It’s Monday and Mondays suck, so let’s grind it out with Fiend’s Derailed.
Yeah, two weeks in a row, two extremely short albums. But Fiend is just too damn good not to talk about. Fiend is a split band, kinda like Suffering Mind, minus the insane output. They like to release short bursts of concentrated rage. However, I like to keep the focus on a single band, which is why we’ll be doing the Derailed EP today.
Nine-songs, six-minutes. It’s, again, no nonsense grind. Get in, kill it, get out. Fresno, CA’s two-piece Fiend is a real standout band in the grind genre these days though. They’re a heavier band that have plenty of death metal splashed in. They’re a blast-a-second, with a stripped-down sound, and they play some of the dirtiest grind in the genre. Honestly, they don’t do anything new. But they do everything really well.
“Horrendous Ego” gets the album rolling. Twenty-eight seconds, a little feedback and then the guitar and drums kick on and the rest of the track is like a belt sander. It grinds hard enough to peel the skin back. But it’s only a taste of things to come. The second track “Hüzün” pushes Fiend’s assault further, with the band getting even more aggressive. In fact, Derailed doesn’t relent until the fifth song, with the peak of the first four tracks being “Derailed”, a track that pays some deathgrind dues.
Fiend gives your ears a break for a few seconds with “The Decline.” The track starts slow with some heavier, punkier trudging. The slow step is just a build up to more blasting though. It’s the closest the band gets to taking a break. There is also “Suffer in Silence.” A heavy, almost two-minute (I know, epic) piece that doesn’t keep things slow for long. It, unlike “The Decline”, comes full circle with its slower riff, ending things on a heavy note.
Fiend’s greatest strength lies in their song writing and sound. They’re loud, brutal and fast. They’re a band that fans of Insect Warfare, Suffering Mind or Internal Rot will get right into. Derailed is one of their earlier works, but it holds up with their furious sound. Hell, get the whole discography from the Bandcamp link below. Hit play and burn through this Monday.
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