Review by Carl on August 2, 2023.

You know these plastic pants with the rubber boots attached to them, right? Those things fishermen use to wade waist deep into the water without getting their asscracks wet? You know what I'm on about. Well, if you happen to have a pair of those lying around, go get them on, because we're going deep into the slimy crypts of the extreme metal underground for this one.

The A side gives us an all female grindcore band from Brazil, and they do deliver the goods in fashion. Growling vocals, lots of distorted guitars, a blast beat driven percussive attack and very, very short tracks, delivered with a touch of raw death metal to them. It's basically old school grindcore with all window dressing removed, and you can bet your sweet behind that this stuff is right up my alley. In style they have me thinking of underground heroes such as Assück, Drogheda, Arsedestroyer and even Naked Whipper, but due to the harsh female vocals they also have me thinking of a band like Nuclear Death as well. The rough 'n' ready production is as you would expect from a grind 7" from the mid 90's, but it does a great job at nailing the right underground feel. Sure, in the fast parts both vocals and drums push the guitars into the background somewhat, and the execution of the music is a bit rough around the edges here and there, but come on, it's grindcore, not fucking Pain Of Salvation.

The B side gives us New York Against the Belzebu (NYAB from here on), and they take proceedings just that little deeper into the underground with their grinding noisecore style. NYAB are the kind of band that looked at Anal Cunt and thought to themselves "that's fucking prog rock. Let us handle this the right way", and so they did, I guess. What feels like 512 short (mostly improvised, I imagine) bursts of distorted guitars, random blasting percussion and growling vocals hit the listener around the ears, and yeah..., I do not care for this that much. I know that this type of noisecore (you probably know those of repute like 7 Minutes of Nausea, Meat Shits and the aforementioned Anal Cunt) has a surprisingly intent following, but I'm not feeling it. It's a load of micro songs that go BRRRR for 5 seconds before going off into the next track that goes BRRRR for 7 seconds, with some odd melodies and a very corny sense of humour thrown in. This type of stuff always has me thinking of a grindcore band launching into song full force, with immediately having a huge anvil (probably with ACME written on the side) being dropped on them, Wile E. Coyote style. The most remarkable thing about NYAB's side of this split is that the production is actually better than that of Purulence, having more bottom and balance to it. That being said, let me conclude with stating that I don't care for this all that much. This stuff is good for some giggles at first, but when annoyance takes over soon after that, it starts grating my nerves till no end.

Taking both sides into consideration, I think this still is a pretty ripping underground offering of extreme music worth your time. The Purulence side certainly makes it worthwhile to check out if you're into raw old school grindcore/death metal, and if you can dig noisecore better than me, you'll have a good addition in NYAB as well. Even though I think they're crap.

And this concludes our review. You can now take off those rubber pants, but don't forget to hose them down and hang 'em out to dry. I promise you'll need them again in a short while, hehehe.

Rating: 7 out of 10