This is the second album from Swedish grindcore band Walking Corpse.
A grindcore band named, (presumably at least), after a Brutal Truth song? Count me in. I instantly knew I had to check this out. Good grind is hard to come by, so I crossed by fingers and dived right in. What did I find?
Oh my, I was not prepared for this.
Our Hands, Your Throat offers up a furious 34 minutes of deathgrind carnage and mayhem. However, it does so with a rarely encountered character and skill.
34 minutes is an intimidating duration for a grind album, but fear not, as Walking Corpse keep things interesting throughout. Although as a grind band they are duty bound to blast like maniacs, they also deviate from this in order to keep things fresh and interesting. In this way, they take influence from the mighty Brutal Truth, as you might expect. However, this certainly isn’t a carbon copy of that legendary band. A few further reference points might be bands like Antigama, Cloud Rat, Rotten Sound, Labrat, Fuck the Facts, and others, which I’ll get to later. This should hopefully give you a decent starting point for the sort of things that Walking Corpse get up to on Our Hands, Your Throat.
As well as the blistering intensity you’d expect, we also get mid-paced heaviness, an edge of menacing dissonance, bursts of death metal brutality, elements of meaty sludge, hardcore/mathcore violence, and the very occasional massive breakdown. It’s a formula for extremity that’s very moreish and entertaining, I have to say.
The band are a creative bunch, delivering a range of atypical riffs, sounds, ideas, and structures for the listener to try to explore as they’re being battered and brutalised. The songwriting is frenzied and chaotic, but strong nonetheless. Walking Corpse know their way around grindcore’s festering remains, and provide enough electricity to get it twitching and convulsing in pleasing ways.
Our Hands, Your Throat is an advanced masterclass in grindcore and many of its adjacent styles and genres. It reminds me of the more inventive records of this sort from the 00s, and provides me with just as much entertainment. As well as the bands I mentioned above, think also in places along the lines of acts like Johnny Truant, Insect Warfare, Maruta, Beecher, thekevorkiansolution, Luddite Clone, and similar. Basically, Our Hands, Your Throat is an inventively brutal album, and I can’t get enough of its nasty, murderous ways.
Essential listening.
Wonderbox Metal 