You smell that?  It smells like the first review (of mine, at least) of the new year, and boy howdy does it smell good.  This might be the strongest any year I’ve written for this site has started off, so if this is where the bar is set at already, I’m thinking this is going to be a very good year for heavy music.  Drink from the cup of heresy.  This week’s offerings: Escuela Grind’s DDEEAATTHHMMEETTAALL and Sketchbook Brewing Company’s Amistosa.

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The Tunes: Escuela Grind’s DDEEAATTHHMMEETTAALL

The third installment in a trilogy of EPs celebrating the influences on the New England grind outfit (the other being GGRRIINNDDCCOORREE and PPOOWWEERRVVIIOOLLEENNCCEE) sees Escuela Grind come in extremely hot off the release of 2022’s Memory Theater, an album that I think poises them at the forefront of modern grind.  DDEEAATTHHMMEETTAALL is designed to capture the energy and spirit of the quartet’s live shows, and if these four tracks illuminate anything, it should be that you need to see them live, like yesterday.  The energy captured on this EP could power an entire major US city, and it doesn’t even crack 15 minutes.  Leading the charge is vocalist Katerina Economou, whose presence and vocal delivery started strong but have only been getting better and more ferocious as the band matures and progresses.  Tracks like “Punishment Ritual” and “Ball and Chain” show off her range like never before and prove that she can churn bowels with the likes of Corpsegrinder and John Tardy, while maintaining a “feminine angle” on death metal tropes (their words).  The rest of the band delivers a lights-out performance that goes beyond a pastiche (which, thanks to Hera, is my new favorite word), specifically the drum work from Jesse Fuentes and the sickening riffs from Kris Morash.  This is a love letter to the bands that brought them to the high places they are now, but they do more than just ape the sounds of their predecessors.  Riffs like the ones on “Abyssal Plane” and “Ball and Chain” evoke classic death metal but still have that je ne sais quois that makes Escuela Grind unique among their peers.  If you need any more proof, “Meat Magnet” features the inimitable Barney Greenway.  If Mr. Napalm Death has taken notice of you, you’ve fucking made it.

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The Booze: Sketchbook Brewing Company’s Amistosa

Some of our friends have a tradition they call “Soupapalooza” around this time of year, where we all get together and do a soup based potluck.  It’s exactly as awesome as it sounds, and I decided this year I would make a beer cheese soup.  Naturally, that meant I needed beer, and as luck would have it, we found a local favorite at the grocery store.  Angela and I have both featured Sketchbook Brewing Company beers before, so you know we are fans of their product, and Amistosa is no exception to that trend.  It’s a Mexican lager, which means it’s not exactly bursting with complex hop flavor, sour fruit or milk sugar or whatever else they’re putting in beer these days, but it is crisp, bright and refreshing well beyond a generic, bargain bin lager.  Amistosa does boast the classic Mexican addition of flaked maize in the brewing, which actually comes through quite nicely on the palate, first with a light corn flavor but also in the sweetness in the finish.  It is damn refreshing to drink, but it will also be pretty sexy to cook with, I think, because it’s got a lot of flavor without overpowering the other delicate components of the soup.  

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I’m very much looking forward to doing more of these this year.  Perhaps even sooner than you think.  Until then, cheers and be good to each other.

— Ian