Chronocide – “Meditations” [Album Review]

When I saw that blackened-grind chaps Chronocide were being compared to Brummie hate merchants Anaal Nathrakkh, my attention was grabbed but, sadly, Meditations, the second offering from the Northern outfit, didn’t match those lofty comparisons.

Meditiations is an unrelenting barrage of raw grindcore. Peppered with harsh black metal vocals, the eight tracks are, what I think those in the know deem as ‘necro’. What that means to the rest of us is that Meditations is a difficult listen. Painfully raw and unpolished, tracks like “Perfect Slaves” and “Burial Of The Dead” are suffocating, bleak blasts of harsh sound that only hardened fans of the genre will probably find solace in. With no break in the onslaught from start to finish, the question you have to ask yourself before you even put Meditiations on is how much you really want to listen to it. As far as I can tell, only if you’re sat in a darkened room feeling in a “hate life” kind of mood will blasts of “Filling Empty Skulls Full Of Shit” provide any kind of suitable soundtrack.

So, what about the Anaal Nathrakkh comparisons? Well, yes, there are some. Both bands tread a bleak, unpleasant path but, whereas the Brummie chaps have created almost perfect musical hell, Meditations can only be described as a hellish listen for all the wrong reasons.

Track Listing:

01. Burial Of The Dead
02. A Cult By Any Other Name
03. Filling Empty Skulls Full Of Shit
04. Martyrs And Victims
05. Perfect Slaves
06. There Is No Revolution
07. An Objective Morality
08. Amor
09. What The Thunder Said

Run Time: 33:53
Release Date: August 14, 2015

Check out the song “An Objective Morality” here.