Album Review: Rotten Sound - Murderworks [REISSUE]
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
One of the most savage shows I ever attended was for Rotten Sound, I think around the time they released the “Cursed” album. It was epiphanic, virtually religious in character, a glorious crusade of seething blastbeats, shrieks and chainsaw guitars. That’s all befitting of a band of their calibre though – at the time, and up to present day, Rotten Sound were considered foremost exemplars of Grindcore. They've never had a truly bad album, but this one here – “Murderworks” – is where they first became essential.
There’s a few things I look for in a good grind release, and “Murderworks” does all of them so well you’d swear the band members were born to do nothing else. It’s like being caught in a stampede, I can do nothing but duck, cover, and pray it doesn’t trample anything vital. If the insane pummelling that opener “Targets” doesn’t immediately clue you in to the relentless kicking you’re about to endure, the sliding reptile riffs of “Void” certainly should. They don’t stop, they don’t pause, they don’t reassess the situation for alternative angles of attack, they just keep swinging and the most you can do is curl up and scream. “Revenge” saws through your paltry attempts at defence with Punishing staccato snare triplets into crippling stank beats, and had you thought that respite might await you when the song drops out for a moment, you’ve been, as they sat, had. Rotten Sound were merely waiting for you to peer meekly above the ramparts before blasting your head clean off your neck. It’s incredible, they play as though they had a million amazing riffs in the tank and they had to get through all of them inside a half hour or the yakuza would start chopping bits off their families.
![Album Review: Rotten Sound - Murderworks [REISSUE]](https://i0.wp.com/live.staticflickr.com/65535/54222444770_356d5cde5c_c.jpg?w=678&ssl=1 "Album Review: Rotten Sound - Murderworks [REISSUE]")
“Doom” opens with a sample of glorious early 90s demon slaughter, before Rotten Sound smash the accelerator through the floor. Keijo screams so hard the international space station has to wipe his fucking alveoli off their windscreen. When they do decide to groove, they do so with the force of a MOAB. “Obey”, “Lobotomise” and “Insane” launch cranium-mulching haymakers at you so hard your ghost gets cluster headaches. At this point Murderworks is barely an album, it’s a delivery system for nuclear ordinance. It’s so fast, so angry, and so fucking cool. It would be true to say that Rotten Sound aren’t breaking the mould here – nothing they do steps beyond the established core tenets of this variety of grind, but there’s a limit to which I’m inclined to bemoan that when the band do what they do with this degree of aptitude. The beating concludes with “Agony”, an appropriately diabolical battering of blastbeats, screeches and that sweet, sweet HM-2 guitar sound, instantaneously rapturous to so many of us. As the album fades into a malevolent ambience, I lie insensate for a time. Gradually, as my ribs begin to knit, and the room ceases to spin, I have power enough to contemplate my next move. I choose the only thing that makes any sense to me; I stand up and start the album over again.
Is this the best Rotten Sound album? Impossible to say for sure when their future full-lengths have been so well received, and in truth Murderworks does get a bit overshadowed by the consumate ferocity of the “Exit” or “Cycles” albums, but that’s against the point – Murderworks kicks absurd amounts of ass on it’s own terms. Any self respecting grind fan would be remiss in not seeking this out, and if you haven’t done so already, take this as an irrefutable command to do so. If you like grindcore – especially bands like Nasum – then this is mandatory listening, and I cannot sing it’s praises highly enough.
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