Premiere: ROTWLCFTSCBMH & Bloat Serve Up A Split EP Full Of Mincing, Grinding Thrash-Gore
Today, The Auricular is pleased to premiere This A Motherfuckin’ Split, the brand new split EP by Richmond’s own ROTWLCFTSCBMH and Rochester, NY band Bloat before its official release on Friday, December 22nd. As not only a meticulous investigator of the Richmond music scene in all its forms but also a huge fan of grind, metal, and extreme music, I’ve been up on ROTWL for quite a while, so when Doug mentioned that we had this premiere coming up, I all but demanded to write the article myself. Doug quickly acquiesced, so now you and I gonna take this monstrous musical trip together. Get stoked.
ROTWLCFTSCBMH — the band name stands for Rise Of The Weird Little Creatures From The Small Creek Behind My House, which I’d say is either the best or worst band name I’ve ever heard (perhaps both at once) — is the project of Eve Dyer, a young metalhead who got started making grind music when the drummer for her previous band didn’t show up to practice and she discovered how much fun it is to play blast beats. While the live version of ROTWL generally features anywhere from one to three other musicians along with Eve, she still plays all of the instruments on the band’s releases, which she records at home by herself.
Having released a number of home-recorded EPs, LPs, and splits over the past few years, Eve’s got her technique down at this point, and to the extent that the five ROTWL songs on This A Motherfuckin’ Split sound noisy and chaotic, it’s an entirely intentional effect. Hyperspeed blastbeats alternate with ripping thrash riffs as Eve screams and growls furiously amid walls of harsh noise, which often threaten to overtake the proceedings entirely. The occasional gnarly breakdown gives the moshers something to sink their teeth into, but for the most part, this is an unrelenting wall of metallic noise chaos. Which can become a difficult listen if it goes on too long, but ROTWL clearly know how to leave people wanting more, as each of these songs comes in somewhere below the 90-second mark.
The EP starts with a song featuring the X-rated title “Mitch sucked 12 penises on the ROTWL Electric Bath 2023 tour.” The “Mitch” in question is Mitch Glaser, the main musician behind Bloat as well as being a member of fellow Rochester, NY grind band Electric Bath. Only the members of ROTWL and Bloat know for sure whether the allegations Eve’s making in this song title are true, but one thing it does tell us is that these folks have a good enough relationship to make fun of each other on record. On a more serious note, ROTWL’s “Bred To Kill” ends with a sample of conservative Daily Wire contributor Michael Knowles making his infamous CPAC statement: “Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” As Eve Dyer is a trans woman herself, the use of this sample is obviously not an endorsement of Knowles’ views. Instead, she seems to be using this statement to point out exactly what our community is up against. That struggle is every bit as harsh as ROTWL’s music.
The Bloat side of this EP begins with a sample as well, one taken from a video filmed by the infamous meth-addicted YouTuber Conald “FedSmoker” Petersen as he accosts a security guard, veering between calling the man a “baby raper” and asking if the guy can get him a job. The defiant and hilariously profane incoherence of Petersen makes for an eminently appropriate lead-in for Bloat’s grinding roar.
Like ROTWL, Bloat is a one-person project, the brainchild of the aforementioned Mitch Glaser. A prolific musician, Glaser is associated not only with Bloat and Electric Bath but also Hallucination Realized, Noxious Gash, and Colonic Pseudopolyps, so he’s clearly a prolific musical creator. He’s only been releasing music under the name Bloat since 2020, but the band has already released over a dozen splits, seemingly following in the footsteps of Belgian grind legends Agathocles. Like Agathocles, who coined the term, Bloat are considered to be part of the “mincecore” subgenre, which emphasizes musical simplicity in combination with progressive politics. Bloat definitely fit right in with the genre on their side of This A Motherfuckin’ Split, dishing out power-chord riffs that are closer to punk than metal in construction, even as the goregrind-ish vocals, which consist of multilayered growls and roars, ensure that no one will ever confuse Bloat with Discharge or Doom.
Coming in at less than 12 minutes in length, this split brings two raging grindcore bands from different parts of the East Coast together in chaotic noise fury. The whole thing lies beneath a colorful yet subtly gory cover that evokes the classic hip hop album covers of Pen & Pixel Studios. If you’re a fan of Scum-era Napalm Death, The HIRS Collective, or Dropdead, you really need to hear this record. Even if you’ve never heard any of the bands I just mentioned, you still should give this one a shot. It’ll definitely take you on a musical journey unlike any you’ve been on before.
This A Motherfuckin’ Split is scheduled for release on all streaming platforms this Friday, December 22nd, including on the Bandcamp pages for ROTWLCFTSCBMH and Bloat. To keep up to date on both bands, make sure to follow them on social media (ROTWLCFTSCBMH and Bloat).
