Birdflesh – Extreme Graveyard Tornado
3 min read
Band: Birdflesh
Title: Extreme Graveyard Tornado
Label: Everlasting Spew Records
Release date: 28 June 2019
Country: Sweden
Format reviewed: High-quality Digital Recording
After having rummaged around in search of music to review this week, my eye caught the new Birdflesh album and hell, I simply couldn’t resist! Taking into consideration the average lifespan of grindcore acts, Birdflesh surely has been around for a lot longer than most out there. Formed in 1992, with four full-length albums behind them along with masses of demos, splits and EPs, Extreme Graveyard Tornado will finally come around in June after over a decade of waiting for another full-length album.
The band of three surely has a stage presence with their hilarious masks and humorous lyrics to songs that barely last long enough for most to get it. At first, I wondered if this was really to be taken seriously. Lyrics about Amish girls, milkshakes and Botox buttocks didn’t really arouse the seriousness I was sort of expecting, and the fact that 24 songs were crammed into mere 27 minutes didn’t help either, however, after a few songs, I finally got it.
Even though the formula for somewhat every song is the same and sometimes it takes longer to read the name of the song than to actually listen to it, tracks such as Crazy Train Decapitation do stand out as it can be placed somewhere between old-school death and grindcore with a Kerry King-solo, managing to also put a slower part into those crammed minutes, while Guacamolestation of the Tacorpse was so fast that it made me think it was being played on a Sony Walkman with the speed button pressed the entire time. Pub Night also got me wondering if that is what they do, enter a pub, fight, get tossed out…all in under a minute of course.
The grindcore music itself is spot on. They are an extremely tight and competent bunch of musicians, and one song after another you find hints towards their love for the metal scene as a whole, adding in elements from most other genres out there with the fineness in all the chaos that is going on, and yet, that was not necessarily the point. You get the feeling that they want to revolt against the seriousness that is going on in the metal scene. As said before, the lyrics are hilarious but once you start to get what the song is about it’s over, and the next one comes around to add another level of humor into the stew of cacophony.
Clarinets and accordions? Yes! Black-metal passages? Yes! You got it all in here, but be sure to tag along for the ride because if you blink your ears for just a second, you will most likely miss it. This is most certainly not for everyone, but who cares? I’m pretty sure Birdflesh doesn’t.
7.5/10 Julia
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