Landmine Marathon

There's something very likable about this Phoenix-based five-piece. The lack of genre-following helps - crusty and rusty thrash, blackened hardcore, ugly sludge, traditional death, it's all here. The always shitty production suits them perfectly. Heck, even the cover art kicks ass, offering as it does a bit of a fun homage to the Repulsion dude. Beats the ultra-serious cover of their last, which promised metalcore but gave us the surprisingly quality goods. This cover promises gore grind but offers up the aforementioned mash-up of metal, with the main difference from last time being a longer average song length. The evil vocals of Grace Perry are some of the best I've heard since Lori Bravo's heyday and some of the awesome riffs (see "Heroin Swine" for several) are up to early '90s death metal standards. Pick your barbed-wire subgenre out of the clanging mass of inner-city garbage these guys pump out, file next to Ludicra or Skarp or something equally as obscure and prickly, and, well, fuck right off.