Band:	Internal Rot
Album:	Grieving Birth
Style:	Grindcore
Release date:	February 28, 2020
A review by:	RaduP

01. Transmission
02. Unnegotiable Impact
03. Grim Magnetic
04. Agonesiac
05. Harpooned
06. Chronic Bedlam
07. Eaten By Crabs
08. Failed Organum
09. Pandemath
10. Arroyo
11. Orbiting Flesh
12. Grieving Birth
13. Judas Chair
14. Axelrod's Revenge
15. Sensitive Cop
16. Melted Cosmos
17. Aporia
18. Gorge On Abuse
19. Reprobated Embryo
20. Deep Pleasure
21. Fermented Mass
22. Dolor

Sometimes all you need is just 20 minutes of pure fucking grindcore.

Who the fuck is that girl and why is a VHS-tape quality screenshot of her on the cover art of this? Who the fuck knows. It's not like Internal Rot didn't have something that seemed like a still taken from a Kate Bush video on their previous record (the one that isn't a live one, but that slays too). But anyway, some folks (yours truly included) have had their heads turned by Hack Session, but that was recorded in 2011, so it doesn't matter. It has been at least 5 years of radio silence from these folks, but Grieving Birth came out right off the hype of Hack Session and it fucking lived up to the promise.

This is no bullshit grind. It's fast, it's vicious, it's loud, it's bludgeoning, it's all those buzzwords you'd want out of a grind record. It's got barely recognizable bits of hardcore and math, but the core is still pretty unchanged. It's the type of grind that just starts and doesn't give you any breathing room other than a few seconds of guitar feedback in between some songs. With its 20 minutes runtime, it doesn't really get into the "too much of the same" waters that it could be if it was maybe even five minutes longer. Thankfully even for how continuous and relentless it is, it is constantly shifting paces and never staying more than a few seconds in a section, so it never feels like it threads too long.

Of course so much grind is exhausting, but tell me some other album that exhausts you so much in twenty minutes, other than maybe some harsh noise. At least this is entertaining. And it's just the right amount of exhausting without pushing it. The Aussie trio of vocals/drums/guitars are all competing with one another and completing one another to create this ugly fast sound. Fairly one-dimensional? Sure, I'd love to see that not be the case for their next album, but what I'd love even more is to make sure they keep the unrelenting aggression intact even if they expand the sound a bit. But for a block of pure grind, I don't know how much more I could ask for.

So if you're looking for some meth psychosis tunes from down under, you're in luck!