EXIT WOUNDS, Exit Wounds  (2008, No Escape)

The skull:
Stark and bleak, this morbid looking photograph of a skull, brought into greater focus by the circle around it and without the distraction of words. Only the number 30 looms in the lower right quadrant, and this is, probably not coincidentally, the number of songs on this album. (Yes, they’re a grindcore band.) The skull’s left eye is so hollow, it’s black as the abyss and ends up looking like an eyepatch…and we dig eyepatched skulls here at Big Dumb Skulls HQ. And, unless it’s just a shadow, the upper right part of the cranium appears to be missing. This would probably be the “exit wound.” Clever.

The music:
There’s nothing interesting about this music whatsoever. It’s well-played, certainly, and I don’t doubt each member of this Polish band knows every Napalm Death, Nasum and Disrupt song title there is. I love ’80s and ’90s-era Napalm Death, and of course Terrorizer and other super-crazy death metal that intersects with grind, mostly from the older days, and I have been exposed to tons of grind over the decades (hey, I used to work at Relapse) but enough already! Give me something I can use. At least this album blazes by in a short 23 minutes…admittedly 23 very punishing, pummeling, violent minutes. I wonder what Friar Johnsen is listening to right now…
— Friar Wagner