Album Reviews: Give Praise Records (Burst / Whisker Biscuit / Total Fucking Destruction)

We recently got a little pile of albums from Give Praise Records. All three are of a similar style, so I decided to review them together. That made for some fun over Christmas, definitely better than those bloody glittery videos on TV. All three of the albums featured are out now.

Burst – You Must Die

Burst are the first band we’ve ever featured from New Caledonia, an island paradise by all respects, and a French-governed territory. Actually, I looked it up on Wikipedia and now I want to go there. I’m assured of several things: good food, brilliant SCUBA diving and some quality live grind courtesy of Burst.

With a sound more “very heavy metal” with just a soupçon of piggy-squeal, You Must Die is more the kind of album that hits you hard than disturbs you mentally as the more extreme grindcore stuff does. As such, it might have a bit of a wider appeal to those dipping their toes into the fetid waters of grind.

Opening with an intro made up of recorded material, newsreaders and sirens which gives way to incredibly frenetic drumming and spat-out vocals as the first song proper kicks in, Burst haven’t just laid down a few songs, they’ve genuinely created a cracking little collection of brutality. And wrapped it in nice paper.

While the focus is very much on belting the noise out as fast and harsh as possible, Burst really do “slow and heavy” well too, as evidenced by tracks like “GHB” and “You Must Die”. The fact that the title track is the shortest on the album (27 seconds) sums them up, though – they’re here for a good time, not a long time.

Burst: facebook

Whisker Biscuit – Kill For Beer

Quite some distance away in the wilds of Canada (it’s all wilds, let’s be honest) are Whisker Biscuit – female fronted punk-core and perfectly lo-fi, their sound is initially very different to the bass-heavy growlings of Burst, but you rapidly realise that they’re still cut from the same violent cloth.

Kill For Beer doesn’t mess about with an intro, instead kicking straight off with (I assume) female gig anthem “Tit Pit” (“Get your tits / In the pit”). I’m all for equal rights, and anything that encourages more women to get their mosh on is fine by me. Hell, the only other song I can think of that’s remotely close is Body Count’s “Bitch in the Pit”. Whisker Biscuit also pay homage to their home nation with “Puck Hucking Canucks” so they’re obviously all about pleasing their target audience.

There’s a bit of intro tape used throughout some of the songs, little bits from films and the Tiny-Handed Orange Wig-Wearer’s infamous “Grab ’em By The Pussy” quote leads into the track of the same name. It’s too violent and basic to really class as overtly political, and it’s far too much fun (and far too short) to worry about the real world while you’re enjoying it anyway.

Fourteen tracks, twenty-two minutes, and you’ll be sweating by the end of it. This bunch must be killer live.

Whisker Biscuit: facebook | bandcamp

Total Fucking Destruction – #USA4TFD

Looking through the song titles on #USA4TFD and then actually listening to the damn things, there is definitely some fairness in saying that TFD are like what you would get if Lawnmower Deth met grindcore. Faster and more brutal than the shit British legends, they still have that edge of humour, and they’re not afraid to break from outright thrashy madness into a funky little sidestep (“Jesus Christ Poser”), for instance.

Like Whisker Biscuit, they don’t seem to be huge fans of the current Imbecile in Chief, with the shortest track of the album – all four seconds of “Anal Trump Is Gay” – being about the nicest thing they could find to say about him.

Even with the fairly simplistic production, TFD still manage to conjure up some impressive sounds. “World War 4” makes use of some horn/klaxon noises that mix with the music to create a sound I last heard a couple of Soulfly albums ago.

Of course, the majority of the album is all about throwing ridiculously fast beats at you, so you can whirl around in a pit and beat the crap out of friends old and new. And it does it marvelously. It’s the way they mix those flurries with bouncy bits that makes this album so enjoyable.

Total Fucking Destruction: facebook

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