Rotten Sound

Not since Nasum's last album has there been a grindcore onslaught as relentless and energetic as Rotten Sound's Murderworks. Fourteen songs are dished out in 28 minutes, delivered with a crushing production that is as heavy as it is clear, courtesy of Nasum's Mieszko Talarczyk. Finland's finest fuse elements of crust into their speedy grindcore attack, which is all wrapped up in what at first appears to be standard gore-grind packaging, but there's more to it than meets the eye. "You have the artwork, and then you open it up and take the CD out. Then you get the quote, 'Murder works for a while, but it leaves stains behind,' which is going against the cover and going against violence," explains vocalist G (all the members use one-letter pseudonyms, mainly to avoid the hassles of having Finnish names in a North American-centred genre). "We planned it to be confusing; you're buying something that looks like gore-grind and then you notice after a while that it's something else." The band's lyrics focus around issues such as war, violence and other important social topics. However, only sparse portions of the lyrics are printed in the disc's booklet. "I like to give some space for people to think of their own ideas about the lyrics. I guess it's pretty hard to find the whole words or message by listening to the album, but maybe someone will," laughs G. What else is fuelling the band's lyrics? "I'm doing a lot of working, using a lot of my own time just to do work. I'm being a slave to someone else. [The lyrics are also about] religion, including Satanism; I'm quite an atheist myself. I don't like the evil that's caused by, say, God and the creation of holy wars," says G. "We started as a hardcore/grind/crust band, and all the punk people were saying we suck because there's no message. But they liked our music then," says G. "Now that we have a message they don't like our music," he laughs. "That's their mistake." Indeed, anyone who likes it short, fast and loud and doesn't check out Murderworks is making a monumental mistake.