Good Guys Go Grind: Needful Things

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Needful Things - Deception (Psychocontrol records)

Czech veterans Needful Things stunned me with the news about their new album. I remember that I thought, “Hell yeah, one more pleasant surprise for this year”, and I was right. This album (3rd in order) proved to be strong in taste (like shot of vodka) and heavy with its sound. In addition to all of this, the album has a very good visual design. I like how the artist compiled all the elements together and chose a beautiful set of colors. The main theme of this art is blind justice, victims, endless destruction, and as a consequence, oblivion in ones own ignorance. Classical? Yes! But not boring at all. Deception rips and slams its way from beginning to end; unleashing fifteen tracks of pure chaos. As usual, the songs are short and full of energetic rage and abrasive aggression. The music combines speed and extremity with dynamic riffs and a massive heavy sound. At first glance, this album may seem like a continuous blasting piece, mostly because of the opening song (it really sounds critically fast). I can assure you there are many different song tempos and structures from fast to slow. I like how all the instruments are combined, and together they create an impressive monolith. The grisly guitars are rumbling through my brain and I know I’ve lost control again. The low crusty bass sound is really tasty, the vocals are really emotional, and these screams and roars are handsome. The drumming fires off with pure insanity; blast beats are fast and nothing stands out from the sound line. This album is full of hate and energy - it could be compared with an MMA-style cage match. More than 20 years of action, tons of records, and powerful performances on the world's stages; all of this is not empty words, and they proved it with “Deception”. If you like warp speed music, then “Deception” will become your shot of adrenaline. Rating: 8.5/10 Needful Things fb Needful Things bc

You can order this LP at www.psychocontrol.com

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Needful Things / Overviolence (Psychocontrol records)

Today is Tuesday and, as always, this day sucks, so let's plug it with a split from Needful Things and Overviolence! As I know, originally this split was released as a tape and it was released for an Asia tour. Now it's been turned into a vinyl, and holy moly this piece looks great. Weird cover art, with gloomy faces, a combination of colors all of which create a nice aggressive and Grind look. Needful Things is a Grind mastodon of the Czechs scene. Can you believe that this machine has been active more than 20 years? And they're still in great shape, just check how loud their blast beats are, haha! Their style of music hasn’t shifted any and is worthy of respect. For this split our friends recorded 3 tracks. These 3 songs are all written in a similar style to an effective template that alters each time but keeps the same basic elements (like fast and short guitar riffs, bulldozering bass and heavy blast beats), time changes are kept to the same mid to fast pace and back again formula. Everything above is spiced with massive, thundering and demonic sound. That's how grindcore should be! Play louder, play faster! That's the main rule of the mad Swedes in Overviolence. They caught me with their first EP, I remember I was really surprised about the level of violence in their music. With this work, the boys show their Grindcore side. This material has less of Powerviolence and Fastcore feel, and more of a traditional Grindcore feel. And I like this small change. The combination of speed, simple structures and ferocity create a very painful pressure. The guitar tone perfectly fits with the blasting madness and bass sound. A few variations of vocals make this mess sound more intense and alive. This is a really robust cup of sound torture! Rating: 8/10 Needful ThingsGrind fb Overviolence fb

Release label: Psychocontrol rec