This is an interesting split, interesting in the fact that I didn’t expect to like it this much. My initial exposure to both Premonitions of War and Benümb were not in the best light, however after listening to this split I have reconsidered my opinions of both acts immensely.

Premonitions of War is probably the more well-known of the two, having formerly been on Victory Records and currently having a release under Metal Blade. Given the current love of shitty contemporary hardcore by teenagers today and their infinite love of the former label, I doubt you could mention Premonitions of War at Hot Topic and not get some ridiculously retarded reply from the staff. After first giving Left in Kowloon a spin based on a review I should have never trusted that stated how awesome of a grind act the band was, I wrote them off as another undeserving hot act of the day. The grind was decent enough and showed a lot of promise and considerable tightness but there was an equally unfocused amount of hardcore intertwined here and there with the grind. Add in the unimpressive generic vocal performance, and you got yourself an overrated act. However, I decided to give Premonitions of War a second chance with the redux/re-issue package of Glorified Dirt/The True Face of Panic. That release contained the band’s earlier material off the Glorified Dirt EP rerecorded with a newly reinvigorated sound. What I heard brought a smile to my face: the vocals had become more centered and brutal, the sound was intense, and the bad taste I received earlier washed away. Imagine The Red Chord, whose music is primarily a death/grind structure and foundation with modules of hardcore, southern sludge, and mathy parts. Now, switch the ratio between hardcore and death/grind and replace the mathy parts with noise and that is the sort of sound one can expect to hear from Premonitions of War. (Note: even the original style of Premonitions of War that could be found on the second half of the package sounded a lot harder and intense than Left in Kowloon. At first I thought that my distaste of Left in Kowloon may have been a fluke, but then playing it again and hearing the dragged-out section in "Black Den" reaffirmed my dislike of the album.)

So how does Premonitions of War sound on the split? The newly re-vitalized and refocused grind/hardcore hybrid style is going strong, but they have eschewed their noise parts for… bluesy doom covers of Mountain and William Bell? That, my friends, I did not expect. Just imagine the look on my face when the music went from a crushing battle royal of hardcore and grind to a slow, rhythmic rendition of "Mississippi Queen" as sung by the retarded love child of Cookie Monster, Phil Anselmo, and the entire staff of a local guitar shop here in Tallahassee where all the employees are at least 63, have mullets, remember the "good ‘ole coon hunting days," and still have their pointy bed sheets ready for that special day when the South- despite much lollygagging- will finally rise again. Surprisingly this odd performance of old southern rock is actually entertaining, albeit a bit strange given the music that separates the two covers. Pertaining to the standard style Premonitions of War is known for, the vocals have gotten even more feral and relentless, to the point where they can almost stand up to some guttural goregrind and even many brutal death metal bands. While the material isn’t as technical as The True Face of Panic or Left in Kowloon the trade-off is that the sound has become an entity colossally larger than anything they’ve recorded before with an unstoppable sound that could only be matched by the musical equivalent of a Soviet scorched earth maneuver, leaving nothing behind for it to decimate.

Then there is Benümb. I’m going to be entirely honest: I never really gave Benümb too much of a chance. I’ve always been a huge fan of their sister act Vulgar Pigeons, but for the longest time I had never heard Benümb. Finally, I saw a used copy of Withering Strands of Hope at the local independent cd shop here and gave it a listen on the in-store cd system. The music was intense hybrid of crusty punk, west coast hardcore and power violence, and Vulgar Pigeons-styled grindcore but for the love of God I hated the vocals. They lacked the lower growling accompaniment that Vulgar Pigeons had. I could only stand them for about 3 tracks before I gave up and put the cd back. That was a mistake if I ever made one.

Going into the split, I finally got used to the single-style vocal performance by Paul Pontikoff. While I still prefer the high vocals contrasted by the guttural assault used by Vulgar Pigeons, the singular style used here works perfectly well; it was simply a matter of getting used to it. Pontikoff has the amazing ability of putting nearly the entire rhetoric of every socially conscious thinker in America into a just a few lines of lyrics. Seriously, the amount of shit this guy can spout off in each song has to set a fucking world record; rappers wish they could hit that many words with that level of grammatical correctness on that level of power. Musically, Benümb is just as grindingly harsh as the music heard on Withering Strands of Hope, combining the grind of Vulgar Pigeons with the more chaotic elements of crust and hardcore. It’s like someone gave that really weird looking emaciated kid with the liberty spikes in your high school art class a thing of napalm and told him to have fun.

Man, I actually liked this split. Now time to go see if I can find those copies of Benümb’s full lengths again. As well, Premonitions of War is performing a hell of a lot better and are considerably more vulgar. If you were on the fence with them, this is the release that will get your ass off it.



Written By: Necro-tron