Vim Fuego So what can you get for free these days? Sunburn? A cold? A pamphlet from the Jehovah’s Witnesses? Not a hell of a lot. You can add “True Old School Horror Grind” to that less than stunning list.

“True Old School Horror Grind” is a free five track demo by American grindcore band Zombie Raiders, and free is an appropriate price for it, because it really isn’t very good. What you get is inexpertly executed horror themed goregrind. You know the sort of thing- smashing as many drums as possible as fast as possible, indistinct guitars distorted almost to white noise, bloppy* vocals you often find on badly recorded pornogrind, and song titles rendered meaningless by the bloppy (hey I’ve just invented this word, so I’m going to keep using it!) vocals. In short, it’s all a bit of a mess. The intro to “Soul of the Demon” is vomiting noises so silly it will make you laugh, partly in embarrassment.

There are positives though. The riffs are fairly distinct, rather than being a total fuzzed out blur. Zombie Raiders understand the value of slow, grinding riffs to provide contrast to, well, the fast grinding riffs. Also the blast beat on the 43 second long “The Dead Live!” is well executed. And if you listen to this often enough, it almost has that feel of “so bad it’s good”. Almost…

Ian Berling is the genius? Brains? Bloke in charge? Yep. Ian Berling is the bloke in charge of Zombie Raiders, playing drums and gurgling the vocals, and it turns out he was only sixteen when this was recorded, but it was already the two man band’s second release. At the end of the day, he’s not going to give a fuck one way or the other what anyone else thinks of the music he makes. This is five tracks, less than six minutes long, and totally free. No, it’s not great, but more power to Berling and his Zombie Raiders for putting it out there.

*bloppy, adjective: To make a blop sound. Origin: blop + py. Blop, noun, informal (I just made it up!): The sound of the bubbles coming from a goldfish tank.