Blast Eats: Wretch Slow Roast Pork Belly with Creamy Mushroom Sauce

I knew I'd find people in bands that loved to cook as much I do when I started this feature. I just wasn't prepared for how good they'd be at it. For this installment, Duncan from Australia's Wretch brings us this wretchedly fantastic-sounding recipe for roasted pork belly that I'm dying to give a go as soon as I can scrape up the cash. (Also—truffle oil in scrambled eggs? I might shell out the arm and a leg for truffle oil too, just so I can test-drive that concept for myself.) 

You’ll need:

·         Pork belly (I’ve been using pieces around ½ kilo – 1 kilo in size, but it’s easy to adjust cooking times to suit)

·         Mushrooms (a cup or two)

·         Truffle oil (not strictly necessary, but is completely awesome if you can get it –a splash in scrambled eggs is fucking fantastic)

·         Garlic (a clove or two of the fresh stuff, or some of that minced stuff in jar)

·         Cream

·         Butter, one knob (tee hee)

·         Olive oil

·         Salt

·         Sage (ground)

Cooking the pork belly

Preheat your oven to 240° Celsius (which is 460° Farenheit or about 513 Kelvin).

Using a sharp knife score the pork belly skin and fat in a crisscross pattern (lines an inch or two apart).

Dry the skin with paper towel or a tea towel, and rub olive oil (about half a cup) and salt (a couple of tablespoons) into the skin. This makes the crackling awesome.

Put the pork belly skin-side up in a roasting pan (if you have one, put the meat on a roasting rack and put a cup or two of water in the bottom of the pan to keep the meat moist; this isn’t necessary, but it’s a nice touch).

Cook at this temperature (240° Celsius / 460° Farenheit) for 15 minutes. This high heat gets the crackling started nicely before we turn down the temperature to slow-cook the meat and render the fat.

Turn down the heat on the over to 160° Celsius (320° Farenheit) and cook for one hour. If you have a larger piece of pork belly, adjust the cooking time to suit. I’d cook 2 kg of pork belly for 2½ – 3 hours. The cooking temperature is very low, so you can afford to be imprecise and not worry about ruining the meat too much.

Take the meat out of the pan and fry it skin-side down on a high-heat BBQ, griddle or frypan with a good thick coating of olive oil until the crackling is good and crispy (takes about 10 minutes – if the crackling starts burning, turn down the heat a bit).

Allow the meat to rest while you cook the sauce.

Cooking the sauce

Heat up a saucepan (medium-high heat) and 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Fry up a cup or two of mushrooms (sliced thick or thin, whatever you prefer) along with some garlic (a clove or two of the fresh stuff, or a teaspoon or so of the minced stuff that comes in a jar) and add a few tablespoons of water if the pan starts getting too dry.

When the mushrooms are cooked, turn the heat to low and chuck in a teaspoon or two of ground sage, a knob of butter (about a tablespoon), a good splash of cream, and (if you have it) a dash of truffle oil. If you don’t have truffle oil and want to give the sauce a bit of zing, you can use a teaspoon or two of mustard.

Cook the sauce down a bit (you can thicken it quickly by mixing a teaspoon of plain flour with a small amount of water and gradually adding this to sauce) before serving.

Best served with roast potatoes, a stack of vegetables, beer and wine … then some scotch, maybe a scoob.

thedowngoing- ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in a many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.” - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (1985)

Some of the best grind bands can be described by such adjectives as “unrelenting,” “piercing” and “destructive.” Those words speak to some of the most intriguing traits of the genre, and epitomize what I love about some of my favorite records. Yet every so often, a band like thedowngoing comes along and makes those adjectives seem quaint.

thedowngoing are noisegrind for the Discordance Axis set: relentlessly distorted and punishingly abrasive, yet technically adept enough that the noise and chaos remains a conscious artistic choice. As much of a car wreck as ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS may at times seem, it’s all J.G. Ballard precision, not haphazard evening news violence.

