Review: Rotten Sound ‘Mass Extinction’ EP
Finnish grindcore veterans Rotten Sound started when their genre was at its lowest coolness factor, blasted everyone to pieces for years and finally gained recognition as one of the finest examples of the genre over their thirty-plus-year career.
Their latest EP, their ELEVENTH, is Mass Extinction, out now through Season Of Mist, and will surely want to reinforce that there’s life in these crusty d-beat grinders yet.
Eight songs in less than ten minutes seems just about perfect for a grindcore EP, and oh shit if Rotten Sound don’t just absolutely tear through these as if their lives depended on it. They’ve never been a band for doing longer tracks than absolutely necessary either, and they managed to savage politics, capitalist greed and exploitation and the ills of a toxic consumerism that is consuming us all, all within that time period.
Recycle kicks, well, boots us off in a short, sharp, visceral blast of crusty d-beat grind, a signature sound of Rotten Sound‘s modus operandi. You could tell they are influenced by their Swedish neighbours from that nasty guitar tone, and they’ve retained that punkish, Discharge ethos from the beginning, all those years ago. Brave New World stabs you in the neck with its blasting, while Gone is given even more virulence by a bug-eyed performance from long-time vocalist Keijo Niinimaa.
Mass Extinction will tear your fucking skin off…
There’s a disgusting groove lurking behind Polarized, and it returns again and again. The title track is the slowest, most lurching heaviness here with its low-end rumble, and it feels like a statement of fact; while so many other things come at us at breakneck speed, it is the slowest and heaviest moments that really mean trouble for our collapsing world.
The best thing about grindcore EPs is that if you love them, you can play them multiple times an hour and never get tired of them. That’s what I have been like with Mass Extinction, because Rotten Sound are such skilful veterans of their sound that a ten-minute blast of noxious violence is so intoxicating I have to jump back in. You would have thought after eight albums, eleven EPs and who can count how many other releases in the past thirty years, may have blunted their ferocity but if anything, Rotten Sound are as vital today as they have ever been. Mass Extinction will tear your fucking skin off.
Label: Season Of Mist
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Sandy Williamson
