Review of Dead Infection - Brain Corrosion

Dead Infection - If their name doesn’t give you enough indication of what to expect, then allow me to elaborate; a raucous of unintelligible grunts and gurgles; frantic, standard grindcore percussion; sludge-laden, and down-tuned guitars entirely devoid of melody. That ought to sum it up. On Brain Corrosion we get twenty-two tracks of gore and grind permeated by an attitude of nihilistic violence that has come to characterize Poland’s more extreme musical acts. Dead Infection have the image down pat, from gruesome album art to the inflated, rotting corpse that greets you on their website (or 'webmorgue), but Brain Corrosion pales beside the image, and this, unfortunately, is never a good thing. With a career that stretches from 1990 to the present, with a temporary disbanding towards the end of the 90s, I expected more from these guys.

Opening track “It’s Over” begins with a short, torturous growl (I swear he’s actually saying ‘roar’) by vocalist Jaro which leads into blast beats and guitar work that resembles numerous other grind bands on their own 20+ track releases. A certain amount of sloppiness and disregard for conventional musical standards is allowed given the ‘fuck-off’ legacy established throughout the history of goremetal and grindcore, but once you’ve heard this style done once, twice, three times, etc., it gets harder to tolerate. I’m generally a fan of keeping things simple and straight forward, but when taken to excess, especially in grindcore, things begin to grow tiresome. And Brain Corrosion, if you haven’t gotten the hint, does indeed grow tiresome. The first seven or eight tracks are worth a listen or two (comprising only nine minutes of music, approximately), especially if you dig grindcore’s simple, punk-derived riffing and spastic drumming. It becomes apparent that track three sounds like track nine, and track twelve sounds like track nineteen and…you get the picture.

The most amusing aspect of Brain Corrosion is Jaro’s growl. I’m almost positive that he’s saying actual words, but I’d never believe it if I hadn’t read their lyrics. The band does manage to distinguish itself from other bands in the genre through their obscure but humorous song titles. Some favorites would have to be “Beware! My Name is Thunderbolt”, “Let’s Have Some Fun”, “Crazy Buckets”, and “You Broke My T-Shirt”. Unfortunately, comical song titles don’t make a good release. The album’s recording is fine for their style; it doesn’t particularly help, nor does it harm. In other words, much like the album itself, the production is very so-so.

Some of you may argue that ‘they’re playing within a genre’ and this argument certainly has its value. But as a reviewer who generally enjoys the genre and must remain honest and objective as much as possible, I can’t pretend that this is anything more than middle-of-the-road gore-grind that has nothing more to offer than lots of guitar distortion, blast beats (we’ve all heard them before), and vocals that stand out due to their utter silliness.

Release Details

Dead Infection

Brain Corrosion

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