“the nature of numbers” rides shifting, sideways riffing and blasting, always just short of being engulfed by a wake of noise. The brief “floorboards” opens on a tantalizing technical riff before stumble-twirling into a slower, heavy section that drunkenly moshes in and out of blasts before collapsing with one last scream of agony. That noise always nipping at the heels of other tracks fully submerges “untitled,” the record’s 8^th track, instrumentation, vocals and samples rolling over each other and never quite gathering their bearings until they wash up onto the shore of feedback at the track’s end.

The duo weaves samples expertly into their already thick tapestry of grinding noise. Voices and sounds shamble into and out of focus like apparitions in dense fog, adding to the conscious discomfort of the band’s aesthetic. This sidesteps the worst pitfalls surrounding sampling, its use on songs like “Vacant Caves” rendering sampled material as elements of composition rather than filigree around the piece’s frame.

Much has been (justifiably) made of Mathias Huxley’s wall-climbingly insane vocal delivery by my fellow reviewers. Descriptions of its chaotic qualities, as well as its likeness to demonic possession, however apt, belie the Large Hadron Collider-like control required to sustain performances so seemingly unhinged and free of rational interference.

Cueing up Arsedestroyer’s Teenass Revolt or Swarrrm’s Nise Kyuseishu Domo (Thee Imitation Messiahs) or Black Bong next to tracks from this record will neatly underscore the difference between chaotic-sounding and truly chaotic, improvised vocal delivery. Those records sound chaotic due to the conditions they were written and recorded under; in contrast, Mathias’ vocals are chaos as a tool toward aesthetic cohesion.

Perusal of Huxley’s lyrics (included with the physical release or available on thedowngoing’s bandcamp) reveals a shattered, poetic, free-associative lyrical style that complements the insanity of his vocal style. On songs like “the nature of numbers,”  Huxley recalls Eyehategod’s Mike Williams and his beautiful, Burroughs-indebted insanity:  “a binary fascination scratching at the ones and naughts etched in my teeth and nails bleeding coalescent  / a tectonic love circles dates months away while i spend new years eve doped up with the dogs.”  Elsewhere, the seemingly relationship-related material on songs like “snakecharmer”  echoes the disturbed, lovelorn obsessiveness of Pig Destroyer’s J.R. Hayes: “breaching my skin adrift a desert sea singing the hymns of decay  / that charm the snakes that dance inside your eyes  / now i stand an ancient ruin a relic to mourning you.”

The album’s physical release comes in the form of a handmade slimline cd. Its artwork and liner layout, though leaning toward the simplistic, manages to come off as pleasantly minimal and sidesteps the rampant garishness that the meeting of extreme music and the visual arts too often produces. The disc itself looks fantastic. Though it’s nothing more than a simple white disc hand-flecked with black paint, the final product epitomizes how DIY the release is, and the lack of a title mirrors the obscure, disorienting sounds coded onto it.

While only 3 songs and a few seconds longer than last year’s impressive Untitled EP, everything about ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS  feels more full, more complete and more thought-out, and worthy of the title of LP. Tighter songwriting and aesthetic cohesiveness means that this is their best put-together release to date, and the tightrope walk that goes on between noise and musicality makes it a must for fans of truly insane experimental grindcore. 

The release can be found on the band's Bandcamp page in pay-as-you-want digital and as a physical release.

[Note: The band sent me a copy for review.]

Blast Eats: Cloud Rat Buffalo Seitan Grinder

I figured that it was about time to kick off the band submissions, and first up, we have Rorik from Cloud Rat showing us how to put together an awesome recipe for a vegan Buffalo wing sandwich, vegan ranch dressing and all. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian anymore, but this sounds so good that it might become part of my repertoire anyway. Never fear, carnivores, I’ve got plenty of meat dish submissions as well, but trying something new never hurts either (and c’mon, how can something that’s deep-fried be bad?) Maybe next time your favorite vegan grind band plays an awesome show in your basement, you can repay them with delicious Buffalo wings before they crash on your lumpy couch.


