grendel - soilbleed

I loved Grendel's last full length CD, Prescription : Medicine, the new direction Grendel has taken with a much more pumped up harsh EBM dance floor sound. Soilbreed, their latest EP, continues in that way. However, the title track is tainted by the over sampling of an over sampled movie. I think Industrial music has sampled Full Metal Jacket enough. I think industrial bands should all collectively agree never to sample this movie again! It really took me some effort to ignore the "the marine corp does not want robots, the marine corp wants killers" and "1, 2, 3, 4, my corp, your corp, our corp, the marine corp." Yes, yes, Full Metal Jacket is a great movie, but let's just watch it and not have it appear in every Industrial song ever made. See, now I've wasted half this review talking about this minor irritation and not focusing on the music.

As with all EPs and singles, a look at what tracks are offered is unnecessary. Soilbleed contains 5 new tracks, and 2 additional mixes of the title track. This is, in my opinion, an excellent range and makes it of value for casual listening and not merely for DJing.

And although I almost fear admitting it, I'm afraid that yes, Zombienation [V.2K5] (track 3) won me over, and is the instant stand out track on the disc. Only my conscience self resisted admitting this, what with the subject matter of the track, but in time I allowed myself to accept that the track is supposed to be an absurdly cheezy dance floor stomper about zombies. New trends in zombie fiction have also allowed me to accept that zombies can move at these higher BPMs.

Squid @ august 2005