Band:	Caustic Wound
Album:	Grinding Mechanism Of Torment
Style:	Grindcore
Release date:	April 25, 2025
A review by:	RaduP

01. Grinding Mechanism Of Torment
02. Blood Battery
03. Human Shield
04. Drone Terror
05. Advanced Killing Methods
06. Blackout
07. The Bleed Rail
08. Endless Grave
09. Infinite Onslaught
10. Legacy Of Terror
11. Atom Blast
12. Technologist Hell Future
13. Dead Dog
14. Horrible Earth Death
15. Sniper Nest
16. ...Into Cold Deaf Universe

It even has "grind" in its name!

I was totally flabbergasted when I first heard Caustic Wound with their debut full-length, Death Posture, mostly for how well the band was able to contrast the faster grind section with slower doom death sections to make a very potent concoction of deathgrind that was shorter than 30 minutes. Comprised of three Mortiferum members, Magrudergrind's drummer, and Fetid's vocalist, there's a strong death metal experience from the aforementioned bands that goes into making the deathgrind sound of Caustic Wound, and it showed on Death Posture, and it shows on Grinding Mechanism Of Torment.

Granted, the intro to my previous review is no longer fully accurate for Grinding Mechanism Of Torment as well, given that this time around someone got credited with "sculpture art", which I reckon means that the cover art no longer depicts some real life grotesquery (like I assume Death Posture did, could be wrong). But everything else, from the low gurgles to the extreme pace variation of the OSDM riffs still rings true. There are some differences though. The production isn't as raw and gritty, though I don't feel like much of a punch is lost through the cleaner production, if anything it makes for a more compelling stereo experience with how pristine the bass and drums sound, and there's a lot of depth to both of these.

Another difference is that the album is slightly longer, though still not enough to pass the 30 minutes mark, with a huge chunk of the tracks being under two minutes of runtime. The notable exception here is closing track " ...Into Cold Deaf Universe", whose nearly 7 minutes of runtime lets the band dive deeper into its slower doom death side, sprinkled with some sludge, using samples for some mood setting before exploding into breakneck deathgrind. It's great to see the band attempting something that gives them more room to build than the usual shorter songs. The cleaner production and more refined songwriting is what one might consider a mellowing out, if it wasn't for how the other songs feel even more chaotic, including some slight hardcore leanings, and some downright violent riffing.

Grinding Mechanism Of Torment tweaks just enough about its predecessor to feel like both a continuation and a branching of that sound, and it truly earns the right to feature the genre's name in its title.