Okay, so one of my very favorite things to eat is a Buffalo Seitan Grinder. So yummy. Homemade seitan works best, but store-bought can work. There are tons of recipes for seitan out there in books or on the interwebs. You can also get store-bought buffalo sauce and vegan ranch dressing, but fuck all that.



For the wings:

1 pound Seitan, cut into "chicken" wing shapes

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 package Soft Silken Tofu

Unsweetened plain almondmilk (as much as needed to make deep fry batter creamy)

Vegetable Oil for deep frying (high heat oil is a must)



For the sauce:

2 cups Louisiana-style hot sauce

1/2 cup vegan butter

1 Tblsp arrowroot powder

2 Tblsp cold water

salt and pepper to taste



For the vegan ranch dressing:

1 cup vegenaise

1/4 cup plain almondmilk

1 Tblsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp dried parsley

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp dried dill



Whip it all together. Whisk it. Blend it. Stir it. Whatever. Wallah!



For finishing the foodstuffs:

1 sweet onion, cut into 1/4" half-onion rings

Fresh french baguette or sourdough or anything that resembles a sub / grinder, cut in half grinder style

Fresh spinach

Vegan mozzarella cheese



Have three bowls ready. Put flour in one bowl. In another, whisk the silken tofu with the almondmilk, adding almondmilk little by little until it turns into a creamy substance that runs a bit. The third bowl should be big, and with a paper towel lining it.

Dip the seitan in the flour, then the creamy mixture, then the flour again. You can do this a few times if you want a really thick layer of fried goodness. So bad for you, hell yeah.

So yeah, deep fry them shits, and once they are a light gold-ish color, put them in the bowl with the paper towel lining it to drain the leftover oil.



After the seitan is all done being deep fried, make the sauce: Heat the hot sauce and butter together in a saucepan. At the same time in a separate bowl, stir the cold water and the arrowroot powder together to make a slurry. When the butter is completely melted, heat it up real hot til it bubbles and then add the arrowroot slurry. Turn off the heat and stir it up mad for a good minute til it thickens up a bit. Add the salt and pepper, mix. Toss the deep fried seitan wings in it till they are slathered up good.



Heat an oven up to 450 degrees. On a cookie sheet, put ya bread down in pairs of slices, as many as you can fit (pending on how many folks you are feeding I suppose). You can spread olive oil on the back sides of your bread if desired as well. On one slice, put the veg mozz cheese all over it. On the other slice, put the buffalo seitan wings and onions (you can fry those separate too if ya want). Bake for a bit, until the cheese is bubbling/melted. Don't burn this shit.



Take the cookie sheet out. Add leftover buffalo sauce if you want. Smother it in vegan ranch dressing, and put lots of spinach in it. Put the slices together, and now you have one hell of a sandwich.



I know it sounds like a lot of work, but you can do all of this within an hour, no big deal. Especially if you have someone helping, makes a world of difference. FUCKING TRY IT BECAUSE IT'S REALLY GOOD I PROMISE.



Love Rorik / Cloud Rat

HaaSL Grindcore Radio 7/26/12

As some of you may know, I host an indie rock radio show at my alma mater for the last time this summer before my girlfriend and I move down to Delaware. While I love doing the indie rock broadcasts, this blog and my general obsession with grindcore have had me constantly wishing I'd picked up an extra slot for a grind show. So, since these shows might be the last radio shows I host (and will definitely be the last radio shows on which I get to play music that I actually like) I put together an all-grindcore radio show with a fairly gigantic tracklist as a kind of last-hurrah extreme music show. I always think I sound dumb when I listen to my broadcasts (and admittedly, these aren't my favorite on-air segments I've ever done) but overall it came out kind of sick, so I figured that anyone who reads this blog might like a listen. You can find the full tracklist (broken into two parts) and Soundcloud links to the show below (feel free to download if you like it or to listen to it if streaming is acting weird).


