Beats and yelling shorts, 2nd September 26

Rahaty: Bestial LustmordOut 28th August on Sentient Ruin Another attempt to bleed the deathgrind sponge dry without refreshing the underlying template. This time by taking things in a blackened direction in the Finnish mould. Although this album nails a certain cavernous aesthetic, the underlying architecture fails to trouble anyone accustomed to the extremity foregrounded across this material. The problem is either one of too much order or not enough. Unlike Moonchapel for example, Rahaty appear musically coherent (the former deliberately allowing their music to decay at the edges as a device for further upsetting the listener’s sense of balance), rhythmically in the pocket, transitions make sense and any inertia is compensated by the relatively tight performances. The fact that the musicianship is on the tighter side would therefore require a more distinctive character to be expressed through the riffs themselves, something that, despite many serviceable ideas, is largely lacking…