“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
”
Suffering Mind / The Afternoon Gentlemen
Now this split is an ideal cross-section of just why Grind is in such an exciting state of affairs right now, fuck your nostalgia because grind is reaching new heights right here and right now, this split being a strong point in case.
First up is Poland's old school grind fanatics Suffering Mind, whose zero bullshit approach to grindcore purity is everything we want from grindcore and so much more. Caustic riffs that turmoil in cavernous depths, resonating that down-tuned richness with an unflinching cimmerian shade of character are the defining feature of Suffering Mind, drawn from the bleak density of Assucks Misery Index and applied indiscriminately to their vast array of canonical grind and crust formulations. Drums are dutiful and consistently violent dicing up the austere riff work and giving a nice bite and punishing factor to the half. However the piercing differentiation between the low end howls and high register screeches are a rapacious momentum that one never forgets about Suffering Mind, a traumatic exploit that leaves their song work rattling amongst your cognitive processes long after the record has stopped playing. Indicative of the quality of their half, their cover of World of Confusion as originally by Assuck trumps the original in every which way.
Flipping the split 180 degrees is big time boozing 5 piece The Afternoon Gentlemen, who likely only formed a band to justify their rampant alcoholism and to procure that lovely cheap foreign booze and duty free under the ruse of a European tour, little wonder the band have played well over 150 gigs in their time; every time they fancy a piss up they schedule it to coincide with a gig. Their idiosyncratic take on grind draws inspiration from a vast array of both musical and drinkable inspirations and sources, with gut rotting fuel such as White Ace having as much of a crediting role as any band to have had a major influence on them. Their alcohol inhibited sense of delusion and skewered creative process surprisingly comes off well, being a catalyst not only to their out the box inventiveness, but in a bizarre state of affairs has doubled to form a strong set of quality control, each song being as enjoyable as the last, the listener placed at a front row seat to some grindcore circus. Its an abstract entanglement of grind, fastcore and powerviolence which still offers the core fundamentals of punishing audio only in an absurdist kind of way. Where most grind bands are kicking it GTA stylegunning for maximum carnage, The Gents are doing the same only Saints Row III style.
