I’m currently playing Space Marine II, which is a video game similar to Gears of War in playstyle. I’m a huge fan of all things Warhammer (the game, not the band here), so I eagerly dove into this console release. So while I am playing this, I begin to draw parallels in my thoughts with the current release from DISTASTE. The video game offers much in similarity to the aforementioned Gears output, nothing new, plenty of guns and a whole lotta gore and blood being splattered about, and you take on an alien race bent on enslaving us all. It’s been done and portrayed before, but still I / we buy it. Yeah, the graphics are updated, and they stay remarkably true to the mythos of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe, but what does it offer us? What need or reason do we continue to fork over our hard-earned cash? If you are familiar with DISTASTE in any way, you should know they play an extreme take on DISMEMBER, with a heavy dose of FLESHCRAWL and parts DISFEAR. So yeah, pure unrelenting Death Grind that offers no respite to your battered eardrums for just under 30 minutes. No, I’m not putting down the music or past efforts, but you are getting much of the same angry, Boss HM-2 pedal-driven guitar sound that is set on 11. Similar to much of their previous outputs, four full-lengths and a host of splits / singles so far. Musically speaking, not much has changed either. You still get the higher ranged Death screams that have a passing feel of Tomas Lindberg (AT THE GATES and the aforementioned DISFEAR) and the machinegun like drumming, standard for the genre. At different points, you are getting little snippets of melodic guitar tones, but be prepared to be bashed in the head in much the same way. The song titles are still presented in their native tongue, and the production falls along much the same lines as past criteria. I will say this, though, I feel the guitar sound coming through the speakers on this particular release is just perfect. It is louder and that buzzsaw tone is like DISMEMBER on steroids, just rips your ears off. Again, I stress, the music is not bad and it really can release some stress for you on the best of days, should you need it, but I come back to my original question. Why do we continue to buy more of the same? I guess that is a question for philosophers to ponder and for those of us who feel the continuing need to feed our desire for this type of music. www.facebook.com/distastegrind, www.facebook.com/fdarec