Here’s some pretty entertaining and humorous grindcore that takes elements from Cephalic Carnage (bizarre tangents, love of weed) and early Pungent Stench (humor, guitar tone, vocals, song structures) and manages to squeeze everything into one highly packed bowl of resin infused fun.Though still grindcore, Serious Grind manage to deliver more than just 30 second spurts of noise, injecting traditional heavy metal and thrash into their red eyed repertoire. Just listen to opener ‘Birth/Born Young in Pittsburgh, Die Old in Florida’. Is that an epic intro and some impressive melodic riffage and solo work’ Yup. Of course, it’s followed by the instant liquidisation of ‘Eat at McDowells’, a far more traditional, meaty grindcore outburst. ‘Blood Soaked’ mixes the two styles with enjoyable results while ‘Ed the Baker’ delivers the expected 18 second kick in the sack. The irreverent ‘Car Wash for Christ’, accurately stated ‘Goth Kids are Gay’, ‘Ancient Chinese Secret’ and the very Cephalic Carnage-like ‘Hippies have the Right Idea’ show of Serious Grind’s not so serious side, with ‘Hippies have the Right Idea’ being a hefty bong smoking anthem for those of you that partake. There is some serious content though in the form of ‘3 Dead, 3 Lifeless’, a spoken word song based on the infamous West Memphis 3 (subject of the HBO movie “Paradise Lost”).

For a grind album, First of All… holds my attention rather well, and its not on the sheer forceful level of the likes of Nasum or Napalm Death, it’s because its varied without being too quirky, humorous without being overly comical and detracting from the music and atypically produced and written for the genre. Vocalist Josh has a primal, unobtrusive, unaltered roar that reminded me of Martin Van Drunen (Pestilence) crossed with Martin Schirenc.(Pungent Stench) and the 16 songs are prefectly timed and structured to keep the album entertaining but not to brisk. The lumbering ‘Larry the Cripple/Death’ rounds the album up nicely with nice death metal lurch.

Fun, grinding shit for stoned couch potatoes.

[Visit the band's website]

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