Band:	Houkago Grind Time
Album:	Bakyunsified (Moe To The Gore)
Style:	Grindcore
Release date:	November 2020

01. Bakyunsified (Moe To The Gore)
02. Houkago Grind Time
03. Effortless Regurgitation Of Kyoani Moeblobs
04. Endless Eight Part 2
05. Ruptured In Akkariin
06. Hey Toshino Kyoko
07. A Manual Of Ways To Occupy Oneself While Waiting In Line For Limited Edition Merch
08. Endless Eight Part 6
09. Walk Her Home Gently
10. War Bad
11. Moe: Nani?
12. Makoto Shinkai Has A Goatee
13. M Is For Moe
14. Is The Order A Blastbeat?
15. P Is For Keikaku
16. Fuwa Fuwa Grind

Actual footage of Houkago Grind Time sending me this promo

So I found this grind album that mysteriously appeals to me specifically and none of the rest of you: Bakyunsified (Moe To The Gore), an album of repulsive, gore-drenched Carcass riffs appended to a series of anime-themed puns, samples, and references - and not just any anime, but (largely) shows by Kyoto Animation, the greatest anime studio the world has ever known. This promo found its way into my MS inbox the same day that Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid season 2 was officially confirmed, so the KyoAni hype in the ol' SSUS Castle was already through the roof. I'll try to contain my enthusiasm, but, you know, it's not every day that two of your subcultures run into each other like this - and it's even rarer to find such a heavy album that, to quote the press kit, "rejects the violence and hatred pervading the current state of the world, eschewing the genre conventions of blood, guts, and porn." This is likely one of the most brutally wholesome albums ever to crawl out of the sausage grinder. Rather, I assume it would be if the lyrics to each song weren't literally "rraurughh raauurghrhg rawwuuuguh rugh rugh ogh
rururargh awgrugh uoorugh oorugh oogh uuuuuugh uuurooogh ruuwaaaaaaagh" (direct quote), but the Bandcamp page says that it's "always wholesome," so, okay. Sure.

Bakyunsified does eschew the more ribald and anatomical proclivities of its scene-mates; rather than a collage of organ meat or medical disasters, the cover art depicts Andrew Lee, the multi-instrumentalist and man of culture behind this project, standing in front of a Konosuba wall scroll. But while "m" does indeed stand for "moe," it also stands for "Mortician," and Houkago Grind Time's savage onslaught of sepulchral vocalizations and tantivy breaks slams with the same force as any of its offalgazing peers. The guitars have the same exquisite crunch and sharp texture as classic Carcass and the compositions blend the nigh-incoherent bludgeoning and ferocious chaos of subsurface grind with some riffs and rhythms more familiar to old-school death metal. Lee uses a lot of harmonics in his riffs and there is a firm balance of chunky, punky body blows and more technical constructions; he lists bands such as Mortician, Impaled, and Agathocles as influences, which I can certainly hear in Houkago Grind Time, albeit with less bass-muddied production and more emphasis on the guitars than anything else.

A variety of guest solos spice up the recipe with some spastic, Slayer-style shredding, with perhaps my favorite spot being that of Leon del Muerte (Impaled) on "Makoto Shinkai Has A Goatee" (he does). And as we all know, of course, it isn't really an album of underground brutality unless it has samples. You can probably guess where Houkago Grind Time is pulling its samples from, and it ain't newsreels or classic horror films: source material here includes K-On! episodes 1 and 4, Lucky Star episode 18, and The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya (2009 re-broadcast) episodes I don't know because pathetic human systems of logic and order do not apply to this series. My biggest disappointments with Bakyunsified are that "Fuwa Fuwa Grind" is not actually a cover of "Fuwa Fuwa Time" (at least, as far as I can tell) and that there are only two parts of "Endless Eight" (all eight parts are equally important). I really can't complain, though - while the diffuse subsubscenes of grind are not among my favorite metal alleys to stroll down, Houkago Grind Time has a really sick sound and solid songwriting that make this album a lot more than simply a vehicle for choice KyoAni clips (how many times have you heard a band that killed it with the samples and then died on the table when they had to write riffs?). The fierce crunch of the guitars is so satisfying that I'll be looking out for more HGT releases for actual non-anime reasons.

It took me 20 minutes to listen to this album and three hours to find the right Nichijou clip to use. The life of a reviewer is a troublesome one. Keep blasting, Houkago Grind Time. You're doing Haruhi's work.