ALBUM REVIEW: KARRAS - WE POISON THEIR YOUNG

UGLY GRINDCORE CRUST PLAYED LIKE IT SHOULD

The disturbing title of this record is emblematic of its squalid, nihilistic and uncompromising content. Karras are three angry Frenchmen who create a sound anchored in a fusion of old school crust/grind/hardcore.

There is a low-fi DIY hardcore aesthetic to We Poison Their Young with grimy punk D beats, filthy bulging bass chords (New Pariah) and violence-inducing breakdowns (the slamming Ritual Overdose). Generally though it is high-octane Nasum playing in a sewer blurred-vision grind / crust core with bursts or blast beats and snare abuse and manic buzzing pace. The bellicose vocal delivery, meanwhile, is more akin to barking confrontational hardcore incitment giving this more of a degraded urban and vitriolic tone. It isn’t all warp speed and Karras benefit from playing with the gears a bit. They do mid-paced almost sludge-death chunky riffs that wobble under their own weight in punishing breakdowns while mid-paced meaty chords get the neck muscles going.

Records like this thrive on brevity to optimise their impact and Karras are, mercifully, cognisant of this and each hate-bleached track tends to clock in no more than two caustic minutes. Like the dizzying wrath of Chaplain’s Breath each track is terse as it is abrasive and ugly. Music of this sort demands compactness as anything else is a fine recipe to turn adrenalin into melatonin.

Sprinkled with nasty movie samples and taking their band name from The Exorcist, Karras have a sound that adds a slight malevolence to their sordid gritty crust metal. Eschewing modern trends at adaptation, retrofitting or experimenting with blastcore blueprints, Karras knuckle down with old school attitudinal spit with all the subtlety of a headbutt. For this, orignality is not a requisite. Ugly music played like it ought to be.

Check out Karras on bandcamp: https://karrasband.bandcamp.com/