Water Torture/Corrupt Bastards - Split Review

I don't normally review re-issues, but there a couple factors that play into why I'm posting about this particular record. For one, because it's fucking Water Torture and Corrupt Bastards. And 2, because a thousand apologies to Mannequin Rein Productions owner/Dead Church guitarist/all around cool guy Maxx for not getting to this when it was first released as a tape. My bad duder. Anyways, for whatever reason any of you passed over this particular Water Torture release, you should definitely take a few steps back and check again because this one definitely goes down as one of my top splits from the band so far. Short short short split, previously released as a limited tape (as previously mentioned), now taking up one whole side of a 7" record. Water Torture bring 2 tracks to the table; one original and a cover of the classic Siege track, "Walls". The first track is pretty standard WT material, blasting powerviolence dual bass assaults with a pretty nice breakdown at the end, but the Siege cover is in my opinion the real gem. They have completely reworked the song into a two minute sludge piece with level 10 face to floor power. Totally crushing stuff, the boys continue to impress. On the flip side Up next we have Corrupt Bastards, the Texas two-piece who bring their own style of drum/bass powerviolence with 5 intense tracks. They keep it short and sweet on their end, lose focus for even a couple seconds and you'll miss a ton. The band maintains a more traditional fastcore/violence approach, like if Spazz or Lack of Interest scrapped their guitar player, and they perform the style very well. Brutal, gruff vocals and neck snapping start and stop song writing, held together by catchy as hell riffs and slamming drums. I loved every song on here, shame to see this band be so inactive. The tape version of this split is long sold out (sorry collectors), but you can find the sexy new vinyl version in tons of distros nowadays. Bass power 4 lyfe.

Rating: 9/10

~VII

First Exposure: Jason Pekar (Corrupt Bastards)

Insect Warfare "At War With Grindcore", 2005, I grew up in a really small country town in south Texas so getting music out there was almost impossible, one sunday night me and a friend were scanning through the radio and came across 91.7 which was a local station that played grindcore/death metal from about 11pm-2am I believe, every sunday night we would tune in and listen to insect warfare, plf, hatred surge, hypo christians and all the other good local and non local grind bands.

My initial reaction was blown away, all through middle school and high school me and about 3 other people were the only ones that skated and were into music and at the time we were only into what our older friends listened to which was more texas hardcore stuff like eyeagainst, will to live, pride kills so once we started listening to grindcore we went to see insect warfare play a show and they basically played all there songs straight through with minimal breaks and at the end of the show we were scraping our faces off the floor.

The record still deffinatly holds up to the test of time, even though they broke up a few years ago I guarentee everyone still spins their record almost once a week.

It really inspired me to make a band and play fast, and every since then after all these 

years i'm still trying to play fast!

~ VII