Rotten Sound’s Murderworks is/was a beautiful little slice of hardcore death/grind, rip-roaring through rapacious riffs, delectably draped in death-defying drumming, and sensationally slathered in stupendous screams. The high-energy songs were infectious and made you want to mosh the night away, and the production was pristine in a modern grind kinda way, with touches of that old-school feel. I loved it, even though it wasn’t that original and a couple cuts were below par.

Exit blows it out of the water, through the stratosphere, and onto the god-forsaken moon where it will fester in abandonment and loneliness. Every day, Murderworks will look to the Earth, that pearly blue-white-green ball far off in the distant starry sky, and weep that it has been forgotten. Weep, because in its gore-soaked soul, it knows that Exit was… just… better.

Now, first off is the production. It was done by Nasum’s Miescko Talarckzyk, and as such, is absolutely perfect. The riffs have just a tad of fuzz to them that brings to mind a foam-covered steel hammer smashing into your face, and the drums are just loud enough so that you can hear em crash along in perfect sync with the guitars while just occasionally veering off the beaten track to deliver some good old-fashioned high speed fills. Q screeches like a demented maniac (IE a lot like Miescko, but just a bit more throat-scraping) and is heard very well. Another fellow does the growling, so the good old dual-vocal approach is used here. It works very well. Basically, the production is much like Helvete or Shift, but somehow much more intense and violent-feeling, like the sort of music you’d hear in the background of a film while a riot was happening onscreen.

The songs are short and scream-laden, like rapid punches to the face by a heavyweight clown wearing brass knuckles. The riffs have two modes: Barreling along the tracks like a 2000-pound train with rocket engines strapped to the side, or slowing down for absolutely monstrous grind breakdowns that bring to mind Killing On Adrenaline-era Dying Fetus and other such masters of the good metal breakdown. The album just seethes essence of rage from every last pore, comparable to bands like Watchmaker and early Napalm Death. If it wasn’t for one quibble I have, this would be a masterpiece of the grind genre to place alongside other classics like Brutal Truth’s Need to Control, Napalm Death’s From Enslavement to Obliteration, and the two widely released Discordance Axis albums, Jou Hou and The Inalienable Dreamless. I’m saying this without any sense of hyperbole. Just one little problem that keeps this CD from the hallowed halls of the masterpiece.

It’s not at all original. The abovementioned releases all pushed the boundaries of grindcore in some way, but Exit does not. This bothers me. Rotten Sound largely plunder their sound from two sources: The extremely obvious Nasum for most of the fast, shredding songs (the main difference is in the drumming: Rotten Sound’s skinpounder is miles –yes, miles- ahead of Nasum’s more-than-capable percussionist. It’s true. Listen to the CD, you’ll see) and, for the quasi-experimental closer, The Weak, the only real deviation from Nasum territory on the whole CD, Brutal Truth. Their 1997 release, Sounds of the Animal Kingdom (great album, by the way. Buy it), contains a seven-minute song called Blue World that’s remarkably close to The Weak in terms of structure and songwriting ideas. It’s not quite outright plagiarism, but it’s certainly enough to make me dismiss the song as already done and nothing new.

Despite all this, I still love this album. It’s just not perfect. If you’re torn up over the death of Nasum, then it may just be time to sob on Rotten Sound’s shoulder for a while.

Before they kill you, of course.