Wound Man - Prehistory [2018]

It's not everyday that I hear something new and go "wow" straight away and I can see it's not even the most recent record by this band, but this is what Laurynas showed me by saying "just stop whatever you are doing and listen to this now" and this is what I want to talk about. It's an odd coincidence I started driving when I played this and few songs later I drive past a tall building in the neighborhood I grew up in. I can see the ambulance, police and firefighter cars with their lights on. The balcony on level 15th collapsed and fell down destroying levels 3, 2 and 1. I was glad to learn no one was harmed in the incident, but it was a powerful sight especially with Wound Man blasting in the background.

Opening track "Dive" starts with a creepy-ass sample (or synth?) that sounds something like an old school horror soundtrack and a very heavy, slow sludge riff begins your descent into this short, but effective punch in the face of an album. Slow part does not last too long to get boring and we start hearing short, quick blastbeat+barking vocals attacks. They almost sound like a trick that you never expect, but at the same time feel like a classic element of the powerviolence genre and you know it's just right. Same formula ripples throghout the album and we get tricked over and over again by going really fast, then slow, then super slow and then super fast again all of the sudden. I guess the effect is achieved by slow parts being really slow, as in sludge doom slow and many fast bands fail at this by making their slow parts too fast.

We reach "Hate flag" which sounds like a hardcore hit you'd like to make a cover of in 15 years. Mid tempo violence that makes me think of something a person I know said about PV genre: "how is it that powerviolence somehow sounds more HC than HC"?
Title track "Prehistory" is a slow riff worship with vocals joining and catching up some speed only in the second half and the rest is just threatening hardcore that makes you feel like you're about to be beat up in a bad part of the city. "Evolution" ends with some more speed changes, angry vocals shouting over each other and a short sample talking about man VS god. Must say the vocals never sound silly during the record as it's sometimes the case with PV.

It's not a fast album, but it sure is fucking heavy and I am immediately hooked on this band. I see quite a few releases on their Bandcamp, gonna go check em out now, but if you have not heard of this pissed Massachusetts gang- Prehistory is sure a good one to start with. The whole thing is over in like 12 minutes, but that's just about enough as you constantly feel like being hit with a brick and I would not like to have this emotion for 40 minutes in an album like that. If you are a fan of Weeekend Nachos or Sex Prisoner do not hesitate for another second of this dumb review.

This is how these guys look like live:


I hope I get to see them live one day too!