Where they from? Houston, Texas, home of the Houston Texans, the newest franchise in the NFL yet somehow also one of the most underperforming. The Texans got their asses thoroughly handed to them this past weekend thus leading to another first-round playoff loss under head coach Bill O’Brien and continuing their curse of being the only NFL team to never have played in a conference championship game. The Texans had plenty of miscues throughout the game but their Achilles’ heel was most likely the fact that a recently beefed up Colts offensive line essentially negated one of the best pass rushes in the NFL and stymied both JJ Watt and Jadaveon Clowney and didn’t allow a sack on Andrew Luck once during the course of the game. Don’t worry though Houston fans, pitchers and catchers report at the end of February.
What do they sound like? They sound like P.L.F. for fuck’s sake, they’ve been around for twenty years, you should have heard of ‘em by now.
Why the hype? I feel like P.L.F. are the last active band of that late aught’s wave of grindcore that sort of came in and swept death core under the rug for a lot of us. I’m talking bands like Insect Warfare, 50/50, Noisear, etc, bands that came in and showed us what REAL GRIND was all about. Whenever I listen to this band I can’t help but feel that they emphasize the one aspect that a lot of grindcore bands seem to ignore despite its incredible importance to the genre: SPEED, PURE FUCKING SPEED. Listen to any album by P.L.F. and you’ll understand that grindcore itself is not an extension of death metal as commonly thought but rather, at its heart, is just sped up thrash, a genre itself born out of a relentless desire to push the tempo parameters to the maximum. Everything about this band is about speed, technicality and intensity.
Latest release: (Trumpet sounds) Jackhammering Deathblow of Nightmarish Trepidation, a twenty-minute tour-de-force of true grind and annoyingly-complex song titles. Normally I wouldn’t say this but, the band’s decision to use slightly better recording production has paid off in dividends here as I feel this is the first album where the intensity of the musicianship is not muddled by the audio quality and really shines through. Also, this thing is riff city, baby! There’s a reason “Blare of Interminable Tinnitus” made the list of my favorite grind songs of 2018. There are other songs I greatly enjoy on this record as well but honestly I just don’t feel like typing out their names. Listen for yourself:
Favorite track:
