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Review: Grave Desecrator - Insult

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Hells Headbangers released Grave Desecrator’s Insult almost a year ago, but it’s appropriate to write about now. This album doesn’t come shiny off the pressing plant. It’s not something you should discover on Rhapsody or Spotify. It’s meant to be handed down listener-to-listener until the sound quality is abysmal and the cassette is held together with tape. Insult sounds old and fetid; if it were a corpse, the blowflies would have departed and cobwebs set in long ago. There would be nothing left but a musty skeleton.

There are great songs, yet not a single notable musical achievement on Insult. That’s meant as a compliment. Insult is a belch of primal fury rather than something charted with clefts and measures. Metal has a long history of these albums. Hellhammer’s earliest demos were, in the words of Tom Warrior, crafted from desperate circumstances. Sarcofago’s I.N.R.I is another classic unpolished gem. Sepultura mined similar turf on Morbid Visions before they practiced harder and became the band that recorded Roots.

Grave Desecrator could go either way. They could expand their craft like some of their South American predecessors, but they’d be just as lovable as a band that boasts “nuclear-powered blackgrind”. “Stared to Hell” and “Stained by Blood” prove they have songwriting chops, even with only a few chords. Hells Headbangers, one of my favorite labels, has provided yet another platform for a band with strings missing and energy to burn.

— Justin M. Norton

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HEAR INSULT

“Jesus Joint”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QABRas4eJaE

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“Baphomet”

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BUY INSULT

Amazon (CD)
Amazon (MP3)
Hells Headbangers (CD)
Hells Headbangers (LP w/ poster)
Hells Headbangers (LP + CD package)

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