Making fun of a band’s name is the kind of lazy, empty journalism that I’d normally try to avoid, but sometimes the temptation is just too strong. I mean, seriously… Before a note of their music has been played, The Drip earn their place amongst Gloomy Grim, Mournful Gust and Imposer as the elite of Metal bands with names that are a lot less threatening than they’re probably meant to be – with the exception that I can at least understand how those names are meant to be scary.
So yeah, that’s out of the way… leaving, it has to be said, not that much to talk about. The Drip make their intentions clear with vicious opener ‘Catalyst’, at two minutes and twenty-six seconds, the single longest track on the record, and then don’t do anything to change. A Presentation Of Gruesome Poetics (Relapse) is six tracks, twelve minutes and a near-constant onslaught of blasting, scything riffs and angry shrieks.
If all Grindcore is about controlled chaos, The Drip definitely lean on the side of control. The frenzied, staggering lurches made famous by Napalm Death or Terrorizer are entirely absent here, their place taken by the kind of muscular, look-at-my-neck-muscles Metalcore breakdowns you’d expect from Hatebreed or Terror. They’re deployed well, and probably get a huge response live, but for those who prefer their Grind wilder, more destructive and untamed, it sounds a little cheap, and perhaps a little posed. This is music for flexing your muscles and ninja-kicking your mates in a circle, not raging against the injustice of a system that doesn’t work.
A perfectly solid release, then, and one that delivers exactly what it promises, but it’s hard to imagine anyone getting too excited about this. One imagines that it was released primarily to give them something to do while ripping up tiny squats and club venues – a task for which it is well suited.
6.0 / 10.0
RICHIE H-R