WARSORE "OPEN WOUND"

High school was a special time for me. The summer before my freshman year was spent at my parent's house, using up their dial up internet to discover music. I would stay up until 4am, hitting up every chatroom I could find to discuss..er..namedrop obscure bands. I browsed geocities webpages and stumbled across trade lists from grinders all over the world. By summers end, I was receiving packages daily from Malaysia, Macedonia, Greece, Italy and Brazil. The piles of lo-fi/no-fi tapes began to hit the ceiling of my closet, and once I started school that semester I was running a cassette label as well. There are two tapes that stick out in my mind during this point of my life ( a time spent at home on the internet setting up trades, standing in line at the post office, at work until late or at school..which means nothing has changed). One was a mix tape which I will go into next week, and the other is Warsore's "Open Wound" demo tape.

 My copy came from a German penpal, and was an obvious bootleg. The cover seemed like a tenth generation xerox, and the cassette was probably a fifteenth generation. I had to turn my stereo all the way to 10 to even somewhat hear it. However, the noises that came out of the speakers changed my life.

This 13 minute demo is a true lesson in grind violence. Ridiculously fast, single pedal blast beats, a singer who alternates flawlessly between high and low vocals, all the while sounding like a fucking mutant gargling battery acid, and those riffs. Such simplistic, non bullshit metal riffs. This was old school Napalm Death "Scum" era riffs covered in slime. Every song is as intense as the one before it. The bewilderment I felt after hearing Napalm Death for the first time was multiplied by 100. What also struck me was their song titles. Tracks like "You Rape You Die" and "Don't Settle For Death Metal" was something I could support, especially at a time when I would receive 10 tapes a day, and a few in the batch were shitty noisecore bands that had some sort of anger towards the female anatomy. The artwork features a dude being uppercutted into oblivion, and that's exactly how I feel after listening to this demo tape, even today. This was more than crusty grindcore. This was anti music/anti human aggression, all while maintaining a sense of humor (a Coneheads movie clip?? cmon!!!).

Since the kids don't need a tradelist from Germany anymore, here's a youtube link to the demo. Aussie grind freaks rejoice!

AUSSIE GRIND