Band:	Brutal Blues
Album:	BB
Style:	Progressive grindcore
Release date:	April 2018

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The band's website reads: "Are you ready for 100% authentic deluxe delta blues from Mississippi? Too bad, because Brutal Blues is a grind band from Norway". So I hope you have 20 minutes of your time for complete aural punishment.

Brutal Blues is a duo of guitars and drums and dual vocals; one of the members you might know from the wacky space grind band Psudoku, and another plays in jazzy, noisy stuff like Noxagt and Ultralyd. Obviously, it is to be expected that BB (not short for "baby") is not very pleasant to the ear or conventional music in any way. Having their debut LP only a few minutes longer than their debut EP might be a bit suspicious, but, oh well, that's just grindcore.

Listening to this, there is a lot of confusion to be felt, mostly due to the obviously unstructured music, but also due to so little conceptual presence that this album has. The tracks are all untitled, there are barely lyrics, if any, and there is very little to latch onto while trying to explain to yourself what is this all about. The vocals don't really ever take center stage; instead, most of the impact comes from the jagged instrumentals. Sure, there's some shouting here and there, but it works to supplement the instruments rather than the other way around.

And as far as the instrumental performance goes, I wouldn't call this a heavy album. There isn't really any chug or anything remotely sludgy. Instead we get unfiltered avant-gardist craziness. While there are repeated riffs to be heard, mostly in the riff-break-riff formula, the changes are so constant and unexpected and the performance so frantic and disorienting that there are very few moments when one could physically headbang or keep rhythm in any way. The drums feel like a predator that is in a constant fight with the guitars and we get random electronic "wheeeeeew"s to make everything more jarring.

But it works. And the fact that it's so trimmed only does it justice; otherwise it would've entered other torturous territories. But, for what its worth, get absolutely destroyed here.