three tracks on the EP are new material from these Finnish hell raisers are violent, faster than fast and raw like fresh road rash. Each of these songs are thick with textured guitars, manically firing drums and massive amounts of grinding aural abuse. As for the Napalm Death covers, well, they’re more than just your traditional cover. They’re more of an interpretation filtered through Rotten Sound‘s blast furnace of hell — true to the original song, but so much more violent, layered and destructive.

As far as grind-core goes (especially 11 minute long EPs), I usually play an album a couple of times and come back to a song or two some time in the future after the initial spins. Napalm, however, keeps reappearing in my CD player, dropping cinderblocks on my skull each and every time. I can’t seem to get enough of this one.

Mindkill
“Mindkill” is the first of the three new songs from Rotten Sound. It’s a minute and a half of caustic, raw, layered and abusive grind-core that only these dues could deliver. This is a powerfully amped up track with some seriously manic drum work and vocal destruction.

Dead Remains
There’s a bit more structure to “Dead Remains” than the AP opener. It starts off slowly with some thick bass and riffs before quickly erupting into a frenzy of blasting drums and driving riffs. Vocally, the delivery is throat shredding perfection, matching the animalistic nature of the music to a tee. There’s a bit of bass heavy groove that comes in around 1:15, but it doesn’t stick around long as all hell engulfs the song about 30 seconds later.

Brainload
“Barinload” wastes no time getting down to business with blasting drums right out of the starting gate. Holy hell this is a gnarly track that packs more than enough brain bashing in it’s 1:16 length.

The Kill
The first Napalm Death cover is just as powerful and violently short as the original, but with a denser texture smothering the whole thing.

Missing Link
“Missing Link” is another prime cover of a classic ND song. Rotten Sound‘s style works wonderfully on this track from the band’s 1989 EP Mentally Murdered. The production on the song is raw, dense and suffocating as these guys do their damnedest cause some serious cerebral bruising.

Suffer The Children
Harmony Corruption is one of my favorite albums from Napalm Death so it’s pretty damned awesome to hear a cover of this song done pretty damned well. Again, Rotten Sound deliver a more than faithful rendition of the song complete with vicious vocals, layered textures and a dense wall of grinding mayhem. Damned fine effort.

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Additional Notes:
Three new songs as well as three Napalm Death covers.