Axis of Despair - Contempt for Man

This album came out a while ago, but it’s taken me a while to get to it because it honestly hadn’t been compelling to me in my first listens. At first glance it’s a pretty basic grindcore album and one that at first blended in to the dozens of albums I’ve listened to this year. But repeated listens have been the key in unlocking the appeal of this album. While the quick, minute-long songs pass in the blink of an eye after offering seemingly little, there are more treasures sprinkled throughout than most of the grindcore I’ve heard lately.

The performances are as intense as expected and the band never take their foot off the gas. It’s definitely not the most dynamic album around, but for the death-spiced grindcore the band bring to the table, there’s more to appreciate in terms of notable highlight moments than most grindcore albums, and it actually manages to maintain interest in its relentless barrage of rapid riffs and blast beats.

“Lockdown” has a particularly cool riff that elevates the song above the typical grindcore drone, one that would feel like the center of a more drawn out thrash song by another band. The nearly three-minute “Crush the Empire” features a slower, menacing guitar progression and proves the band can go the distance over a single track with more coherent structure. I like the bass grooves and guitar riffs on tracks like “The Wolven Law”, “Vile Behaviour”, “The Pain Maze”, and “Dull Dead Future” as well. The album’s three-minute closer avoids a cliché “epic” moment and simply opts to structure the intense grind the band have been cranking out on the previous nineteen tracks into a respectable bow.

Overall, it’s a pretty above-average grindcore album, and one that proves that the genre’s short-song format has potential beyond a barrage of quick, unstructured bursts of attitude and fury. And it proves that even without the boldest production, solid grooves and confident writing can take grindcore to higher places.