Part 1

Cloud Rat- “Parachute” from their forthcoming split with Republic of Dreams
Suffering Mind- “Dystopicarus” from their split with Phobia
Death Toll 80K- “Profiting on Fear” from Harsh Realities
Wormrot- “Perpetual Extinction” from the Noise EP
Rise Above- “Collect” from I Love to Relax
Priapus- “$12.50” from their split with Old Painless
Sakatat- “Ne Değişti?/Onlara İhtiyacımız Yok” from Bir Devrin Sonu
Ablach- “Christie of the Cleek” from Dha
The Oily Menace- “Fluid Privacy” [Unreleased]
Amputee- “Barren Fields” from their split with Nimbus Terrifix
Cellgraft- “Aphasia” from Deception Schematic
Bloody Phoenix- “Damned Since Birth” from their split with Black Hole of Calcutta
Kill the Client- “The Rest is Over (Nasum cover)” from A Tribute to Nasum

Break

Syntax- “Shape Shifter” from Syntax 2012
thedowngoing- “the economic relationship between productivity & suffering” from ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS
Self Deconstruction- “The Anger Which I Wait For” from the Self Deconstruction EP
The Afternoon Gentlemen- “Kill a Banker” from their split with Suffering Mind
The Kill- “Trolley Pushing Zombies” from the Shower of Bricks EP
Chiens- “Automat Kalashnikova 1947” from their Self-Titled LP
Psudoku- “Possible UniveRSZ” from Space Grind
KiKurachiyo [鞠螺千世]- “Lilith [Shoegrindz]” from Sketchgrind
Three Faces of Eve- “The Culling” from Demo 2007
Cyness- “Preussenpower” from their self-titled LP
Defeatist- “Funeral Loathing” from Tyranny of Decay
Noisear- “Nada” [Unreleased]
Sete Star Sept- “Meltdown” from their split with Penis Geyser
Republic of Dreams- “An Enlightened Macho is Still a Macho” from a forthcoming split with Cloud Rat
Morphic Lapse- “Inundation of Cerebral Error” from Morphic Lapse Demo

Break

Femtekolonnare- “Och bilen går bra” from Välkommen till Växjö
Shaken Baby- “Shades” from Phantasmagoria
False Light- “Rotting Teeth” from their selt-titled LP
Idiots Parade- “Tma” from their split with Abortion
Torch Runner- “Feeding” from Committed to the Ground
Psychic Limb- “Untitled 7” from Queens
Lycanthrophy- “Tighten Your Belts” from their self-titled LP
Gripe- “Go For the Throat” from The Future Doesn’t Need You
Past Tense- “The Dangers of Excessive Marijuana Use” from Demonstration
Iron Lung- “Stone Hands” from Sexless//No Sex
Backslider- “Idiot Hymns” from the Maladapted EP
Robocop- “Room 641A” from the Dead Language, Foreign Bodies split with Detroit
Cannabass- “Bury the Hatchet… Neck Deep” from Gravitational Pull A Rip in Time-Space

Break

Excruciating Terror- “Ignorance is Bliss” from Divided We Fall
Catheter- “Brink of Extinction” from Dimension 303
In Disgust- “I Can’t Forget” from Reality Choke
Black Hole of Calcutta- “Genetic Control” from Black Hole of Calcutta S/T #2
Evisorax- “Generation Control” from Isle of Dogs
Carcass Grinder- “Pansy” from their split with Insect Warfare
Buried at Birth- “Tear My Face Off” from their Discography LP
Nemesis Complex- “Relentless Grinding Eradication” from Enemy
Super Fun Happy Slide- “Gastrological Ventriloquist” from The Undislodgable Nugget Scenario
Black Army Jacket- “Pathogen” from Closed Casket
S.O.B.- “I’m a Dreamer” from Don’t Be Swindle
Red- “Maximum Terror” from Demo
Slight Slappers- “Tokyo Power Violence” from A Selfish World Called Freedom

