Get Your Face Melted Off By Noisem On Their Furious Latest Grindcore Full Length

Listening to Noisem’s new album Cease To Exist feels like getting ground between gears churning along the path to a burning tar pit. The grinding metal band feel like they’re playing their instruments in ways they were never meant to be used and ripping open exciting new paths. The guitar work feels like it’s repeatedly hitting you over the head like a drum beat, while the manic drum work sprawls all over the place, contributing to a caustic mixture where the physical and mental extremity remains clear above the noise.

They have completely and dramatically separated themselves from songwriting conventions, instead delving headfirst into a method wherein they craft and capture focused bursts of energy that knock the listener off their feet. They even turn melody into something gloriously ghastly, since the ideas that do emerge immediately turn towards the album’s “final destination” of a form of anger, pain, and suffering that ultimately can not be put into words. Cease To Exist does not feel like a “grindcore record” or “death metal record” or anything of the sort as much as it’s a sonic experience.

There’s a somewhat surprising extra dose of personality in the record because the vocal work actually shines through rather clearly, at least compared to some alternatives. Vocalist Ben Anft can clearly be ascertained to be sharing utter fury at a variety of specific targets, singing for instance on the curiously titled “Deplorable” about what seems to be — for lack of a more erudite term — a bigoted bastard or two who have gotten on the last of their nerves. “Deplorable” has been used widely lately for a certain class of politically minded individuals, adding another layer to the outwardly minded flavor of this record.

Cease To Exist doesn’t just encapsulate a dose of miserable pain that in the end, might be an experience separate from our own. The album instead shares what feels like the ultimately very grounded tale of a person standing in the midst of our societal mess and expressing utter, primal rage at the torment. Even within the mind-melting chaos the record delivers, the band maintain a curious attention to structure as exemplified in their glorious finale which builds from a thudding, doom-feeling beginning to an absolutely miserable, flame-engulfed conclusion.

5/5 Stars

Listen below via Bandcamp. The full mayhem releases via 20 Buck Spin March 15.