siLLy puPPy When wading through the sea of mediocrity with bands that fall into the slam death metal, brutal death metal and grindcore derived camps, it’s always nice to discover a diamond in the rough. More often than not these styles of extreme metal are one-dimensional and treat the music as a competition as would an olympic athlete with the sole focus of making louder, harder, faster and more grotesquely brutal sounds than everyone else. So it’s always a joy to find an album that not only exercises those very athletic abilities of the musicians but also pays attention to making the album interesting!

Sometimes an interesting act comes from a ridiculous unknown setting on planet Earth and that’s exactly the case with ШУМОВАЯ ЭКЗЕКУЦИЯ (shoo-MO-ba-ya ehk-zeh-KOO-tsee-uh) which means The Noise Execution in English. This band formed in 2006 in the extreme western part of Kazakhstan in the mining city of Aktau which sits on the shores of the Caspian Sea. This city that no one has heard of is primary known for its unique block address system where no streets have names and instead addresses only consist of three numbers which is also known as the micro-region block system. But i digress. Apparently this city has angsty youth who want to bang their fucking heads and that’s exactly what this brutal death metal / goregrind group of noisemaking boyz is all about.

The band was formed in 2006 from the ashes of two local bands called Inferno and Endless Maze. The two masterminds of Artem Cheremiskin (vocals, guitars, drum programming) and Vasily Shmelev (bass) have been the main instigators of these brutal sonic assaults. The band released two demos and two EPs before unleashing this noisy debut full-length album PEDICABO EGO VOS ET IRRUMABO which charmingly translate from Latin into “Fuck You Both.” Bwa hahahaha! The band’s lineup was cemented by the time this came out in 2011 and included Artem “Dying Pigus” Goregrinder (vocals, guitars, drum programming), Vassilly “Bass in Face” Punisher (bass), Allen “Speed As Fuck” GUTerrorist (guitars) and DimAnus “Hair Smashed Face” Smoke on vocals. And yes, the music is as fucking crazy as the member’s names.

This is a short album that just squeaks over the 26 minute run but for this style of aggressive and over-the-top incessant rampage of sound, it’s about the right length. Things start off with full bombast that find the rampaging guitar riffs accompanied by pig squeals and deep guttural growls that find that happy zone somewhere between slam death metal and goregrind. The tracks are never very long with only a couple reaching over three minutes. Once again perfect for the densely packed freneticism that occupies almost every moment of this album but the ALMOST part of that statement is what makes this album interesting. True that ШУМОВАЯ ЭКЗЕКУЦИЯ demonstrates a fairly established version of goregrind for the album’s run but it’s the little things that are added to the mix that make this one fun to listen to.

Firstly, there’s a call and response between the guttural growls and the pig squeals so it’s kind of a beast and the beast sort of affair but it’s most rooted in death growls. Secondly, there are all kinds of other styles of metal involved. There are hairpin turns that drive into thrash metal riffing, crust punk, neoclassical guitar solos (think moments of Necrophagist) and weirdest of all a few times when the metal is dropped for some kind of avant-garde jazz with reggae beats most prominently at the end of “Изуродованная блядь.” These surprises are usually brief but effective in catching you attention as even the most brutal metal can be hypnotizing if it’s a one-trick pony the entire duration. Personally i’m lovin’ this one quite a bit. It has all those über-brutal elements of death and core metal but finds enough creative fortitude to mix in myriad elements of surprise. Aktau, Kazakhstan makes good metal. Whodda thunk it?