XavlegbmaofffassssitimiwoamndutroabcwapwaeiippohfffX - Gore 2.0

I found XavlegbmaofffassssitimiwoamndutroabcwapwaeiippohfffX’s debut four-track EP (Gore) back in 2016 through an odd series of curiously entered links that eventually led me to them. According to their Bandcamp page, the band’s name is pronounced “Acidic Vaginal Liquid Explosion Generated By Mass Amounts Of Filthy Fecal Fisting And Sadistic Septic Syphilic Sodomy Inside The Infected Maggot Infested Womb Of A Molested Nun Dying Under The Roof Of A Burning Church While A Priest Watches And Ejaculates In Immense Perverse Pleasure Over His First Fresh Fetus”, obviously. And luckily, they tell us exactly how to pronounce their name in the first track of this album.

So this band clearly parodies the absurd lengths bands in slam/goregrind scenes will go to in order to one-up their peers in their portrayal of gore and violence, but despite being an obviously light-hearted project, Gore 2.0 actually has a lot going for it. In fact, it’s quite possibly the freeness the band takes on that allows this album to reach so many different places. Not weighed down in self-seriousness or the “rules” of grindcore, Gore 2.0 is a wickedly entertaining addition to this year’s output to say the least.

With 23 tracks clocking in at over an hour, it is a surprisingly long album. The 4 tracks from the debut EP are all here (including the dated, but hilarious monkey-noise-sampled “Dicks out for Harambe”), but that still leaves 19 new tracks to explore.

So how do XavlegbmaofffassssitimiwoamndutroabcwapwaeiippohfffX make an hour of intentionally whacked out grindcore so entertaining? Well, it’s both the spurts of majorly weird musical ideas that immediately turn heads and the little touches alongside those overtly slapstick moments to keep the album interesting, and it sure is… interesting.

I already mentioned the actual cackling monkey sounds atop the grinding double bass and death growls of “Dicks out for Harambe”, but we also get the Western clean guitar gallop of the nonsensical sci-fi of “Space Cowboys”. And then there’s the Soundcloud rap mockery of “Sell Your Soul”, which is a hot mess of obnoxious lines about dropping xanies and the beauty of hentai over popping trap beats in and out of grindcore freak-outs. It’s fucking hilarious, and band member Kris repeatedly spouts off about anime titties and flexes eating ass in Japanese, which I’m pretty sure he learned from Filthy Frank. We also get the sudden bluegrass tangent on “Children of the Swine King” and samples from the fucking movie Antz sandwiching the deathgrind of “March of the Ants”.

But there are impressive compositions and performances across the album as well, and moments of musical clarity that seem perhaps unfitting for a joke project. The rhythmic growls and the chant of the down-tuned hardcore weed anthem “Invoke the Smoke” are surprisingly catchy. The song “Smokebreak” is a genuinely creative tongue-in-cheek interlude that simply lays a ridiculous sample of hyperfast programmed blast-beat drumming over a minute of smooth jazz guitar. The song “The Library Murders” cleverly subdues the guitar riffs in their clean state as the growls are oddly whispered… you know, because you’re supposed to use your library voice.

The song “Plague of the Ant-Binders” opens and kind of closes with a weird electronic supplement over some clangy bass between its pretty standard goregrind, and the song “Hotbox Suffocation” conveys its edible-induced paranoia through an impressively dynamic array of pick slides, slow death metal grooves, dissonant arpeggios, and fiery drumming and soloing.

The lyrics are worth reading as well. The band write out the “bree bree” inhale growls and “BLEH”s on songs like “Bone Saw”, “Strainus Diabolica”, and especially on “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”. The song “Children of the Swine King” lists the obnoxious guttural squealing vocals as “(PIG NOISES)”. The band clearly show some disgust for how humanity treats our primate cousins as both “Dicks out for Harambe” and the cleverly named “Monkey Noises” bear lyrics that invoke Planet of the Apes. But really, why the fuck are there so many songs about primates, ants on this album?

There are a few ridiculous weed songs on here too, some of which are actually pretty clever lyrically. The short interlude “Worst Smokebreak Ever” actually rather (bluntly) poetically captures the dismay of younger generations born into a world fucked up by their parents and grandparents. We also get “Veil of Moonlight” clearly parodying the cheesiness of “kvlt” black metal in both style and writing; it’s a bit reminiscent of Nekrogoblikon. The song “Surfs up Goths” comes with some more spelled out toilet bowl growls in its narration of eating surfers from the perspective of sharks with lyrics like “Swiggity Swoogity I’m coming for that booty!” and “Surfers beware I’m on the hunt! / Jaws wide open! / I’m hungry cunt!”.

Even as it reaches its latter moments, XavlegbmaofffassssitimiwoamndutroabcwapwaeiippohfffX bring plenty of novelty and consistent ferocity to the 23 tracks her to keep Gore 2.0 from becoming a bore or from retelling the same joke over and over again like an indignant dad. For an hour-long parody of goregrind and black metal, there’s actually a lot to enjoy here: sheer comedic ridiculousness both penned and instrumentally performed, and (un)seriously brutal performances. I really loved this album and I’m so glad to have a thoroughly satisfying debut LP from these guys; if this shit ever comes out on vinyl, I’m sure as hell buying it.