Walking Corpse hail from the frozen wastes of Sweden, and with them comes a riot of a record. Our Hands, Your Throat evokes Pig Destroyer and Insect Warfare with a record that although not wholly original is nonetheless a well-produced, perfectly rounded grindcore party with more than enough surprises to remain magnetic.
The riffs come thick and fast from the get-go with headbanging, hair shaking, body popping regularity. You could genuinely dance to Our Hands, Your Throat, and whilst it retains that nasty grindcore aesthetic it does so wrapped in a more than palatable cowl and chain mail vest. The kick drums sound like an asteroid beating its way for the last dregs of atmosphere as it plumets down to wipe out a planet, the guitars roar like a Space Marines chainsword devouring the flesh of an Ork Warboss. There’s breakdowns, there’s death metal, there’s even some sludge elements thrown in there for good measure, and it all adds up to this miasmic, fire and brimstone romp through the bold and boisterous halls of grindcore royalty.
“the guitars keep up a non-stop fusillade of dissonant madness, book ended with huge traditional breakdowns and sections that force those neck muscles to engage in Corpsegrinder’s favourite exercise.”
The single ‘The Wheel’ was released a little while ago and despite this it still stands out on the album. Combining elements of various subgenres of metal into a bubbling cauldron of hate and raucous energy, the guitars keep up a non-stop fusillade of dissonant madness, book ended with huge traditional breakdowns and sections that force those neck muscles to engage in Corpsegrinder’s favourite exercise, and let’s face it, if the head aren’t banging then what is a grindcore band doing?
The longest track on the album at just over five minutes, ‘Nothing Grows Here’, really shows off Walking Corpses’ proclivity to introduce new elements into the time worn world of grind. The track starts off with a dissonant dirge that Gorguts would be proud to call their own work combined with the disturbingly shrill vocals of Henrik Blomqvist to produce a sound that strays far off the path of grindcore into pure death metal territory (never a bad thing). As the track continues it twists a turns like a man on fire avoiding a sniper, until eventually leading up to staccato outro that could have come straight out of the Fear Factory back catalogue, albeit with less of Burton C Bells wailing over the top.
Our Hands, Your Throat, is one of those records that get played and are over before there’s time to draw breath. It’s 35 minutes of grindcore madness, then begs, borrows, and steals from other areas of metal in a way that could serve to dilute the potent mix of riffs and drum work. Here however all it really does is further distil a premium liquor of a grind record. This is only the second full length of this young band, and like many of the other groups on the extremely well curated Transcending Obscurity Records there’s a bright future here, like a nuclear blast, or a stream of ignited diesel from a flamethrower.