Part 2

God’s America- “Latter Day/Fickle” from their God’s Junk split with Human Junk
Warsore- “Six Million Slaughtered” from Open Wound
Gore Beyond Necropsy- “Raw Grinding Filth” from Go! Filth Go!!!!
Arsedestroyer- “Untitled 27” from Teenass Revolt
Entrails Massacre- “Hillbilly Rockers” from Crucial Strikes With Attitude
Regurgitate- “Drenched in Cattleblood” from Carnivorous Erection
Narayama- “Manipulado” from Split Tracks
Archagathus- “Insanity Dog” from Canadian Horse
DxIxE- “Sick Stink Hours of Torture” from their split with Realized
Chulo- “Hombre vs. Tombo” from their split with Gripe
+HIRS+- “Gay Magic” from The First 100 Songs
Cogs & Sprockets- “Parades of Greed” from Black Friday EP
Unholy Grave- “Suicide Bombers” from their split LP with Mass Separation

Break

Assück- “October Revolution” from Anticapital
Discordance Axis- “Information Sniper” from their split with Melt-Banana
Insect Warfare- “Digital Target” from their split with Agoraphobic Nosebleed
Retaliation- “Sweden With Burn to the Ground” from The Cost of Redemption
Dephosphorus- “Stargazing and Violence” from their split 7” with Great Falls
yacøpsæ- “Antagonismus” from Tanz Grosny Tanz

Break

C.S.S.O.- “Cosmic Super Strong Ordure” from Are You Excrements?
Asterisk- “Syntax of Limbo” from Dogma
Swarrrm- “Sky” from Black Bong 

Blast Eats: Introduction/Deluxe Potato Cakes

Music, for me, can be as much about the people behind the songs as the songs themselves. Because of this, I've always loved interviews that share more than album details and what trashy horror film a band picked their name from. Grindcore's street-level, everyperson sensibilities make it perfectly tailored to this interest of mine, and I, like many others love when a band mentions being influenced by something I love, or simply liking to do the same things that I do.

For these reasons, I've decided to put together a feature where members of grindcore bands (and some others along the way) share their favorite recipes, to celebrate a universal, community aspect of everyone's lives that seems to get lost among hand-screened album covers and basement-painted t-shirts in the punk ethos: cooking. I'm starting the feature off with my own favorite recipe for cheesy bacon potato cakes (yeah, they've got to be terrible for you, but they make up for that by being fantastic), and you can expect some awesome recipes from actually talented people very soon.


Bacon Deluxe Potato Cakes

2 Medium potatoes
1 Cup onion, diced
3 slices uncooked bacon, sliced into 1" (2 1/2 cm) pieces
3 eggs
1 cup grated New York Sharp Cheddar cheese
oil for frying
Salt, pepper and other seasonings to taste

Wash and shred potatoes into hashbrown-sized strings. Carefully strain off excess liquid (yeah, you might lose some nutrients, but your potato cakes will stick together that much better). Set potatoes in a bowl and set aside.
Fry bacon in a pan or skillet, cooking until halfway done. Set aside.
Crack eggs, and separate yolks from whites in a cup, immediately depositing yolks into your potato mixture. [Feel free to add a portion of the egg whites for an eggier texture; don't add too much or your patties won't adhere properly.] Freeze your egg whites in a baggy (marked with the number of eggs and the date you froze them) for future use in a mousse or egg white omelet.
Add onion, bacon and cheese to your potato mixture. Add ground pepper, salt, dried chilies or other seasonings to taste. Using your hands, combine ingredients thoroughly.
Add about 3/4" (2 cm) of oil to a clean skillet, or enough to halfway submerge your patties. Turn your burner to around medium and begin heating up your oil.
Begin forming patties around the size of the palm of your hand, and once your oil is hot enough, start frying several of these patties. Cook each side around 2 minutes, or until each side is golden brown and fully cooked.
After each is cooked to your taste, remove to a paper towel-covered plate, and sponge off any excess grease with another paper towel. When finished, plate with spiced sour cream or Sriracha mayonnaise dipping sauce and serve.

