Review Summary: The Sawtooth Grin succeed in supplying an album that is both ridiculously fun and technically satisfying.
Do you like mindless grindcore fun, with songs about how ravishing the prom queen looks in her brand new dress with her head in your lap and her intestines scattered around your basement? Well this is the album for you! On
Cuddlemonster The Sawtooth Grin brew a disgustingly sweet mix of spazztastic grind and crazed technical fury. Not only are the instruments extremely nuts, the vocals are easily just as frantic and deranged. The band is quite incredible when it comes to working as a unit, and they are as rhythmically and technically tight as can be. The guitars are always playing something exciting, from diminished melodies to clean jazzy chords, and the drums always supply interesting (yet not overly showy) beats to help the songs either groove or (most of the time) bulldoze along.
The album begins with NES'esque chromatic melody, before blasting to a frantic stampede of distorted insanity. Halfway through the song the band decides to give you a moment to breath, an all too short moment, before grabbing you by the face and forcing you back underwater as you drown in a flurry of dissonant harmonies. The album is full of these "breather moments," but the band gives you only enough time to gasp for air until bringing back into the undertow. The band knows what makes and breaks grindcore, and makes an effort to make sure that through the all too short 15 minute album span the listener is never once bored. The section halfway through "A Two Minute Lecture" makes you want to get up and dance, and then the band sweeps your feet out from under you and throws you back on the ground; and the funky tom solo in "Please *** On Me" works in differing from the rest of the song.
One of the greatest aspects of this album is that it is so fun and enjoyable all the way through, and it's evident that the band has as much fun as you. The song names are really humorous, ranging from "Please *** All Over Me, I Like It" and "Meat Hook Marty and the Pajama Party." The production, although poor, fits the overall atmosphere of the album and everything fits perfectly together in the mix. The vocals never overpower the frenetic guitars, and the drums are always adding the necessary kick in the gut to the band's sound.
At just barely over 15 minutes long, the album never overstays it's welcome and flies by quickly, yet not sudden enough to seem rushed. The band perfected the stupidly fun grindcore formula that so many bands like The Irish Front and See You Next Tuesday can't seem to get just right.
Cuddlemonster is a stupidly fun listen that will have you both headbanging your brains out and dancing like a complete fool. It's a great success both in overall enjoyment and in technical skill, and at only 15 minutes long, stays fresh enough to keep you coming back for more and more.
