You know, when a CD cover depicts a doctor/butcher, whatever, throwing testicals into a meat grinder I am pretty damn sure I know what to expect music wise. I was actually mildly surprised with the result of the CD, though, since I was expecting it to be straight Grind but there is a healthy dose of mostly competent Death Metal as well.

Genital Grinder is a French band, a young French band at that, and this self titled CD is their first full-length after two demos. They originally went by the name of Abyss Gate and played Thrash Metal (should have stayed that way, we need more Thrash bands), but alas, Abyss Gate decided in a musical direction change and thus Genital Grinder was born. As mentioned there is a decent amount of Death Metal in Genital Grinder’s Grind influences and that saves the CD from mediocrity, for the most part. In typical Grindcore vain, the CD is very short, lasting just under 30 minutes, but with 15 listed tracks and two hidden tracks. As one can imagine some songs are very short and if your mind lapses at track 2, it will be track 8 before you know what hit you. There are fully developed songs on here that actually last more than 3 minutes but in classic Anal Cunt vain there are songs that last only half a minute, or even worse, a couple of seconds. One of these "songs" is nothing but the sound of someone with explosive diarrhea… I don’t know about you but that’s not the first thing I think when I think about high quality Metal. But then again, Exhumed fans love it when the guitarist (I think it’s the guitarist) forcefully vomits on stage and into the crowd, so I guess it’s a classic scenario of there is something for everyone. Is it for me? No. Strangely enough when Genital Grinder isn’t putting a microphone in their toilet and writing 20 seconds of blast beats they are creating some above average Grinding Death Metal.

The real songs on here are a collection of well-placed blast beats and head-banging groove. There is definitely an early Deicide and Cannibal Corpse influence as the style of blast beats and death groove sections can easily fit perfectly on those bands early releases. Though highly unoriginal at times, it’s a style that is mostly successful and will appeal to hardcore fans of the genre, but everyone else will probably get bored rather quickly. The vocals are dynamic as the style employed changes often, from Death growls, to Gore shrieks, to Grindcore screams. Meanwhile the production is adequate with the classic Cannibal Corpse bass mix (i.e. audible) and the guitars are certainly heavy enough, though it suffers from the same problem Fleshgrind's latest did: the production is good but it has been heard before. One thing, well two things I guess, that I did find interesting about this CD are some of the riffs. Every once in awhile a riff will be used that sounds like pure Black Metal, though with much heavier distortion and a different tuning, and there was even one or two cases where I heard a riff progression that sounded vaguely Power Metal-ish. Once again, the tuning and distortion were totally different, however, it was refreshing and really made me pay attention to the song. I also really enjoyed the sixth track, Forgiven Dead, as a little bit of the bands early Thrash beginnings can be heard in the arrangement and the overall atmosphere is surprisingly dark and evil compared to the rest of CD which doesn’t exactly invoke those kinds of feelings. Sporrache is another quality track which does have a breath of originality to it thanks to some interesting riffs and rhythm patterns; they should write more songs like this. Also, it should be obvious but the lyrics are quite disgusting and those sexual perverts and gore fans out there… you know who you are… will get your sick fix from the lyrics.

I’m sure there were will be people out there who’ll enjoy this more than I did, especially those who have to get every Death/Grind CD they can get their hands on, but there is better stuff out there if you’re looking to get into the genre. This release isn’t a total loss as there are a handful of quality songs with some cool riffs, and if the band can improve the originality there could be potential. Genital Grinder is still a young band and while there is definite room for improvement I can hear hope for the future and I look forward to hearing what the band does with their next release.