Grind-O-Matic: Flower Power

Saltine crackers. They taste great up until the halfway through the package and then you are left with a dry mouth and desperately need some water. They’re like the band Grind-O-matic; good up until midway through and then you need something else. Grind-O-matic are a three-piece grindcore band out of France and with the release of their latest album, Flower Power, have lyrical themes focusing on the nature, drugs, and nature’s wrath upon humanity for our negligence and abusive tendencies. In typical grindcore fashion, they have 20 songs spanning over 39 minutes with the longest track being 5 minutes long.

 

Flower Power starts off with “The Ayahuasca Path” and just like the the brief sample that starts the track with a man describing how presumably the ayahuasca trip went poorly, the track begins to descend into visceral drumming, screaming, and chugging. Many of the tracks have absurd titles such as “Naughty Nepenthes”, “Fussy Cat”, and “Markovs Umbrella” and include samples of pro-drug legalization conversations. The track, “Arabian Gunje of Enchantment” has no vocals and uses on samples including a woman speaking of why she enjoys marijuana, a law enforcement individual speaking of his opinion on drugs, the ramifications of the legality of drugs on society, and the destruction it has on the youth of America.

 

 

The guitar is dirty and fast, the drums are pounding, and the screams are unforgivably piercing and lead the march into each of the tracks. When it comes to the drums and vocals, the metaphor of being similar to crackers becomes most prominent. Initially they’re great but the variety is lacking and by the time the album is halfway over, they become background noise with no real necessity.The additional vocals of the guitarist are absolutely brutal and the perfect addition, which is a shame because at times, the guitars sound too dirty and they become sloppy. If production was cleaner, the sloppy sound could be avoided. Fortunately, this happens only in a few songs over the course of the album so there is not much to hate here.

 

“Socrates Fizz”, is the best track on the album and features the best performance all around by the three musicians. The album ends with “Peyote Coyote,” the longest track, which is a long sample of a man describing his hallucinations and how he feels, with distorted vocals, sounds of more vomiting, and a very eerie synth that dominates the rest once the sample ends and ending the delirium that is Flower Power. Grind-O-Matic have done a fine job for three musicians and the included samples add tremendously to the album but more creativity is demanded along with greater clarity in recording in order to really capture the naturally cruel sound.

 

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Written by Cole Olson

Grind-O-Matic: Flower Power
Grind-O-Records
3 / 5