About two months ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Altered Beast play a quick, understated, but totally badass set in my friend Paul's basement. Being the swamped college kid that I am, I am just now able to sit down and write a few words about the demo they passed out to everyone in attendance.
If I hadn't been so intrigued by seeing these guys perform, I may have simply written a review saying, "Altered Beast is a grindcore band with members of Tower of Rome" and left it at that. But Altered Beast is way more than just a side-project.
To be honest, the attitude of this demo sounds more powerviolence to me than grindcore. Whether or not you consider powerviolence a real genre or not is open to debate, but in my mind it is. Most of the songs are in the twenty to thirty seconds range, are ultra-fast, and have an endearing sloppiness (I mean that in the best possible way) that reminds more of Infest, Siege, or Crossed Out mores so than, say, Pig Destroyer or Nasum. In other words, Altered Beast is hardcore-minded and not very metallic, but I wouldn't want my powerviolence or grindcore any other way.
Sonically, this demo isn't anything new or innovative, but I was totally floored by the sheer energy and attitude these guys have, both on this lovely CD recorded in one take and also standing in front of them in a grungy basement in a college town. Even though the "Pterodactyl screeches" and Infest-style shouts are buried under blast beats, spastic riffing, and fuzzy bass, if you actually read the lyrics they are pretty amusing. My favorite is "Sick Mosh Brah." At the basement show, the guitarist/screamer introduced it with a little story that went something like, "Yeah, we were playing a show and all these idiots were doing this stupid dancing shit. We told them to stop and they wouldn't, so we wrote a song about it." And it ends with these inspirational lines:
You want to pick up change / Well, you will be picking up your teeth / As far as we are concerned / You've got beef with Altered Beast.
Seriously... it's an instant classic.
