Ape Unit – Turd

Grindcore is dragging on its last legs.  Scratch that, it didn’t have any legs over the past ten years, it was a mere torso with arms.  Now those arms are gone, and it’s ground its lower half into so many surfaces it’s about up to its neck, close to the brain, where it can finally pulverize itself fully into the ground and be gone forever.  Why do we say such things?  Because the genre, most of the time, hasn’t taken itself seriously since who knows.  We can’t even remember anymore because the bulk of promos we receive from so-called grindcore bands, who now often make reference to powerviolence in the same sentence, are so God awful even God refuses to take credit for creating any of it.  When did anyone decide that making a joke out of grindcore was a great idea?  It’s not even tongue-in-cheek anymore, it’s tongue-through-cheek, sticks in your ear, wiggling around like an annoying eight-year-old’s idea of a prank.  It then takes that tongue and dredges a few boogers out of its own nose, eats those as “that kid” was always known to do, then flings them around the classroom until placed into the corner to eat paste as punishment as a symbol of the world’s failures.  See, we don’t even have any clever, meandering stories to make fun of the genre anymore, so we’ve reduced ourselves to lowering our standards. We’ve now placed ourselves at the same level as modern grindcore. What level? High school humor, or better yet, preschool, if you consider the type the level of gibberish they keep waving around as a false flag of underground freedom.

  

Listen, it’s possible to play grindcore and actually have standards, it really is, believe it or not.  “Nuh uh, you guys have been hatin’ on core for like forever doods.”  Oh really?  You sure about that?  Click those links, please.  Now come back, breathe, and listen, grindcore fans.  Songs about battering women’s bodies isn’t funny, it never was.  Songs about sperm in a variety of contexts aren’t funny, they never were.  Lyrics that are counter-culture yet make references to pop-culture aren’t clever, they never were.  Samples taken from porn were never interesting, and will never be, as most of the music that calls itself “grindcore”.  The problem is that someone, somewhere set the standards of all this foolery many years ago, and as grindcore lost its original draw, falling into a pit of humorous despair, its former fans moved on to things that actually can be taken seriously. Those who remained true to the core still worship what they think are their roots to feel as though they have a place in the underground world.  All of this cretinism in grindcore has created a special niche quagmire where the fans therein pretend they’re so very elite rariade. And of course, no one else gets it.  No, you don’t get it that we actually do get it.  You’re horrible.  You shouldn’t be printing your own cassettes or CD-Rs, let alone convincing some desperate label to do so.  Nobody wants them.  Your friends are merely pretending they enjoy it because they can’t be honest. Your family wears your shirts at your shows but nowhere else. Even your own children lie in front of you. No one can be honest, but we will.

 

The first reason this album was even noticed is the cover, which is spectacular, at first glance.  The colors, the balance of images, the artist Croaman, it had to be worthy of our trust.  Oh, the story it tells…  Ape Unit has been grinding in Italy since around 2008, so they have a little experience, but as this “release” shows not enough to actually pull themselves away from the pack of slathering mooncalves who keep pretending and dreaming that grindcore is real.  Turd proves why the genre is dying.  It’s self-reflective on many levels, because it’s symbolically pretty much what you’d expect to find written on a bathroom stall in the first grade.  Interestingly, unlike most of this crap we receive straight from the toilet, piling on top of other crap to create a mass of festering waste, the first track is promising, featuring the only thing Ape Unit has going for it; a few, though rare, mind-bending riffs that require an advanced degree in chaos mathematics to decipher.  This, however, is quickly and consistently marred by grindcore idiocy.  You’re treated to inane samples, low/high vocal back-and-forth with little variation that sounds like a pig farm, and songs that mostly run under a minute. You’re barely given a moment to grasp anything.  This short-song approach was made into a joke, on purpose, by Gore Beyond Necropsy, to point at the obvious fact that the less time you utilize, the less room there is to develop. If you keep everything under a minute, there’s pretty much nothing to consume, and it’s all easily forgettable.  But oh no, Ape Unit wasn’t finished yet, in addition to the typical annoyances of grindcore, they toss in group singing out of tune, surf rock break-downs to cover their powerviolence tag, and, of course, making fun of famous bands and referencing how cool is this man Seth Putnam, you know, for their credentials.  To top off this fecal cake at a sewer birthday party for a boy made out of dung who just wants to be real, seven different labels were involved in releasing Turd on 10″, clearly for the fact that a single label by itself carrying this kind of offal wouldn’t have the funds and if there’s hate to be had, best to spread it around so everyone gets a taste and not one of them is left to swirl down the pipes alone.  Honesty, is that what you wanted? Did you want to hear the truth so you could put an end to this venture you call a band?  Then here you go.  Stop making anything close to music, including metal/grind, until you learn to take it seriously.  Don’t waste our time, or the world’s.  Turd is only nearly absolute garbage, and who wants to be just average if you suck?  Take it all the way next time, boys.

 

Ape Unit Official Facebook

Written by Stanley Stepanic

Ape Unit: Turd
¡ZAS! Autoproduzioni, Distrozione, Don Carlos Productions, Here And Now! Records, Tadca Records, Uterus Productions, Vollmer Industries
1.3 / 5