There is a small corner pizzeria on Long Island in a rather mundane town. There is an old, small Italian woman who gives me the death stare every time I frequent her establishment because (I think because of the shirts) she thinks I am the second coming of Satan. Hot girls with tight, black pants work next store. Now, this could be any pizzeria anywhere; however, this pizza has been rated the best pizza on Long Island. Other than being great, they consistently deliver a quality product day in and day out. My frequent food parallels always have a purpose. Here greatness and consistent quality are fortes of both this pizzeria and of Malignancy. Malignancy have consistently grinded out off the wall and fierce music with each release. I have yet to be let down by any of their releases. And just like the pizza, this album deserves a small order of garlic knots and a large Coke while being devoured.

Malignancy, in the midst of an era where many bands churn out some horrid material, wade through the shit and have managed to carve out a niche all their own. And surprisingly, I find that this band does not have much of a following. If I may hypothesize, I believe the music can be a bit too much for people. Not surprisingly, their biggest following is in Europe, a place apparently laden with broader musical acceptance, or so I have heard. Malignancy play an inspired form of violent grind, chock-full of nasty speed combined with a tad of groove. They create an unmistakable wall of sound that is absolutely crushing, a feeling I have not received since listening to Deed of Flesh’s Inbreeding the Anthropophagi. The music is extremely varied, ranging from fast riffing to stop and go style breakdowns. But their variances are well-received for they frequent return to many of the riffs in the course of a song, preventing a horrid amalgamation of tiresome riffs from occurring. I am not much of a guitar player, but this guy is absolutely berserk, from the precision, to the speed, to the interesting and highly unique pinched harmonics. I am by no means flexing any sort of guitar muscles but merely restating some research that I had done. I wanted to know what the technical name of when a guitar player makes the guitar "squeal", for lack of a better word. The Malignancy guitar player has obviously mastered this concept as well as frequent string bends. And these bizarre notes are done so frequently, that each riff differs slightly each time it is played in the course of a song. The vocals are deep and guttural and fit nicely with this type of music. The drummer (on this album and all releases since 1996) is actually the guitarist for Mortician. He is fast and has a real "I don’t give a crap about the rest of the band – I’m playing what I want" approach. However, due to the odd timing of the music, it works quite well. He is extremely fast, talented, and has the ability to fill in the back of such an intense form of music so perfectly.

The death metal genre title "grind" is used so much it’s difficult to get a real sense of what it means. My definition would be highly violent music filled with plenty of blasting, technical guitars, and a bit of groove – a form of controlled chaos. Malignancy have mastered this formula and have for many years. And cheers to any band that is unique and, in a way, selfish in the sense that they care very little about common consensus and whatever band is popular to emulate at the time. This is a very hard band to make any parallels to. If you enjoy overall heaviness, solid production, with plenty of speed and interesting riffs, this is worth the measly eight dollars. In addition, you will also receive a disc of a band who will constantly release material that is even more over the top than the previous album. I am not going out on a limb by saying that Malignancy is the most underrated band in underground death metal. Check them out live too which will prevent your notions that this is some kind of studio-produced band.

Review byDouble Ds