Review Summary: Barren hell of what we once called home.
Walls still sweat where amps once screamed, as the smell of mildew clings to the riffs and corrosion is set to rhythm. Once upon a time in the rotting husk of a gutted basement venue, I imagine the birth of Caustic Wound as a mumbling incantation between a few rather experienced conjurers of the underground sound: the project consists of three members of Mortiferum, the drummer of Magrudergrind and vocalist of Fetid (also ex-Cerebral Rot) - information that should already be more than enough to understand what kind of bile courses through these particular sewers. The shrapnel was deadly from the start with 2018’s
Grinding Terror demo, and the band remained furious and feral by the time debut full length album
Death Posture was released in 2020, which I would dare to baptize a modern classic of the deathgrind festerworld.
Caustic Wound burrow deeper into neural tissues with their second full length album
Grinding Mechanism of Torment, a vein-popping statement that separates itself from its predecessor, maybe not in evolution, but definitely in terms of augmentation. The album wheezes and gurgles in misery as the band hammers down exceedingly primal ‘90s grindcore-inspired death metal, the way it was written in stone by genre demigods like Napalm Death, pre-
Heartwork Carcass and Terrorizer, with disregard for subtlety and antipathy towards fanfare. Strenuously dragging its teeth across concrete for a good 28 minutes and change, the band retains its massive sound and does not rely solely on scab-picking nostalgia for appreciation, instead it succeeds due to the sheer force and brutality of its material. While all the loose skin from
Death Posture has been stapled a bit tighter this time,
Grinding Mechanism of Torment has still been purposefully executed with not the utmost precision, as is the laudatory tactic in the case of grindcore and everything within or nearby, for which we are all grateful. You’ve probably heard this before, but honestly, have you heard it this pissed off?
Reverently following the tradition, most of the tracks in the album float around the one-to-two minute mark, with a notably high density of visceral riffing that’s constantly in the front and center. Plenty of groove is nested throughout the grindcore avenues of the album, which nevertheless holds a potent old school death metal flavor and somehow stays authentic while at the same time being recognizable in the Venn diagram of all the aforementioned genres. Apart from the acute, pummeling drums and ulcerated, mostly growling vocals, the tracks’ blistering solos are another highlight, for example at the end of “Blackout”, or the excellent pieces “Spider Nest” and “Human Shield”. There are also a few 20 - 50 second aneurysms for shot-loaded entertainment (like the killer self-titled opener track and “Dead Dog” / “Atom Blast”), but for me it’s also the longer pieces that accentuate the band’s unkempt dexterity, i.e. both “Legacy of Terror” and “Technologist Hell Future”, as well as the three-minute “Infinite Onslaught”, which also has a remarkable solo. Crafty tempo changes are regular and vital to the record’s flow, most clearly in tracks like “Blood Battery” and “Blackout”, but I am also all in for more head-on bulldozers like “Advanced Killing Methods” and “Drone Terror”.
The oppressive hostility peaks at the closer “Into Cold Deaf Universe”, which is longer than six minutes in duration and stands as its most particular moment. Cemented with a doom / death metal introduction (they could not keep the inner Mortiferum spirit at bay right there), the track picks up speed and sustains repetitive, gut-wrenching screams towards the end that leave nothing behind but a blasted-out terrain. That’s what the mind must feel like when waking up from recurrent nightmares of all things collapsing, which is exactly the picture
Grinding Mechanism of Torment paints with its short but extremely loaded lyrics. The only stretch that slightly lost me was somewhere between “The Bleed Rail” and “Endless Grave” due to a relative compromise for more rudimentary guitar lines. Other than that, and even without the preposterously filthy production of
Death Posture, Caustic Wound’s barbaric and inhuman primitivism simply overpowers. No frills, just fracture, and another deathgrind behemoth for the vermin to worship.
