It dawned on me recently that it had been 20 years this November since the release of my first Gruntsplatter release. The “Bisect: A Split Release” was the first release on my label Crionic Mind. A split cassette limited to 100 between myself and Torture Chamber. Torture Chamber was an early experimental project of Jonathan Canady, who went on to form Deathpile shortly after, and also features J. Hochvater who later went on to form Minority of One.
I pulled the Gruntsplatter tracks, cleaned them up a bit and added an additional previously unreleased track from the same era. The result is a 20th Anniversary reissue that I added to my Bandcamp site as Pay What You Want.
I hadn’t listened to these tracks in 15 years at least. I don’t hate them as much as I expected I would. A couple yes, but on the whole it does give a illustrate the foundation I was able to build from once my equipment started to catch up to my ideas. These are all 4 track recordings.
Here are a couple of review excerpts from the time…
Industrial Nation #14
“GRUNTSPLATTER present a mesh of ambient electronic noise that is similar to TORTURE CHAMBER’s work, but much darker. Very dense noise with samples and heavy electronics. I certainly encourage noise fans to pick this up…”Ohm Clock #4
“GRUNTSPLATTER, who used a studio, sound a bit more subdued but no less chaotic. After listening to so many ambient releases, this is a welcome change to rinse out the musical palette.”
And perhaps my favorite review of all time…
Infernal Archives #2
“This doesn’t suck, because it’s beyond suck! This isn’t extraordinary because it’s beyond extraordinary. This isn’t even music, it’s beyond all actual sound and audio extremity. Overwhelming violence and supreme distortion is what makes up this tape. Both of these groups are far more concerned with transcending sound than making music. It is definitely not for me, but something about it does intrigue me. I would probably play this on Halloween for a haunted house carnival. It’s scary, I can see the trick or treaters running when they hear this. It’s not music in the harmonic sense, it’s purely music because it inflicts emotion by the use of sound.”
Here is the link if you are interested in checking it out.
crionicmind.org 