If you’re unfamiliar with Ohio’s Hemdale, it’s likely because you weren’t around during the week and a half Visceral Productions was in existence in the mid 90s. In the short span of the label’s existence they put out three splits featuring Ohio’s sloppy death grinders Hemdale. The first was the infamous and highly sought after split with Exhumed, the second was a split with Exit-13 and the third, and ultimately the group’s final recording, was a split with Disgust. Since all of the material has long since been out of print, Relapse decided a proper re-issue was in order and gathered up the combined 23 tracks from Hemdale’s half of their splits and included the group’s 14-song demo as a bonus.

Hemdale play a goofy, sloppy style of music that’s equal parts sloppy equal parts grindy and equal parts death metal. The first 13 tracks on Rad Jackson are from the In The Name Of Gore split with Exhumed and opens up with a violent kick to the teeth in the form of "Delicious Gory Fun"; a blasting, grinding, growling, snarling assault, which continues throughout the 13 tracks. There’s plenty of sick, sloppy, sludgy slower-than-molasses-and-heavier-than-fuck segments spaced throughout the blasting, growling and chugging, along with several goofy intros including medical examiners and horny inbred hicks and a crushing cover of Destruction’s "Curse The Gods". Overall, it’s just pure violent sloppy fun.

The next 6 tracks are from the Exit-13 split released only a few months later, but with noticeably weaker production and lacks the thick, meaty, bassy production of the split with Exhumed, but is musically along the same lines; sludgy crushing death metal mixed with blasting grind segments. Included are two punishing covers of Napalm Death’s "Rise Above" and Grave’s "Extremely Rotten Flesh" plus a remix of "Are You Pornophoric?" from the Exhumed split. Minus the relatively weak production, the material is great, but it would have been nice for Relapse to shell out a few bucks to beef up the production a bit, but that would probably cut down on their profit margin, which is why I’m sure they didn’t bother, the fags.

The last of the split material is the 4 tracks from their half of the split with Disgust and brings a stronger sound than the Exit-13 tracks, but still lacks the beefiness of the Exhumed split material, but, nevertheless, Hemdale once again crush with their patented sludge death grind sound… for the 3 1/2 minutes worth of material they recorded.

The final 14 tracks are from the group’s demo tape and have a typically early 90s demo tape sound to it, with a pretty shit awful production, but you can still make out every note, blast and growl, even if you have to strain your ears a bit sometimes. The material is exactly what you’ll have come to expect from the group after listening to the first 23 tracks and doesn’t disappoint in the slightest.

Its unfortunate Hemdale weren’t able to stick around long enough to record a full length, but they were able to pack enough quality material in their short existence to make their re-issue, released 5 years after splitting, one of the best albums of 2002. If you’re a Hemdale fan and have been trying to seek out the rest of their discography, it’s all here and all you’ll ever need… unless you’re one of those fucking retards who feels the need to go on eBay and spend $150 for a CD or EP that’s out of print, rather than just being satisfied with spending $10 on their entire discography at once.

As far as sloppy sludgy death grind goes, few can match Hemdale, so if you’re looking for something stupid and fun, this is an absolute must buy for people who hate Pellet from Relapse but like fanny packs, cowboys, trucks, Bengal tigers, blue, climbing poles, pockets, shanty towns, drink coasters, lots of dirt in one confined area, spunk, flowers, tongues, light bulbs, items purchased in bulk, yellow paint and/or chewing gum.

Also, if you don’t rush out and buy this album, the zombie on the CD cover will eat the kitten.

Written By: Teufel