Ooooh. Now. These Austrian metallo-hardcore monkeys really are right pissed off about something or other. Chuggy and and a little sludgy, Stillborn‘s Degraded Culture is a dirty shitnugget of cymbals, distortion and barely intelligible death-rattle growl-a-rama vocal larkery. Kind of like Bastions, but with a lethal dose of central European angst.
This actually all works rather well if you just want some testy filth in your ears. Track 3 “The Devil’s Face” is a nasty little cracker of the genre – great lurching riffs and deft use of the grunt to crown the breakdown, and in terms of subject matter, a simple little ditty about why religion is a REALLY bad thing. Bulls eye. Lyrically, of course it’s unapologetic Sixth Form throughout. Speaking personally, I even recognise some of their lines. I think I wrote much the same things on a Lever Arch folder while sat right at the back of A-Level English, at a time when I was fixated on Ministry and the Dead Kennedys and was properly angry about the West’s response to the Yugoslav Civil War. Or maybe it was Somalia. Not sure. It was ages ago.
Nonetheless, these boys really do seem to take the systems collapse / doomsday conceit very seriously. And why ever not. However, I only know this because the lyrics are helpfully posted up on the Bandcamp page so when you stream the tracks you can read along. Without this, you wouldn’t have a clue what they are banging on about. But the banging is the good bit. So I wouldn’t worry.
3 out of 5 high fives!