Human Cull | ‘Split Second Extinction’

Good grind: tight, fast, thick guitar production, impressive blasts, groovy breakdowns, monster-raving-loony-dangerous-person vocals.

Bad grind: band not really tight, guitars thin and out of tune, limp blastbeats, sonic mess, no real structure beyond a half arsed manic spasm.

Human Cull from Devon aren’t as bad as the latter, but they’re not really great either.

This collection of tracks adheres to all the genre’s familiar tropes, sounding a bit like Cripple Bastards in parts, though with gruffer vocals. Elsewhere there are some nods to Agoraphobic Nosebleed (‘Misinformed’), for what it’s worth.

True to the genre, none of the songs last that long – averaging about a minute – which means Human cull never really take the chance to demonstrate whether they can really do anything of substance.

Not everyone is Discordance Axis: not everyone can distill pure grind mastery into such a short time frame. Yet even so, it’s only really by tenth track, ‘Unwilling Martyrs’, that the band show any real dexterity – reminding of Benumb’s efforts.

‘Resentment’ has a nice elasticity toward the end, bringing an unhinged and dystopian feel to things.

Overall it’s hard to judge a band on so comparitively little raw material.

It’s clear they’re at least proficient, but at the same time the guitars need so much more concentration, tightness and heaviness than they have here – there’s just no weight behind it, and it times it’s plain sloppy.

Yet that never stopped any true Buckfast fuelled crusty, and there’s no reason to suppose it ever will. So if you’re into the lower reaches of the grind scene perhaps you can find a bit more worth in this than I do.

2.4 / 5 – Earl Grey ::: 17/07/12