Bowel Rupture, Endless Stench, and Exit Fear
The end of the year is fast approaching, but the horrible noise just keeps on coming! Below are three sick releases from New Zealand punk bands Bowel Rupture, Endless Stench, and Exit Fear. And there’ll be more gruesome music appearing on Six Noises over the next few days, with a write-up about the long-awaited return of sinister NZ sludge outfit Shallow Grave. There are plenty of other posts to come before the year’s end as well. So dig in, enjoy all the riff-raff rowdiness below, and I’ll see you soon with more obnoxious noise.
Bowel Rupture: S/T
The self-titled debut from Wellington punks Bowel Rupture features grinding lo-fi crust that’s about as rank and raw as gargling a mouthful of sewage. Delicious! Nab the digital version of Bowel Rupture’s debut, and you get three songs. Grab a cassette copy, and you get four. Either way, every one of those tracks is going to be haemorrhaging blown-out noise with enough gruesome grit and ferocity to loosen your fillings.
Bowel Rupture’s in-your-face singer, Selina, howls bloody murder on the band’s debut – her distorted vocals echoing throughout. Guitarists Jeff and Quintin churn/grind, and then grind/churn, throwing in plenty of gnarly pick-slides on the band’s mangling songs. Bassist Dan stirs the swampy low-end into a more noxious quagmire. And drummer Jeff just batters everything, all the time, relentlessly, remorselessly.
Bowel Rupture’s debut is fucking harsh, fucking crude, fucking abrasive and, you know what, it’s downright fucking unpleasant too. Obviously, those are all big fucking ticks in the ‘highly recommended’ column.
Endless Stench: 26/05/16
Endless Stench’s rough and ready 26/05/16 demo was recorded on a cell phone a couple of years ago, and it’s had less-than-zero mixing or mastering since then, so if you’re seeking any hi-fi hijinks, you’d best look elsewhere – immediately. 26/05/16 has been recently re-released (for Cassette Store Day) by Wellington label Limbless Music, and it’s fair to say the demo is both exceedingly raw and a monstrous fucking mess.
Of course, those aren’t criticisms. The demo’s ugliness and disgustingness are its major selling points, and ugly and disgusting also happen to be fitting descriptions of Endless Stench’s über-caustic grinding crust. The band might have had six members, including two barking vocalists and two berserker guitarists, but Endless Stench’s music was reductive, crude, and all the better for its brute-force primitivism.
Endless Stench’s unwashed, dumpster-diving shitnoise also attracted devotees from both the underground punk and metal camps – and the band definitely weren’t purveyors of anything remotely wholesome or pristine. The lower-than-lo-fi chaos on 26/05/16 celebrates all of those facts, and it’s a reminder of the joys of filthy, pungent punk.
26/05/16 is recommended for masochists, poor decision-makers, and lovers of cheap beer, crushed pills, and acid-in-your-earhole noise. Ugh. Ooosh. Fvk. Etc.
Exit Fear: EP 1
Auckland trio Exit Fear features members who’ve played in bands like School of Meat and (the almighty) Shitripper, and Exit Fear is fronted by Tooms vocalist Dorian Noval. The band’s debut, EP 1, features hammering tracks –– like “Damage”, “Deadshark” and “Strangers” –– which hurl full-bore hardcore at you with unbridled energy.
Exit Fear’s creative formula isn’t complex, which isn’t to say the band are simple, but their streamlined hostility is certainly 100% effective. The band combine pummelling guitars with volatile vocals and pounding percussion, keeping their songs raging and impassioned from the first second to the last. That same lean/mean approach worked wonders for hardcore bands like Cursed and His Hero is Gone, who Exit Fear have cited as influences, and the fusion of emotional fervour and instrumental intensity works extremely well for Exit Fear too.
