No Value - 2006 - Primitive Recreation

No Value is (was?) a noisy fastcore band from Japan. This is a short and sweet EP running for about 9 minutes. It's fast, it's melodic to an extent, it's intense and it's distorted to oblivion. There's a girl yelling somewhere in there (with occasional male vocals kicking in) but everything is so loud and short that they can be anything. It's great, not much else beside that.

Get it.

P.L.F. - Devious Persecution and Wholesale Slaughter / Ultimate Whirlwind Of Incineration

P.L.F. or Pretty Little Flower or Pulverizing Lethal Force or whatever else they're called is a grindcore band from Huston. They've been around for quite a while, never really garnering that much attention as did their fellow neighbor Insect Warfare despite sounding relatively similar to each other at least on the surface. The two albums I'm sharing here are from 2013 and 2014 and they're similar enough and short enough that I consider them to be a sort of double feature or two part album. The inevitable comparison with IW is appropriate since PLF also features a lot of thrash metal (Razor-esque) breaks between the blastbeats and generally a heavy dose of riffis. Songwriting wise they're much simpler and more orthodox with no noise or any other kinds of influences to make them sound more punchy. Its muddy production gives the albums a grimy and old school feeling which is great but the albums are not without their flaws. The are vocals uninspired and laid back. Serviceable would probably be the most apt description of them. This is probably because they're mainly in the lower register even while doing the raspy screams. Their emotionless delivery takes out some of the punch from the songs but not enough to make these releases limp. If you're in need for some thrashing be sure to get these two fine albums.

Get them both and start thrashing!