siLLy puPPy Named after the cute little nocturnal rodents native to the forests of the Philippines, this CLOUD RAT is anything but cute and cuddly. Formed in 2009 in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan this band has released a number of earache inducing EPs, splits and compilations but only a few actual albums but this is a grindcore band where such distinctions blur and albums are hell bent for leather to be as bombastically brief as possible.

This self-titled release was the debut which came out in 2010. With 11 tracks it only amounts to 17 1/2 minutes of playing time and for the most part features extreme screaming over heavily distorted grind guitars that explore not only the expected high tempo speeds of the core genres but also features some slower doom metal moments with exaggerated distortion. The album sorta runs together in a well-thought out flow.

The track “Sinkhole” for example cedes into “Yama” which features a nice mid-album intermission with clean guitar chords echoing away with spoken word poetry which is on the weirder side of things cutest of singer, screamer and band philosopher Madison Marshall who happens to be a girl! Female fronted grindcore isn’t very common but she pulls it off with ease. What’s cool about this short little album is that it goes well beyond the usual one dimensional approach of grindcore and incorporates moments of sludge metal, crust punk and screamo.

Michigan has long been a hotbed for every style of music imaginable and it’s obvious that even extreme caustic metal has found a reinterpretation within this state’s boundaries. CLOUD RAT easily covers the grindcore basics but goes well beyond the call of duty and for that i find this band to be a rising star of sort albeit resorted to the underground despite the tiny mammal it derives its name from sitting high in the canopy of tropical forests. This is a nice mix of dissonant jangle chords set on slo-mo with aggressive outbursts. Bitchin.