Clinging To The Tress Of A Forest Fire (hereafter referred to as CTTTOAFF for ease) hail from Denver, Colorado and deal in heavy as hell grind in all it's misanthropic glory. Coming to my attention only recently (sorry, I completely missed the boat on this band initially), they just released this split with French group Nesseria on Throatruiner Records. About to drop on vinyl, this is the most visceral record I've had the pleasure of hearing this year. Funnily enough, CTTTOAFF actually released a demo this year by the name Visceral, likely the most aptly named demo put out in recent times.
Starting as they mean to go on, CTTTOAFF kick off with "Opaque." Barely scraping past the one minute mark, a bass laden intro feeds into intense screams and the quickest blastbeats this side of black metal. This band are angry and they want you to know about it. "Lower Than Life, Higher Than The Sky" begins in a much different way, squalling feedback and minimal drums colour the first minute or so, leading us into Ethan's gut-wrenching vocal display. Absolutely full of spite and aggression, he paints a desolate picture of existence with his voice. It's difficult to believe that only three people are making this crust infused noise.
Can Nesseria follow this unholy racket ? Yes. Yes they can.
Launching full tilt into "Freistadt," the french quintet give you barely a second to recover from what came before. This is the kind of music the French excel at; (if they aren't wallowing in sadness and staring at the floor encased in black metal drenched shoegaze of course) raw and intense hardcore-esque black-grind. "1789" closes the record. A three minute lesson in how to sound as pissed off as humanly possible. It's unrelenting in scope, pounding beats and vocals so harsh you fear for the larynx of their vocalist, Adrien. Having only released a handful of splits and one full length in 2009, I can only hope that Nesseria deem us worthy of a new record.
Check out the stream of the split here: http://throatruinerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/split
