By the looks I figured Brain Spasm would be peddling a sound not unlike Frightmare or maybe a particularly naughty version of Ghoul; not exactly. While they do have one gangrenous leg planted on the campy side of the divide this is internal organ smoothie slurping goregrind. These schlock horror loving, Farthammer.com account sharing, trailer park dwellers pound your brain matter into a Gak like consistancy (remember Nickelodeon Gak kids?) in a whip fast 13 minutes. A fact altogether made comical considering the B-movie clips probably account for a quarter of the run time. I just let the thing repeat through a second time; Problem solved.
Brain Spasm take every element of this niche style to their unnatural limits. There isn’t a crumb worth of ‘tech’ on Toxic Monstrosities. Which is by no means a cut. The drums blast, go d-beat, or drop to simple time keeping to support a brief groove. The guitars are down-tuned and distorted in a way that mimics the visceral bathroom occurrence following a Las Vegas seafood buffet. If there was a solo on this record I’d feel obligated to hit the forums and decry “sell outs!”. Thankfully it didn’t come to that. The bass also sounds to be run through fuzz or distortion, at least some of the time. Doing this for the bass and actually having it come through all steroids jacked in the recording really maximizes the heavy-ocity (what else would you call it). So, brutal bands out there, I encourage the free and open use of ridiculous bass distortion.
The vocals fluctuate between a midrange pig snort and what I assume is effect processed low gurglings similar in sound to that of cocaine-fueled aggressive toilet plunging. Like the bass, for goregrind processed vocals elevate the ludicrous factor, which is necessary. Because it’s goregrind. All put together Toxic Monstrosities is a festering wall of rhythmically throbbing glad bags filled with lawnmower-ed woman parts, Black Label beer cans, and losing lottery tickets. Ernest P. Worrell, can I get a spittle accentuated “Ewwwwwwwww”.
I wouldn’t doubt that a solid amount metal fans would also count themselves wrestling fans. If not now than at least as kids. So when that last track comes on and sounds faintly familiar yet different in style from what just played before it, give it a minute to click. A review of the tracklist will confirm these maniacs in fact have ended their album (e.p.?) with a cover of… yeah the Ultimate Warrior theme song. They also drop one of Roddy Piper’s great lines from They Live to open track two, “Consume!”.
A special type of metalhead is going to love this record. Brain Spasm deliver a very quick humor filled romp of flatulent gore grind whose punchline delivered enough to make me rewind and hear the whole bit from the beginning. This review might be short but you have to hit play on their bandcamp and race to the bathroom before you blow through another pair of Hanes today. I did you a favor.
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