Repulsion

Innovative grindcore band that forged the style of fast, ripping grindcore which became a standard of death/grind crossover in the 1990s.

Horrified
Relapse
1986
Production: Very up front production and mixing that's clear enough.

Review: Grindcore like thrash before it produced for each element of its hybridization multiple possibilities with all others, and in the early days of grind Repulsion articulated the most coherent style of rigidly structured, straight-up ripping core.

Riffs spin around a rhythm for each song and hold place with only the expectation of impact often, still managing enough melody in their resolutions to support the ranting voice that surges above a monotone to give a pronounced and terrifying vocal effect. Drums blast or rock along with a standard beat in varying configurations, and specialize in moments of high-intensity percussion following by a minimalistic dismissal in fill. Most importantly, the voice guides it all.

Tracklist:

1. The Stench of Burning Death
2. Eaten Alive
3. Acid Bath
4. Slaughter of the Innocent
5. Decomposed
6. Radiation Sickness
7. Splattered Cadavers
8. Festering Boils
9. Pestilent Decay
10. Crematorium
11. Driven to Insanity
12. Six Feet Under
13. Bodily Dismemberment
14. Repulsion
15. The Lurking Fear
16. Black Breath
17. Maggots in Your Coffin
18. Horrified
19. Black Nightmare
Length: 31:37


Copyright © 1986 Relapse

It speaks the insanity of a schizophrenic world, full of paranoid and morbid fears hidden beneath a visual skin of solidity. Patterns for these songs vary from two-riff pileups to songs which are built of shifting riffs braided together in a structure of rhythmic consistency to great lulling effect, even in the midst of violence. The neutral and even humorous nature of the violence and decay confronts mortality with a poison it cannot resist. True nihilism is achieved in playful and violent music.

Like textures made coherent by a narrative voice repeating phrases, the music of Repulsion expresses its unifying principles through the truth of rage against frustration and mortal fear in all of us. Here it is an almost joyful mocking of human insanity, a monsterplay that is both gleeful and profoundly political at the same time, deliverance and comedy in brutal morbidity.


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