That Yellow Bastard - That Yellow Bastard - New Cassette 2017 Already Dead Tapes (Chicago, IL) Yellow Tape - Grindcore

Full disclosure: I don’t know a thing about grindcore. I listened to Ed Gein and The Locust a couple of times. That’s about as much as you’re going to get from me - I don’t have any relevant comparisons. All I can really tell you is that T.Y.B. was truly devastating and I’m really bummed I missed that place and time.

That Yellow Bastard (named after the SIN CITY comic book series) would’ve been playing your Mississippi basement or bar 5-10 years ago. They’ve since disbanded, but members can still be found in bands like A.M. Stations and AD264’s Sounding. Rumors of a possible reunion are always floating around so keep your fingers crossed, kiddos.

Tracks like “Bubblehead Scientist,” “Gated Community Murders,” and “Life Goes Splat” are pretty straightforward, formulaic grind as far as I can tell. There’s some blast beats and some shreddin’ and then there’s a chuggy breakdown part followed by some other soul-bashing riff to finish you off. Super-quick changes, you can’t really process the utter assault. There’s plenty of unintelligible shrieking and gutturals. Pretty sure they’re talking about conspiracy theories or aliens or something, though. On that first track, I was listening to the beginning and was thinking, “Oh cool, what’s up, Van Halen?” but then the bass and heavy guitars came in… had to check my drawers and my piss-poor attitude after that.