you like Metal? Of course you do, you’re here, reading about it. Right, so what genres do you like? Thrash Metal? Death Metal? Technical Death Metal? How about maybe Grindcore, Slam, Black Metal or even the fabled Aliencore? Perhaps you are like me and have amorous feelings for all of these extreme genres. Do you also yearn to listen to a band that covers every single one of these musical bases in a single hair-exploding Jaw defying album? Is that a Yes I hear you wail, into the bleak twilight of your puny lives?
Well Fuck me lifeless with possibility and throw my rotting corpse down a well with joy; if such an album hasn’t become manifest. Its here for all to relish in the form of PartyGrind by Canada’s own Killitorous.
I must add a word of warning before I delve fully into my review of this beast. This is the kind of metal that takes no prisoners. The musical equivalent of Agent Orange; figuratively eviscerating everything in its path. Such is the intense and (in its own way) hilarious momentum of this album, that is best experienced for the first time amongst a big group of friends. For not only is there safety in numbers, but there is also huge Party potential.
The music itself is an amalgam of all of the genres I named in the primary paragraph but done with such an artful, passionate humour that one cannot help but be won over by its wide-eyed reticulated exuberance. Now when I say humour do not think that the music itself descends into parody. Far from it; however we all know that moment of hearing something that is so ludicrously heavy or fast that you just have to convulse in laughter at the sheer audacity of the musicians. PartyGrind is packed from basement to rafters with moments like this.
Blastbeats that palpate the heart and test the ribcage but also with enough syncopated breaks and intelligent refocusing to confound the ears and keep them captivated. With a flesh-pulping Death Metal style as their base, they are augmented with flourishes, accents and techniques from almost every style of modern metal.
The guitars and bass are also scintillating in the way that blur the boundaries of genre and form. From spine chilling Black Metal tri-tonal scratches to wailing Full-Thrash-Assult solos it is as though the Encyclopaedia-Shredellica is being flicked through before your very ears. And done with such knowledge, skill and exultant joy that one cannot fail to become slack jawed at their range. Trills, spills and devilishly technical riffing morph in and out of each other like the most hideously beautiful image, transformed through a musical photo-shop that never seems to stop.
The vocals modulate from the sub-tyranny of the deeply dredged gutturals to a rasp suffuse with apple cores and razorblades. Slicing through the music with machete sharpness; simultaneously being part of the music and owning the moment in its own right.
Some moments on PartyGrind are so heavy that I did write about them but even the words describing them became too weighty for the internet to bare and they fell like lead from a church roof, never to be seen again. But what stands out most is the memory after listening and getting to know PartyGrind is the way that all of these qualities that exemplify heaviness and brutality in Metal have been combined with sonically nuanced and highly aware song-writing. It is this coupling of quality and quantity that lifts Killitorus above the morass of bands who are also adept at constructing devastating music and into a league all of their own.
Listen to this album and you will find yourself head-banging and throwing yourself around, wherever the hell you are. It will astound and delight all of the synapses within your brain that fired when you first fell in love with Metal. It collects and distils all of those unique sensations and feeds them back to you enhanced and muscular. Wrapped in lyrics warped and informed by the crass cultural glue that binds us all together; allow a squalid beauty to be formed out of our broken and disjointed identity.
Do you like Metal? Of course you do. Which is why you’ll love PartyGrind.
– John Whitmore
