Nag – Nag: Thank Satan for bands like Nag. The Norwegian punk/metal outfit strikes the right charm with jaded metallers by rocking out like it’s no one’s business on their self-titled album. Energetic, passionate, the guys from Nag know how to help metallers have a good time.

Rarely ever slow, mostly up-tempo and never once kill-joys, Nag sound high on methamphetamine on their debut release. I haven’t heard as good a punk/hardcore hybrid style from any other band this year to be honest. Punk fans will love it. Metal fans will love it. If you don’t, you’re in deep as a stoner hooked on opium so you might as well sign up for a mandated twenty-eight days program even before the cops ever learn about it.

Fenriz’s Band of the Week followers will love Nag like it’s a heroin addiction. Organic, no production gimmicks, absolutely zero bullshit, Nag sends the moshpit moving to the tune of a widespread calamity – people screaming, fists burying into sallow blackening flesh.

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Stench Price – Stench Price: Grind supergroups are far from being dimes-a-dozens, peeps! Therefore when Dan Lilker, Rogga Johansson, Dave Ingram, and Max Phelps collaborate with some other notables in metal for a grind album, you give them your full, undivided attention.

Stench Price comes courtesy of Transcending Obscurity, and the label have a genuine hit on their hands with Stench Price’s self-titled release. Best vocals of the album belongs to whoever-the-hell did track six, “The Vitality Slip”.

There are six quality tracks here, and the band even brings some great bossa nova and jazz interludes in between the grind segments to extreme exaltation. In excelsis deo, the dudes at Stench Price should consider hooking up for another album, featuring a host of new guest musicians to whet the appetite of metallers in search of grind par-excellence.

Meanwhile, enjoy what this group of guys brings to the table.

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Vorvan – Once Love Was Lost: Vorvan doesn’t play screamo metal. Vorvan kicks ass. Vorvan’s Once Love Was Lost is a mash-up of different elements, including punk, hardcore and a little grind. There’s some great songwriting on display here at times and while there’s some metalcore screaming going on occasionally, the band plays a style similar to revered genre-bender Ken Mode.

The drummer is absolutely nuts on Once Love Was Lost, and quite fittingly, the drums pace the frenetic build-up of each song to suitable conclusion, where the band decimates a population of moshers and sends the rest scurrying for cover. In-coming!

Projectiles of vomit might actually make their way out of punched, cramped stomachs as the audience reacts to Vorvan’s performances with violent savagery. At times proggy, quirky, this might make Sportscenter highlights a tad more interesting than the crap the network’s producers use. If you want great work-out music, Vorvan kicks your dance music playlist into the five fathoms.

More next time!

– Al Necro