Blockheads, This World is Dead
Featured Album
Grindcore vets display the hunger and vitality of youngsters with energy and anger to burn
It’s amazing how much expression and emotion certain grindcore bands can pack in the timespan of a couple television commercials. Take Blockheads, a French quartet whose fifth full-length, The World is Dead, compresses 25 songs into a mere 40 minutes. Though they’re not as well known as many of their younger peers, Blockheads have been together since 1989 and have pursued a single-minded path to demolition that rivals the careers of peers such as Napalm Death, Nasum and Blood Duster.
On The World is Dead, Blockheads’ first album in six years, the band displays the hunger and vitality of youngsters with energy and anger to burn. From the commanding blastbeat salvos of the album opener “Already Slaves,” Blockheads attack with the volume of a jet fighter and the velocity of a NASCAR engine, yet extremism isn’t the ony way they make an impact. Each track makes it way through well-structured intros and outros and even mid-paced midsections that squeeze diversity between the ceaseless pummeling. The anomaly is the album closer “Trail of the Dead,” a trudging seven-minute doom metal song that reveal unseen dimensions beneath the otherwise relentless barrage.
