As unbelievable as it sounds, good grind is getting so hard to come by.
Just like any over populated and over-cultified subgenre, just because
you play grind does not necessarily mean you are any good. Crap
productions, wilting levels of intensity and general lack of real
vitality unfortunately charactersises alot of what passes for grindcore
in the present moment, and it is certainly to the genre's detriment.
Balatonizer, even if they do use a drum machine, find themselves
excelling within this mire. With thirty two tracks in twenty seven
minutes, they pull out every trick in the book to keep the listener
absolutely riveted. Though similarities could be mooted to Agoraphobic
Nosebleed, these Italians are just so much better; because whereas the
former, and many like them, seem to care only for a handful of good
tracks out of every album, it seems that Balatonizer care painstakingly
about each one. As a result this is a treat of a spin. Intense, varied,
and utilising a surprising amount of non-typical grind approaches
(keyboards? You bet. And they're brilliant) they utterly absorb the
listener in a manner that few other grinders are able. Its so good that
you forget the drums are programmed at all, so natural is the flow of
the riffs. Like a better Mortician, they take the extreme not to where
it is implausible, but to where it is still believable, making this an
excellent
Rate: 4/5
By Ciaran Tracey.
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