CRETIN

I could go on for pages explaining the aesthetic of CRETIN, and why this lo-fi pants-shitting rockslide of a grindcore smear deserves a perfect score. But it's actually explained succinctly in the band's manifesto on their website. Among their tenets: no drum triggers, leave in mistakes, don't forsake the catchiness even at 190 beats per minute, and "above all, defer to the masters. The designers, REPULSION and NAPALM DEATH, and the myriad of bands that inspired them, like SLAYER, SIEGE, LARM, etc".

To say that this could have been a forgotten and recently-unearthed REPULSION album is a high compliment. CRETIN are undisputed masters at what they set out to do — filth-caked analog grindcore played by human beings, with relentlessly catchy riffs, a depraved sense of humor, and the kind of off-the-rails death metal mania that makes stuff like AUTOPSY and early PUNGENT STENCH still kick the shit out of the generation of belching, un-rocking science experiments that came after them.

Listening to "Freakery" is like mainlining caffeinated swamp water, its thirty minutes of chaos inspiring the kind of old-school headbanging that leads to chiropractor visits. Former EXHUMED drummer Col Jones provides the chaotic, frantic backbeat to splatterhouse riffs and vocals that drip personality and hoarse abandon. There are sing-along parts here and there, and plenty of places where a thrash beat opens up some space in the grind blosh. In short, this album pushes every proper button, with scabby, shit-and-nicotine stained fingers, and it's pretty much any grind fanatic's dream come true.

Some will call it "retro". I prefer the word "timeless" — music like this exists outside of a scene or genre. CRETIN are a blood-and-dirt loogie hawked at all that is pitch-corrected, auto-tuned, quantized and soulless about heavy metal circa 2006. "Freakery" is a defiant freak flag, an infiltration by the circus geeks into the corporate boardrooms of the modern metal infrastructure, and I hope they ruin everyone's day.