“Freedom is dying! Take it for granted!”
With these lines, The Right Wing Conspiracy were able to attract my attention. I mean, which band, let alone an American band, writes this? I thought they were all about freedom and shit, but these guys seem to have some conscience. Together with some tough ass Grindcore, this might make for something interesting.

Don’t ask me how I found these guys, but before I knew it I had a CD posted to my address. Originally, I was only looking for some youtube video’s which contained some studio songs, to present to you guys in a news article, but vocalist/guitarist Rafael Ortiz thought it necessary for me to look at the whole thing, which I did with pleasure.

List season has arrived. Soon the internet will be littered with countless lists of the year’s best albums. After pondering what my own list might be I realised that I couldn’t possibly come up with a truely ‘best of’ list. I haven’t even heard every album that’s come out this year, I imagine no one has. So, to do something a little different I’ve put together a list of my favorite releases from 2011 that were offered for free, including some with a name your price option. Remember, this is a ‘favorites’ list not a ‘best of’ list, I haven’t heard all the free ones either. Of the freebies I’ve heard these are the ten that have kept me coming back and I’ll present them two at a time.

10. – Savage Messiah – A Plague of Conscience

Today is Sunday, which is a day of celebration, it’s not only the day of the Lord, but also the start of a new week. So to celebrate we’re looking at something new, something unusual. We’re just heading out to the Punk side of things where we find Nuclear Scorn. Nuclear Scorn are an American band that pumps out a mixture of Crust, Grindcore, D-Beat and Blackened Thrash Metal. It must have been the Texan sun which gave them hyperthermia, because this shit is crazy in comparison with some of the stuff we normally have here.

As a kid, I’ve always been fascinated with Punk. Not only with the movement and its attitude towards society, but also with its attitude towards music. It has always amazed me how these people approached music as an art, rather than as a commercial thing. In that way, Metal has a lot in common with Punk. On the other hand, over the years I have grown appreciative of Thrash and Speed Metal as well. Genres like Crust Punk, Crossover and Hardcore Punk seem to have made the combination of Thrash Metal and Punk very attractive.

Pour yourself some beer and another one over your head, sniff your sweaty armpits, scratch your crotch. Press play on Hatred United and bang your head like there’s no tomorrow. Windmill when you can, bang your fists on the wall, kick your army boots through the TV screen and shout foul language at your mom cooking dinner.

For Hatred United, two Finnish underground formations joined their love for raw and hatred for everything else into eight songs of noise. The first, Gasmask Violence, is new to us, but Vuohi is a group we’ve seen before when we reviewed their The Rising Era of Goat release about two months ago. Kick it in gear!

I haven’t heard proper Deathcore for ages. So long in fact that I hardly seem to recognize it now. Still, I believe Vaulting, from Wiesbaden, Germany, are operating in the department. Perhaps on the genre’s border with Progressive Death Metal. It’s hard to tell genres apart these days. What I can tell you though, is that Vaulting’s material sounds aggressive, weird and different. All in the good way.

I was contacted by Sebastian, the band’s drummer and he told me they have their debut album approaching is release date fast: it’s scheduled to be aired on October 28 via Unundeux Records. The album’s to be called Nucleus and we may review it later. At this moment in time we’d like to introduce you to the band’s earlier work and serve you a few tracks off Nucleus already.

Creating a clusterbomb of genres with their second demo The Rising Era Of Goat, Finnish Grindcore quartet Vuohi (apparently Finnish for goat) mix in Black, Death and Thrash Metal to create a chaotic blend for 10 blistering songs, 21 minutes all in all. Since forming in 2002, they’ve been moving away from their Deathgrind roots; now we see a larger incorporation of Black Metal, in both music and vocals, an interesting contrast to the Grindcore raging underneath and creating something quite unique to my ears.

Since Total Noise Chaos, it’s clear the band have taken time with their songwriting, especially balancing such different genres; Luoti’s riffs and chords can be distinguished beneath the demo-production fuzz, and there are several headbang-worthy moments, such as on “(In The Name Of) Ultimate Humanity”, although Raaka’s bass could do with a little boosting. The drums, after initially thinking they were a machine, turned out to be Veri, who machine-guns his way through songs but offers little else except some toms on closer “Obituary”. Still, the band work in unison, and this pays off with very tight material.

This band was handed to me by David, who told me that this was a sick Death Metal band from Chigago. Well, I started looking around on youtube, trying to find some of their stuff. I found something, of which I later realised that this was another band with the same name. So, I was ready to comment on bad production but then I found this link to the real band’s Bandcamp. And what I heard there is no bad quality at all.

What I heard there was raw, fast, head-on Death Metal. It’s not really my style, but I imagine that it would be quite enjoyable for a Grind/Death Metal fan.

If you want underground, you probably can’t go any deeper than this. Psyphoria – not to mistaken with another American band called Psypheria – is pretty much from New York. Ironic don’t you think, that I would post a band from (near) New York on September 11^th. I swear I didn’t plan it or anything! Besides, technically the band is from Union City, New Jersey, which is next to New York. It’s the most densely populated city in the US and carries the nickname ”Embroidery Capital of the United States”. How fuckin’ Metal is that?!

So, if this is so underground, how did we find them? We didn’t, they found us. Because drummer Ed, who also plays in Humanity Falls, sent us a message the other day. Playing the music now, I immediately recognize its drumming style, which is chaotic. But where in Humanity Falls this was met with more chaos from strings and vocals, Psyphoria’s other members manage to add on to it to create a coherent whole.

The title is pretty self-explanatory, but let’s spend a few words on this nonetheless. Clean State Records is a pretty unknown record label, having a bunch of independent but generally not very well known bands under its wings. That doesn’t mean shit, as you’ll know. The most unknown bands can completely blow you out of the water.

Think Reclusive Forest Council, the main solo project of the young Taiwanese-American guitarist that names himself Halfbreed Ray. We’ve written about him before, discussing his band Haemic. The guy’s a major talent and moreover he’s working with us on shit not yet to be disclosed (though we are still looking for bands to participate). Well, Ray’s RFC’s on this comp as well.

The full thing was titled The G Force – Stick it to the Man, which is a pretty odd ball title for an Extreme Metal compilation. But forget about that, The G Force is stuffed with sixteen tracks, all by different bands.

After Niek briefly highlighted one of the best songs of 2010, I thought I’d give a more in-depth take on one of my favorite bands, Anaal Nathrakh.

For those not in the know, Anaal Nathrakh are a blackened Grindcore band hailing from the industrial metal Mecca of Birmingham, UK. Fronted by the maniacal vocal torturer Dave Hunt a.k.a. V.I.T.R.I.O.L. (also known for Benediction and Mistress) and backed up by multi-instrumentalist Mick Kenney (Frost, Suffer Well, Mistress, Professor Fate and Fukpig, to name a few), who writes, records and produces all the music. The name is taken from John Boornam’s movie Excalibur, from a spell of Merlin’s. The specific phrase ‘anaal nathrakh’ means serpent’s breath, which sounds pretty epic to say the least.

To try and describe Anaal Nathrakh’s music is challenging, to say the least. Taking a basis of raw Black Metal and Grindcore, add a few elements of industrial and one of the widest varieties of vocals (including some powerful cleans), and you have a general starting point for the band, although by no means definitive. The ‘Thrakh have 6 albums, an EP, 3 demos and an old compilation out, not bad for 12 years of being together. Each album is a destructive tour-de-force, and despite their sound shifting over the years, none of the brutality and earache have been lost on each release. This first song, taken from their début album, is still a live staple to this day. Go read/watch!