ROTTEN SOUND

With an almost unlimited amount of great new music vying to attract our attention, it is often frustratingly difficult to find the time to give new albums a decent chance. The slow death of the CD has certainly put an end to the notion that records have to be 80 minutes long, but there are still too many bands seemingly dedicated to cramming as much music onto their latest opus as possible. Long is great, but short is often better. ROTTEN SOUND have definitely received that particular memo.

"Mass Extinction" is an EP comprising eight tracks that were recorded during sessions for 2023's "Apocalypse" but that didn't make the cut. That album's loss is definitely our gain. Not quite ten minutes of seething, destructive grindcore, delivered with the Finnish legends' usual, uncompromising intensity, this is a mercilessly brief explosion of rage and violence that is long enough to cause maximum damage, but short enough to be consumed by the busiest of people. Convenience-core.

But as handy as it is to have a new ROTTEN SOUND record that will not take up too much of your time, "Mass Extinction" is equally useful as a way to assess how much of the band's utterly livid and ruthlessly precise grind the average person can withstand. As ever, ROTTEN SOUND are insanely brutal and dangerously fast. Crank them up to an appropriate volume, and songs like "Recycle" and "Ride Of The Future" will either fill your heart with subversive joy or send you screaming into the distance. This shit is not for lightweights.

For those who can cope with being disemboweled by blastbeats, "Mass Extinction" is just about perfect. "Gone" is 50 seconds of iron-clad hardcore punk aimed straight at your shrieking, terrified face; "Polarized" is a dizzying whirlwind of kamikaze grind and churning, deathly riffing; and "Brave New World" is a politically priapic storm of teeth-grinding extremity. ROTTEN SOUND don't need to progress. All they need is caffeine, endless supplies of hatred, and somewhere to lie down for a snooze after the event. The lurching abomination of "Empty Shells", the breakneck bellicosity of "Idealist", and the title track's comparatively epic (but no less brutal) finale, "Mass Extinction" is ROTTEN SOUND doing what they do best. Right now, no one does it better.