The Crypts of the Unknown harbors many festered treasures. Have you ever come across an album that you enjoy, but seemingly no other human in existence knows about it? Or maybe an album that ticks all the boxes in a style that doesn’t get a lot of love? Oh, and of course, you’ve found this album long after it would have mattered to help the band spread the word… or perhaps it’s just your dirty little secret…
Whatever the case, we here at The Goat Review prefer to air our loves to the world, to open the gates of our corroded Crypts to the masses. Today, join us as Scuttlegoat reminisces on Blunt Force Trauma‘s 2012 release Vengeance for Nothing. It may not be perfect, but how would you know?
In relation to our Crypts of the Unknown blurbs, we have often discussed what to consider obscure. Though we considered a metric like the number of Spotify listeners, we ultimately never decided on a concrete cutoff. It gets more complicated when a bands material is inaccessible, which maybe is not the same as obscure. Blunt Force Trauma are known amongst slammers who are… well, “in the know” about the genre. The band is a follow-up project to Japanese cult act Jenovavirus but shares very little with that acts unusually dense, almost polyphonic approach to slam.
[This just in, hot off the presses: Metal archives reports that, contrary to popular belief, the two bands are not connected at all.]
Oh. Well. The two bands share very little stylistically, anyway. Blunt Force Trauma are, fundamentally, a working man’s slam act whose primary mode of attack is switching between differently paced hardcore-inspired grooves. The band knows how to work a breakdown like few other acts, when to pick up the pace just a hair, when to shift to a particularly braindead drum beat, or when to pause the bludgeoning for just a second to hit a particularly gnarly bass-pop. So, quite differently from Jenovavirus, Blunt Force Trauma are not the thinking man’s slam act. Blunt Force Trauma is a slam band for slammers who appreciate the nuances of the genre but have very little desire to leave its confines, a band that knows how to work a genre that thrives on very little variation.
Unlike a lot of other slam acts from Japan — especially the aforementioned Jenovavirus — Blunt Force Trauma have a somewhat “decipherable” lyrical approach. Maybe not in the sense that I could tell you what their lyrics are about, but there is very little animalistic noise featured on the vocal front, things like pig squeals or otherwise extended techniques beyond frequent tunnel throats. Again, Blunt Force Trauma show a commitment to a lack of frills. The vocal performance reminds me of Dying Fetus, in fact, with how simple vocal interjections will set up massive grooves. Instruments might play uniformly most of the time, but whenever an instrument plays itself to the front for just a second, it is meant as a setup to bludgeoning violence. Blunt Force Trauma are, in this sense, committed to the pace of their album above anything else.
Returning to my original point, most people that I tell about Blunt Force Trauma seem to not be unaware of them because of a lack of mainstream appeal within their genre. Blunt Force Trauma would play wonderfully to anyone who likes slam. And the small reputation they have, they have because of their talent and cohesive sound. But only being able to listen to them through a YouTube upload hurts. Make no mistake though, Blunt Force Trauma is worth downloading NewPipe for. Put this on at the gym and have your gains be as massive as these slams.
