CUNTROACHES / GUTTERSNIPE Split LP ANXI-005 LP Gutternsipe and Cuntroaches are two collectives operating on the slimy, rotten edge of the world. After a European tour, both bands decided to go into studios in their respetive home towns – Berlin for Cuntroaches and Leeds for Guttersnipe – and document where they were. Across 4 tracks they individually map out the end of the world and the forging in fire and dirt of a new one. Cuntroaches have been festering in Germany’s Baccalian capital Berlin for a few years now, blurring the lines between an evil, masticated version of black metal and breakneck-speed punk. It’s dirty as hell, punishing and thrilling. Cuntroaches taketh life and then they give it back in forms you don’t know. A 3-piece, the group detour the conventional rock muzik line up into a blurred, vile, masticated, squat-grown language. Drummer Claire Panthere’s pogo-ready rendition of primitive BM power-drilling deep into the frontal lobe while the instrumentation provided by bassist David Hantelius’and Martina Schoene-Radunski is twisted beyond sane recognition. I Can Tell Your Scum feels like an Ildjarn cut played by early Flux Of Pink Indians, Schoene-Radunski’s vocals obliterated by ever rising delay. Brutality decimated by a dub approach. Inside Me launches further out, faster and more aggressive, with a crunched bass borrowing like a massive parasite into the track. Cuntroaches’ fucked approach to punk takes into the basest, most disgusting form of high art. Gutternsipe follow their debut My Mother The Vent for Upset The Rhythm with two tracks of blown out, deeply scary and alienating abstraction. It’s a completely different approach sounding like Smegma or Hanatarash throwing rock instruments around a burning junkyard. It feels like freedom, wonderful, freedom. Tipula Confusa’s approach to percussion is ecstatic, harnessing the approach of improvised music and No Wave into a Dadist abomonation. Urocerus Gigas is an octpodial Kraken, wretching and wrangling guitar forms and vocal screams from some unimaginable deep. You probably know the score with Guttersnipe, but on these tracks they go further. Poppyseed Pudendum feels like every Load Records release played simultaneously yet still manages to revel in space. A five minute blast that launches after incidental prelude, it’s noise as ascension, as transmogrification. Return To The Cyanobacterial Slime is an 11 minute surrealist cut up played in real time by these undescribable entities. Way more spacious, here the group have been torn apart, broadcasting from a lonely place deep in enemy territory. Held hostage by aleatory percussion, Gigas’s wordless pleas reach up, up before being confined to their own misery. When the duo break through into some fire music jamming, the freedom is complete. Will we ever want to go back? CUNTROACHES: Recorded in Autobahn, Berlin 2019. Recorded and mixed by The Governor Himself, Berlin 2019. Master by Weasel Walter, New York 2019. GUTTERSNIPE: Urocerus Gigas – Guitar/Synth/Vocals Tipula Confusa – Drums/Drumsynth/Vocals Recorded by Ross Halden at THE SPONGEHOUSE (R.I.P), Leeds, 2018 Produced by Ross Halden with assistance from Gutsnips Mastered by Weasel Walter, NY, 2019