Veganize It: This recipe can be easily made vegan by using a vegan cheese of your choice, substituting store bought fake bacon or homemade tempeh bacon for its meat counterpart, and using vegan egg replacer or vegan mayonnaise as a binding agent in the place of eggs. Vegan ranch or Sriracha mayo made with one of the many varieties of eggless, vegan mayonnaise will both work great as a dipping sauce.
Note: Different vegan cheese products melt at different times and temperatures. If you know you have a softer, quicker-melting product, consider initially leaving the cheese out, frying the first side and then removing the patties from the oil and combining the cheese with the uncooked second side before returning your patties to the pan.

Femtekolonnare- Välkommen till Växjö

If you have been reading this blog long enough, you’ll have noted a recurring theme in a number of my reviews regarding prejudices and reserving judgment. My rampant liberalism aside, this can be attributed to the fact that my opinions are most often proven spectacularly wrong.

Case in point: my treatment of Swedish grindcore and powerviolence. Despite a general affinity for Sweden itself, I find that too often the grindcore it exports seems to share an overly-manicured, safe quality with its famous death metal. Acts like Rotten Sound, Splitter, Sayyadina, even Nasum sound too polished, too over-engineered to me, lacking the violence and urgency that makes this style so vital. For this reason, I generally write off most Swedish extreme music as embracing this pitfall. And most of the time, I’m right.

In this case, however, it was quite a pleasant surprise to be proven wrong by the dirty, blastbeaten Swedish fastcore of Femtekolonnare and their newest tape, the seven-track Välkommen till Växjö.

Led off by a vocal sample that ends in a “One, two, one-two-three-four” count off, A-side opener “Och bilen går bra” smashes open into a high-pitched grind that gradually commingles with punk riffage until finally blinking out of existence to usher in the next track. The EP’s exact middle, the awesomely titled “Spela Snabbare” (“Play faster”) finds the band indulging its most punk rock tendencies, riding a simple (but gut-level satisfying) chord progression through a series of changes, including a shout/scream call-and-response between vocalists Fritjof and Jonas. Speed-freaked closer “Ett jävla daltande” ends the tape on a frantic note, though the band still leaves room for two second-long drum breaks that offer another example of the vital stylistic diversity that distinguishes this band from its peers.

Lyrically, the band favors a humorous, often satirical anti-establishment style, evidenced by titles that Google Translate tells me mean things like “Everyone Laughs at the Cops” and “Öjaby - Växjö's Asshole.” That humor is a crucial ingredient to what would otherwise be a collection of finger-pointing sociopolitical punk songs, not exactly uncommon to this style of music.

Välkommen till Växjö’s packaging is minimally but tastefully designed, all blacks, white and greys, as befits a DIY hardcore tape of its ilk. Drummer Carl’s choice of typography and abstracted, militant images recalls the old school in a modern way that comes off as referencing rather than aping it.

This release, neither the band’s most aggressive nor its most crust-leaning, offers an effective entry point to the rest of their catalog for that very reason. It’s this balance of styles that makes Femtekolonnare so noteworthy, blistering energy and light-hearted, moshing punk trading off in such equal measure that they serve as a suitable soundtrack to both riotous anger and righteous air-drumming.

Välkommen till Växjö is available through Ingen Våg.

The band have also recorded material for a split with Germany's Love Channel, expected to be released some time this year on Vulgar Records.

