Review: Bodyrot ‘Fleshworks’ EP

Fancy a smack in the mouth? Well metaphorically, Bodyrot are here to provide that to you with the kind of blink and you’ll miss it grindcore that could potentially knock a few teeth out through big enough speakers. Four tracks in less than ten minutes. You already know what to expect right?

Grindcore is, by nature of its brevity, one of the few bastions of music where originality is not entirely necessary for the band playing it to be of interest. What counts instead, and what Bodyrot possesses in spades on this debut showing, is a particular combination of energy and sheer viscerality. This is music that sounds like a pack of wolves tearing their prey asunder and is propelled by the same feral urgency the pack in question would dispatch their dinner with. Heads down, teeth out, on to the next one.

This is music that sounds like a pack of wolves tearing their prey asunder…

Bodyrot treat this music like it’s the blues – they don’t stray outside the lines, they just play it with the conviction it needs. Hints of Terrorizer and Despise You come to mind in the precision and rage respectively, but there’s a slightly crustier edge to both the dual vocals and the riffing that gives a whiff of their forefathers in Canadian grind Dahmer and Mesrine. There’s no ping or overly dissonant techy metal riffs here, it’s just high speed filth all the way.

Fast food for the hungry ears of the speed obsessed is essentially what Flesh Works provides, opener Body…Reclaimed being the standout, more so due to it breaking the two-minute barrier than it being startlingly different from the other tracks. It’s hard to tell at this early stage if more than an EP’s worth of this would be all that exciting, but in this compact form, it’s all the total mega ultra whirlwind doss you could possibly ask for in 2022.

Label: Carbonized Records | Grindfather Productions
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram

Scribed by: Jamie Grimes