Album Review: Houkago Grind Time - Bakyunsified (Moe to the Gore)
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Described as Mincecore, Houkago Grind Time is a one-man outfit from California and Bakyunsified (Moe to the Grind) is his debut album. Promotional material states that the record is a love letter and statement of devotion to Kyoto Amination’s Moe anime boom of the mid-noughties, but what I know about Anime – Japanese or otherwise - could be written on the back of a postage stamp so I won’t insult you to try to look knowledgeable on the subject.
Instead, (Moe to the Grind) is twenty minutes of having your face pulled off and fed back to you. Massive crashes of instrumentation fill the time, accompanied by either screeching banshee wails or low guttural growls. The music fluctuates between punked-up grind to more recognisable, through admittedly brutal, death metal.
Peppered throughout the record, used as either intros or outros is the disconcerting sound of cartoon voices which serve to produce the uncanny effect of lifting you out of the musical melee for the briefest moment before dropping you back into the barrage of howling guitars and frenzied, whirlwind drums.
Equally as jarring in such a cacophony is the unmistakeable use of some classic rock riffing. Some of the longer (and I use that word relatively) tracks are built around discernibly traditional song structures, while others incorporate some sweet soloing.
To pick out individual tracks would be a fruitless exercise as the record seems to sweep by in the blink of an eye. However, there’s more than enough on offer from Houkago Grind Time to entice you back again and again for more bouts of anime-inspired aggression.
