What happens when punk gets its big, tough, spiky dick caught in the trash compactor? He tries to pull away right? By doing so, he gets dragged closer and closer to a loud gory end, exploding chunks everywhere. This is what happens when the Dutch “GEWOON FUCKING RAGGEN” decide to make music.

They looked at hardcore punk and must have thought to themselves “this isn’t heavy or fast enough, let’s add something more”, so they added some powerviolent grind to the mix and boom! GEWOON FUCKING RAGGEN!

Having seen the band live a few months ago and remembering how it felt like a nail machinegun repeatedly shooting your ears, it is a great pleasure to review GFR latest trashcompactor, powerviolent, grindcore punk work, “Bruja”.

All it takes is 53 seconds. Starting with “Record Store Wallstreet”, 53 seconds of absurd violence slammed right in your face faster than a bullet, then dragging you across the room to throw your ears down the stairs and laugh as they roll down. You’re hooked already.

After this you realize, “there’s 18 more songs of this? Fuck yes!” Bu there is no time to realize such a thing, “Black Sheep” is already on your ass throwing punches, making every hair in your body stand at attention with incredible speed.

It just keeps pilling on and getting better, “Unsigned Paychecks” roughens your tender meat a little more. Have you seen fast short songs on windows media player? It looks like the time bar is struggling to keep up with the music. Anyway, if this is the soundtrack of what they will do to you if you don’t sign pay checks, I’ll sign all the pay checks, if someone else forgets, please let me watch that sexy justice happen.

Next is the first song that reaches one minute, exactly one minute. That’s right, It’s been four songs till now, none of them longer than one minute, all of them leaving me hooked and hungry for a lot more GFR and the longer than one minute songs are still to come. After all the ear beatings received from previous songs “Stench of Flesh” allows us to sniff our bruised meat before hitting it some more with several blunt objects of all kinds.

Now it’s time for one of those classic samples before sweet violent music, this one is straight out of Dirty Harry and leads us to “The Stash”, the first song that is almost two minutes long. The hardcore punk is strong in this tune, but things gets faster and more aggressive when they ask you with zero patience to take them to the stash.

“Drion” is another song that doesn’t last long but grinds your face off with a wall of fast, brakeless sound. The riffage just keeps getting more delicious. I like how at the start of the song, the riff tricks you into thinking it is going to be a certain level of fast, then its triple that speed, damn good.

“Razorface” is the part of the musical beating where you think you’re safe because you covered your face with razors. GFR don’t care about your face razors, they give you a moment to contemplate your situation and proceed to fuck your ears even deeper.

“Exclusion of Evolution” is a bigger song, it is when you realize you don’t deserve to exist because you thought covering your face with razors would save you from a beating of sound. This song starts in a way that could almost fool you into thinking this was something other than very fast, frenetic aggressive music. Then it hits you, it’s as if they took normal riffs and fed them tons of cocaine and they just went insanely fast. This applies to most songs.

That’s the end of side A. Side B starts with us getting “In Trouble Again”. Trouble finds you and lubs up your earholes before it violates them with hammers, sideways. That’s my way of saying it starts slowly, the songs stares at you grinning with psycho crazy intentions, then the mad speed comes back with a vengeance, not accepting its own absence from the music for over twenty seconds. Understandable when you realize twenty seconds is half of many songs.

“War of Confusion” starts even slower with delicious riffs being thrown back and forth and those awesome vocals howling in your head. It last for about two minutes, then a crust grinding speed erupts making your brain cells start a mosh pit that gets bigger by the second.

Another awesome sample from the movie Bloodsport precedes “Bad Guy Bolo” which starts with a riff that would be at home in a Doom video game followed by more intense, relentless, face shredding speed.

“Survivor” starts with a riff that vaguely reminds me of something classic, then the cocaine hits and GEWOON FUCKING RAGGEN. One of those great hits to listen while driving fast on the highway and flipping everyone off. It is very hard to stay completely still while listening to this song.

Afterwards we have a great time listening “A Miserable Time”. It kicks off with a nice groovy rhythm getting faster as it goes, making your head think it’s a flail. One of the smaller songs of side B so far, shot and sweet.

“Ghostfuck” starts twice, which means your mind gets hit very hard twice and then keeps getting hit. Another small and delicious track that subliminally informs you that you wish to fuck shit up.

Then it’s time for “Kruiskade” with another slow groovy start that blows up and spreads sound shrapnel all over the place. First they want you to dance, then they want you to kill each other, that’s how it sounds like, just beautiful.

After experiencing all this, we get to experience a “Heavy Mental Breakdown” which is actually a slow song in total. No speed here, just the drums beating your sanity and the bass and guitar riffing among them like two different sides of your conscience discussing your descent into madness like a comic book and it feels great.

“Stressed” closes the ep. If the previous song was a contemplation of your descent into madness, this is the exploding realization of that feeling. Starting with a speedy groove, the riffs start laughing in your face and screaming amazing sounds to aggravate you even further. It gets faster of course, as the band is screaming wildly in your face that you are stressed while the riffs keep on laughing. The whole thing ends with a blast of speed and an echo saying “Bruja”, to remind you of what just happened to your brain.

A collection of short, brutally fast songs that will fulfil any thirst for musical violence. If you’re looking for some straight to the point, no bullshit, in your face sound, then this is a most excellent. GEWOON FUCKING RAGGEN!!!

Text by J.P. Alves