Slog - Divination

Cheap Thrills #6: Eldritch Corporate Malpractice


This latest edition of Cheap Thrills is sure to be a hit with any senior citizens, pets, and/or small children in your immediate vicinity because we are bringing the ruckus with five more name-your-price releases that will make you the talk of the town. As always, support the artists by picking up some tunes and merch!

–Alex Chan

Trucido – A Collection of Self Destruction
August 19, 2022

I should give a small heads-up for anyone who’s currently at work or around anyone with a delicate disposition: Trucido’s Bandcamp background art (taken from their recent split with fellow grind maniacs Deterioration) features a gnarly collage of various intestines and muscles that have been conveniently liberated from their fleshy prisons.

Anyhow, here’s the business: Human blast beat Bryan Fajardo is lending his talents to yet another ludicrously fast grindcore band, this time based in his home state of Texas. Trucido, whose name roughly translates to “slaughter,” will undoubtedly draw blood with its gnashing, thrashing, and all-around murderous mayhem. This 15-minute LP hits like a whirlwind of spiked clubs and rusty machetes, hammering listeners into submission before hacking them to bits.

Ὁπλίτης – Τ​ρ​ω​θ​η​σ​ο​μ​έ​ν​η
April 9, 2023

Despite what the artist name and album title would lead you to believe, Hoplites is a solo black metal act from China whose latest album–which Google Translate tells me is Greek for Eat Me–is quickly taking the internet by storm. The project‘s belligerent and dissonant black metal packs a wickedly angular mathcore punch, crunching right into listeners’ faces like a spiked fist. At the same time, Τ​ρ​ω​θ​η​σ​ο​μ​έ​ν​η possesses a haunting, tortured elegance–much like the 19th-century painting (Léopold Burthe’s Angelique) that graces its cover–and its tightly controlled chaos belies its emotional core. There’s a tumultuous story at the heart of this album, an elegy for one about to be devoured, yearning (perhaps in vain) for deliverance from a terrible beast.

Slog – Divination
January 13, 2023

There’s a lot of black metal in this month’s column, so let’s take a breather with some sepulchral death-doom straight from the crypt. Slog is a Los Angeles two-piece that lumbers forth with the sickening gait of the recently risen dead, ghoulish growls and downtuned guitars practically dripping with noxious effluvia. The esoteric, almost free-association lyrics paint a chilling backdrop of apocalyptic sci-fi. Take “Synthesis Sequencer” for instance, which contains lines like “similarity extinguished surrounded among confluence junction comments on freight development promotion selection requirements dialogue.” I’ll be damned if I know what any of that means, so perhaps the aforementioned zombified entities were victims of some kind of eldritch corporate malpractice?

Arnaut Pavle – Transilvanian Glare
January 20, 2023

In case you’ve been sealed in a stone sarcophagus, mysterious Finnish miscreants Arnaut Pavle have emerged from the shadows once more to deliver nine blistering tracks of blasphemous blackened punk. Transilvanian Glare is the full package: searing guitar riffs, acrid snarls, and percussion that will pound a stake right into your heart. Blast this from your Dragula and you’ll set churches ablaze.

Kryatjurr of Desert Ahd – Deafening Supercells of Thunder and Death
February 10, 2023

Deafening Supercells of Thunder and Death certainly lives up to its name. The latest release from Kryatjurr of Desert Ahd–and the first of the band’s second narrative “cycle” of EPs–sounds like it was recorded inside of a tornado, and while I’d be hard pressed to describe the songs in musical terms, the listening experience is a near-physical one, conjuring the roiling, primordial forces that have shaped our planet for eons. In the time it took me to finish this article (sorry, sorry!), a follow-up EP has been released that picks up right where Deafening Supercells left off: that is, with howling winds that level anything in their path, leaving naught but desolation in their wake.