Cretin

It always make me crack a smile when a label as high-profile as Relapse releases nasty-sounding, lo-fi grindcore, as is the case with Freakery, Cretin’s debut for the label. Clocking it at just less than half an hour, this is a completely enjoyable blast of old school grindcore, with a touch of gore and death to boot. With a lyrical angle espousing the virtues of various freaks of nature (uh, do we still say that?), this at times comes across like more mad Macabre tales, set to tunes that occasionally bring to mind Exhumed, which makes sense considering Col Jones, ex-Exhumed drummer, plays with Cretin. With a relatively bass-less production and songs that more or less fly by leaving very little for the listener to chew on, except for some deliciously generic punk/grind riffing, Freakery isn’t in the upper echelon of modern grind. But they don’t want to be; instead they’re content to revel in a more retro and primitive grind sound, and it’s one that any grind fan will find cause to rejoice in.