Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.
Total Fucking Destruction: Hater (Translation Loss, 2/15/11)
Total Fucking Destruction: “Thrashadelphia”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/12-Thrashadelphia.mp3|titles=Total Fucking Destruction: “Thrashadelphia”]
Given the relatively straightforward demands of grindcore, any band willing to name itself Total Fucking Destruction should know what’s expected of it. Conversely, even the most casual grindcore enthusiast probably knows what to expect from a band named Total Fucking Destruction. With Hater, the Philadelphia quartet holds up its end of the bargain, but in such spastic fashion that even the most dedicated are likely to be left in a perpetual double-take.
Hater’s 27 tracks come instilled with a musical hostility equaled only by the comically abrasive song titles (“Murdernumber,” “Hate Mongering Pig Pandemonium”), all taken to absurd heights through a near-constant everything-at-once approach. Built primarily on a foundation of furious drumming, speed-metal riffing, and stream-of-consciousness anti-authoritarianism, Hater at times flexes a kind of accidental atonality not quite Zappa-esque, but more like Slayer if Slayer abandoned the concept of riffs and played at quintuple-time.
Napalm Death: Utilitarian (Century Media, 2/28/12)
