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Rating:
When I saw the cover of this album, abandoned in a remote nook of Milan, I had no reservations whatsoever. The store clerk, whom I rather fancied, evidently didn't think the same, as she looked at me like one looks at a prolapse full of infected pustules, but who cares: it was worth it! Sore Throat: what a splendid, superb name for a group of crazies beyond all measure! The translation of the name turns out to be "sore throat"... well, of course! Never was a moniker more fitting in extreme circles. Born in '87 and lasted just a few years; very little information online about them. But there's little to know in the face of an album like this: a colossal piss-take literally made with the butt.
These four mental degenerates, after the prelude of "Unhindered by Talent," managed to assemble an album containing 101 (ONE HUNDRED AND ONE) sonic splinters that to call "songs" is an outrage. And since we have on our hands a freaking work that incorporates in its sound ProtoGrindNoiseCrustPunkHardcore (oh oh), who better than "Mal d'orecchie" (I write Earache Records for the three people who are unaware of this label) could handle such a crude musical offspring?!?!
A dirge from the underworld lasting a handful of seconds: thus presents side A, which is nothing but the uncle of "Altered States of America". Then the universal flood: 90 tracks in less than 23 minutes. You're hit by an apocalyptic shockwave, not even understanding where one piece begins and another ends. Take the most uncompromising Discharge, blend them with the emerging Grindcore of the time (easy to cite the early works of Carcass and Napalm Death) and coat with some good Noise: you'll get the insanely feverish sonic mixture of Sore Throat. Recording level ridiculous, indecipherable instruments, noises we used to make in elementary school, like rattles and cuckoos, street works and road construction, a voice that makes no sense at all: all wonderfully fascinating. The incomprehensible howls of all four band members create something almost unlistenable and cacophonous like I had never heard before, embellished with titles like "Fuck all but we," "Slam of buttcocks," "Rotting vegetation of Eden." In a word: INHUMAN!!!
Side B instead features more usual structures, where samples, which also appear in the first part, introduce Crust masterpieces dense and ferocious to the extreme. Here I've lived some of the most unforgettable moments of my musical existence, which leads me to give the album the highest rating. This chapter appears more engaged, proving that our guys, if and when they want, can also be serious; yet the same choice to open it with a PAPPAPAPPAPA and close it with two other crazy songs seems a warning worth noting!
Legend has it that the group couldn't stand any form of musical enrichment, essentially coming to "hate" people like Napalm Death (and a track is called "From off license to obliteration"), D.R.I., and the like. Anyway, a group as crazy as it is interesting, on which, as often happens in these cases, curious discoveries are made. Like John Pickering, the voice of the immense Doom, was their singer. Or that the drummer Paul Halmshaw is the founder of Peaceville records, represented on the cover by a shark. In short: eternal praise and esteem to the legendary Sore Throat.
Not recommended for the faint-hearted, hell the damn!!!!
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