Spring is officially here. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, flowers are blooming and I’m drowning in grindcore: Wormrot, Jante Alu, Unholy Grave, Sayyadina, Unholy Grave, Psycho and two releases from the always reliable Willowtip; Defeatist’s Sixth Extinction and the second album from Sweden’s Infanticide.

If you enjoy Scandinavian grindcore in the vein of Nasum, Rotten Sound, Gadget, and Afgrund, then Infanticide will be for you. Blistering but catchy and groovy with an emphasis in punk fueled mid range tones, Infanticide deliver their 21 tracks in an expectedly curt, violent 25 minutes and deliver them well, though nothing to change the grindcore world.

The formula is devastatingly simple really, so there’s no point in trying to flesh out this review to more than the album really is. From Our Cold Dead Hands continues Willowtip’s excellent run of 2009 grindcore (Phobia, Maruta, Kill the Client, Squash Bowels, Defeatist) by simply doing the recognized standard of classically influenced grindcore and doing it well. Vocalist Simon Frid delivers mid range bellows (no screeching here) amid blasting power chords and the occasional groove as immediate but somewhat similar tracks like “Lifeless”, “Illusion of Purpose”, “Puzzles of the Flesh”, “Within Inches” and “Demerol Deity” blister skin with appropriate nods to Napalm Death, while the likes of “Shock and Awe” and “Under Dumhet Digna Ned”, slow things down (barely0 to a punishing, controlled groove. All of it rendered with what can only be termed as a typically “Swedish Grindcore” production.

A solid start to the year for Willowtip, with this and the Defeatist album, but did you really expect anything else?

[Visit the band's website]

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