Parasite (CD - 2007)

Personnel: Chris Fox (vocals); Drew Slavik (guitar); Andy Dalton (drums).

Audio Mixer: Andreas Lars Magnusson.

Recording information: Planet Red Studios (12/15/2006-01/08/2007).

The story goes that Michigan's See You Next Tuesday had to record their debut effort, Parasite, twice, after the original files were lost to a studio computer hard drive crash. Anyone else smell a conspiracy here? Or perhaps said hard drive was simply unable to cope with the sheer "brootality" contained in the band's hyper-technical grindcore -- a theory that's at least as plausible as suicidal ProTools software seeking to spare humanity from such eardrum debilitating music. That's grindcore for ya, and if these 14 hyper-blasts and occasional melodic experiments (see "Paraphilia") are anything to go by, See You Next Tuesday surely exemplify the genre's outermost avant-garde fringe in terms of controlled extremism. Armed with his Kramer guitars, whammy bars, and probably Floyd Rose tremolos, too, guitarist Drew Slavik attempts to inject an '80s shredding mentality into grind's uncompromising savagery; refusing to ever repeat the same riff twice, and thereby ensuring that See You Next Tuesday's songs always last less than two minutes, with very rare exceptions. Vocalist Chris Fox contributes both bowel-churning growls and incensed spazzed-out screams in the Mike Patton tradition, while the band's humorous song titles (e.g. "Good Christians Don't get Jiggy with It Till After Marriage," "Before I Die I'm Gonna F**k Me a Fish," etc.) make for sharp contrast against their devastating instrumental fury. As with most adventurous, technically proficient grindcore, the "noise or art" debate is very much a matter of personal taste, but there's no denying the forethought -- insane and unjustifiable, though it may seem -- underlying even the loopiest of these sonic outbursts. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia minimize