SKULL513

JESUS AIN’T IN POLAND, Freheit Macht Frei (2012, Grindpromotion)

The skull:
While inspecting the cloven skull before him on the autopsy table, the forensic pathologist said aloud, to no one but the imaginary medical procedural television director in his head, “This is without a doubt the worst sinus infection I have ever seen. No amount of pseudoephedrine was gonna clear this guy up. Hell of a way to go, if you ask me.” “Slain by snot,” he imagined the weary but wry protagonist answering, because even in his fantasies, the doctor was just a part of the supporting cast.

The music:
Maybe I’m going soft, or maybe I’ve just been beaten into submission by sheer numbers, but I’m starting to maybe develop a taste for grind, after these many years in the service of The Skull, listening to disc after disc of blasty Napalm Death worship. At the very least, it’s becoming less offputting to me, although I’m not sure I could cogently explain what makes one grind disc better than the next, except that the good ones tend not to sound like they were recorded on a boombox that crusty anarchists reclaimed from the dump. Jesus Ain’t In Poland is an incredibly stupid name, but they seem to have their shit together and their death-inflected grind mostly works for me. Their slower passages groove and afford the band the space to develop their riffs, and while their blasty bits are really not distinguishable from any other band working this style, they at least aren’t unlistenably obnoxious. Given the stylistic constraints of grind, I’m not sure it’s even possibly to impress with originality, and Jesus Ain’t In Poland certainly aren’t doing anything you haven’t heard before, but if you like grind (and aren’t in it for the shock value alone) then you’ll probably dig them.
— Friar Johnsen