The beastly Ocean City, Maryland grindcore experimenters Full Of Hell released their album Garden Of Burning Apparitions late last year, and the other members of the band almost immediately got bush working on side projects. Guitarist Spencer Hazard, for instance, makes sludgy ’90s-style noise rock with his band Eye Flys, and they released their Exigent Circumstance EP a month after the Full Of Hell album came out. Now frontman Dylan Walker has started a new trio called Collapsed Skull, and they’ve just released their insane debut EP.
Collapsed Skull isn’t really grindcore. Instead, it’s more in the zone of powerviolence, the hardcore subgenre dedicated to insanely short and insanely heavy songs. (Grindcore is also devoted to insanely short and insanely heavy songs, but they’re different, OK? Please don’t ask me to explain it.) In Collapsed Skull, Walker screams over a bass-and-drums attack, and it’s partly provided by Brandon Brown, the former Full Of Hell bassist who now plays in Jarhead Fertilizer.
That gorgeous cover art should give you a pretty good idea of what Collapsed Skull are up to on their Eternity Maze EP. There are 11 songs on this thing, but it still fits comfortably on a 7″, since most of the songs last less than a minute. This music is both extremely fast and extremely ugly. Power Trip/Pissed Jeans/Code Orange collaborator Arthur Rizk produced, mixed, and mastered the EP, so it sounds great while also sounding terrible, if that makes any sense. You have to be in the right kind of mood to properly enjoy it, but if you’re in that mental space, it’s a great time. Check it out below.
The Eternity Maze EP is out now on Closed Casket Activities.
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