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To
paraphrase Kuolema’s MySpace biography, ‘this band
plays really fast Finnish hardcore. The band formed in
1981, broke up four years later and got back together in
2001’. Apparently they are also notorious for
‘crime and violence and fornication’. Shit, sounds
like my kind of band. And not only because of their
anti social leanings but also because their music is
quite good. Somewhere in their site it says they also
play grindcore, but some of this stuff is too rowdy yet
melodically punk for that.
Viina
Aineita Naisia 2001-2008
naturally includes six different recordings. The first three
songs comes from a 2007 session and shows a band dishing out some
pretty edgy punk rock. By the time we get to the fourth tune, Kuolema’s grindcore side is more than evident. The recording
itself has less shine and the length of the tunes is nothing but
short as grind. These are eleven tunes taken of a 2006 7” EP and
show a band focusing on maddening speed, voracious vocal rants
and crusty hardcore ferocity.
Next up are
nine songs recorded in 2003. Once again, the sound itself
varies. There is hiss all over and the high end takes away from
the heaviness. Very little low bottom sounds. This time around
Kuolema balance out some of the melodic and raucous punk from
the start with the virulent grind from 2006. The vocals are
punk as fuck, so much indeed that they could approximate the
angry bedroom-ready edge of a one man black metal unit. Neat as
a mangled corpse.
By the time
we are on the twenty-fifth tune we are listening to the Nitku
sessions registered in March 2003. The audio quality has a
clearer separation between instruments, like holes of white
sound between instruments. There is not a steady sound to this
recording, where as some songs sound more underproduced than
others. The vocals are even more virulent, dragging words in
Finnish and carrying the same caustic spirit of early Amebix.
I can’t see
how any grindcore and crusty punker could go wrong with Kuolema.
Here is a band going for auditory terrorism. More than two
decades after their formation they sound as carefree and in your
face. The musicianship certainly isn’t any better, and if so, I
can’t even begin to imagine how is it that they sounded back in
the day. Then again, that’s not the point.
“EU” is
track thirty-two and the fourteen that follow are culled from the 1st 7”
EP sessions from 2002. Strip the sound from their name,
disassociate Kuolema from what we already know and you could bet
this is in fact, some unknown black metal band. Definitely, here
are the same principles, the same approach but not the same song
length.
The last handful of tracks come from a live Helsinki show from
2008. You can tell it was tiny, as we can hear several people
talking this sounds more like a big party than a small show.
Think they are bad shit? Kuolema know their shit enough
not to care. This long after they first came around, they
haven’t lost one bit of their early spirit. I'd bet my savings
that twenty years from now they'll still be sounding the same.
Official Site
MySpace |
