Here, here is your future, all you laptop fuckers. The stock market is overruled by a bunch of messageboard freaks, your job will be slowly taken over by a robot, you live your reality through a palm-sized screen, and yet there is more to come. This CUNTROACHES/GUTTERSNIPE split was first released on tape in 2018 then pressed on vinyl in 2020, although it sounds as if the release date could have been a hundred years further into the future and no one would notice. Not even sure if this is still punk rock, instead paranoid sounds of the sci-fi nightmares, created among bad trips and the threat of a fucked-up future. That future is now. We no longer fear nuclear weapons, which anyway were always just a metaphor for our real threat: chaotic randomness of human behaviour. This record captures this downfall, the mania, power-hunger, and accumulation, then we are force-fed with this neon puke, wired to a chair, eyelids duct-taped to the forehead and watching million flashing images. I try to distance myself from writing about music by throwing images on you, but this record triggers visions. Both bands are connected to our subculture though both are so independent, progressive and full-blast lunatic. After all, it’s aggressive hyperactive music, but is it still hardcore? CUNTROACHES foxtrot on pedalboards without getting too close to crasher crust-ish noisecore. Their groove and beat section is as wild and vital as field recordings of high-tempo tribal trance drumming and a little reminiscent of LEBENDEN TOTEN, not their sound but the mind-grinding experience of their live shows. These two songs are over-the-top in all possible senses, providing an almost live experience, witnessing with full awareness how you are digested by a beast. It’s vicious, twisted, super chaotic, perfectly balancing on the border of naivety and precise artistic view. GUTTERSNIPE has a bigger slice of this split due to their second track extending to ten minutes. The pairing makes sense, rather idea-wise. The xenofeminist crisis energy rock duo from Leeds sounds as if SPK was threated with a gun to play hardcore songs or listened to the complete Actuel catalogue at once at tenfold speed. Then the ten minutes beautiful odyssey hits in and it absorbs me completely. A special record and big up to Anxious Music for putting it on vinyl with this neo-trash cover, different RPM for both sides, and cute/cool insert. If your colleagues ever ask you what sort of music you are into, show them this and they might never ever bother you with anything personal.