Other Releases

In Vino Veritas (2010)- 16-track cd-r and the band’s longest release to date. Notable track(s): “Hippiesvin”, “Fred, kärlek och jävla dumheter”

Med segerrika vapen (2010)- 4-track tape that includes one of my favorites from the band, “Tafatta snutkukar.” Notable track(s): “Tafattasnutkukar” 

Valguiden (2010)- 8-track cd-r released a month before the Swedish parliamentary election that dedicates a track to slamming each of the Swedish political parties. Notable track(s): “Sossarna”, “Källsorteringspartiet"

[Note: The band sent me copies for review.]

Lycanthrophy- LP

 

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by time. That is the life of men.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

No band’s road to its first LP is quite identical to any other. Some begin by slowly riding the demo circuit, eventually working up to the big LP; others put out their first full-length before releasing a note of other material (in some cases, even before touring). Still others churn out splits and obscure tape releases for years without a hint of longplayer aspirations, leaving fans in perpetual fear of a breakup prior to even a proper debut album.

Czech grinders Lycanthrophy’s trajectory up until now offers perhaps the best working blueprint of this third route (next to pre-2011 Archagathus, that is). Now that they’ve finally crossed the threshold into LP territory, the most pressing question yet looms large: Was it worth the wait?

The material on this LP mostly continues the trajectory the band has plotted over a series of splits with bands like Suffering Mind, F.U.B.A.R., Gride and Kursk, maintaining the ferocious, crusty fastcore sound heard on those releases (while beefed-up considerably for full length presentation). On the twenty tracks that compose this self-titled debut, some of the best tracks from those recent splits coexist (in re-recorded form) with new material for a seamless, accomplished fastcore experience.

The latter is most likely the reason you picked up this release in the first place, and it doesn’t disappoint.

Cymbal hits like the beeping of a timed explosive open the album, and “Tighten Your Belts” detonates into a fast, moshing track that grinds like industrial recycling machinery for its :47 run-time.

“Born With Debts” follows with a strafing machinegun assault, vocals, drums and guitars jumping on the track almost in tandem to blast away any doubts that the band slowed down (or “sold out”) for this full-length. Its snarling punk anger is vintage Lycanthrophy, and it ends up being one of the best cuts on the album.

“Primitive Game” shifts nicely from a thrash-punk stroll to a stop-start grind with guitars that whine like power drills, and pauses a moment to reflect on its thrashy beginnings before tacking on a couple of blastbeats for good measure.

One disappointment for fans familiar with material from their other releases is playing the old split tracks and their re-recorded incarnations on this LP side-by-side. While the new recordings fit better with what is overall a more accomplished, mature playing style on this record, what they sacrifice is a fury, a violence, a lack of polish that the older recordings of songs like “Vomit and Celebrities,” “Fur Farms” and “The Morning After” had that ultimately made them so exciting.

This is the sound of a band that’s found its comfort zone; while that familiarity means, in this case, an album’s worth of across-the-board solid, consistent material, it also means a recording experience apparently devoid of the friction that can sometimes spark a band’s most vital, energetic in-studio moments.

The fuller production found on this LP accounts for some of that apparent spit-shine, but don’t expect some big, structured, major-league metal “production”. The true hallmark of production done right on a punk release such as this one is that you forget it’s there, other than to note that it doesn’t sound like Agathocles recorded it in a vegan taco truck or some Swedish perfectionists laser-honed it in a hermetically sealed lab hundreds of yards underground. Nothing is unbalanced or frightfully compressed, and the drums are mic-ed well enough that they don’t sound like a group of drum circle buskers on a subway platform. Mission accomplished.

Despite the lack of boundary-pushing and the presence of older material, Lycanthrophy turns in a solid, heart-pumping (or -ripping, judging by the artwork) album of fastcore that will appeal strongly to fans of Disrupt and Siege, as well as those of the burgeoning Eastern European grind-wave. So, was it worth the wait? Yes, most emphatically, with the caveat that we don’t have to wait this long for a second dose.