Hailing from the desolation of Medicine Hat, Alberta, Barrows have channelled some of the harshness of the Canadian prairie landscape into a virulent clump of unhinged deathgrind for their debut record. Swine Race is a mean record, with all the subtlety and charm of a limb caught in a threshing machine. Clocking in at not quite half an hour in length, the album varies from punishing to merciless in its pace, but it doesn't use this relentlessness as a crutch.
It's a surprisingly complex, dynamic little piece of violence, difficult to endure but also strangely appealing. As much as it is a kind of suffering to get through, it's the kind of pain you keep dipping back into, as though to revisit the satisfaction of reminding yourself exactly how bad it was.
(Inverse)It's a surprisingly complex, dynamic little piece of violence, difficult to endure but also strangely appealing. As much as it is a kind of suffering to get through, it's the kind of pain you keep dipping back into, as though to revisit the satisfaction of reminding yourself exactly how bad it was.