By Monk
If there is one man who has stood over the Northern Ireland grind scene (sic) like a colossus it is Pete Clarke.
For the past decade the frontman of Strangle Wire, and before that Zombified and the brief industrial death spin-off The Obscene Machine, he has devoted almost his entire life to this most extreme of metal sub-genres, not least through his record company, via which he has not only profiled local acts from this particular wee corner of the Überverse but also championed genre legends such as Basement Torture Killings and Foetal Juice. Now, he has once again emerged from the darkened sewers of his hometown of Lisburn with his latest foul infestation of our senses and sensibilities…
Billed as a strictly studio-only project, Corpse Water seeks to turn back the clock, evoking the spirit of old school death/grind founding fathers such as Six Feet Under, Cancer, Obituary and (most especially) Cannibal Corpse (of whom Clarke, like myself, has been an unapologetically long-time fan). One of the project’s other mission statements declares that its objective is to create “songs meant to be enjoyed rather than analysed”; so, in that spirit, we’ll not spend too much time doing the latter and rather more focussing on the former intent, shall we?
And in that Clarke succeeds more than admirably and effectively, as he has produced yet another brutally efficient exemplar of the genre, one which grabs you by the ears, throat and every other part of your anatomy immediately and continues to do so throughout its 27 minutes.
Song titles such as ‘Spontaneous Human Combustion’, ‘There’s A Body In The Tank’ (inspired by one of my all-time favourite J-Horror movies?) and ‘The Body And Blade’ tell you exactly what to expect, and that expectation is met one each and every level of every one of the nine tracks.
If I have to pick out personal highlights, then ‘I Demon I Monster’ is particularly crushing while the aforementioned ‘There’s A Body…’ possesses a suitably dank level of menace that is all the more foreboding for its brevity.
- ‘Something In The Water‘ is out now.