Screwed - Terror Cycle

I tend to think that musical barriers that are highly pronounced in one generation tend to fall in the next because young people are musical sponges, soaking up all kinds of different influences that might seem antithetical to older generations. For example, I can't imagine trying to explain to someone who is 21 now that there was a point where mixing metal and hardcore was controversial. Whether to incorporate metal and, if so, how to incorporate it into hardcore were open questions when I was a kid. Now, a band like Portland's Screwed just throw chainsaw grind, metalcore, d-beat, sludge, and thrash in a blender like there'd never be a question all those things should go together and we're all better for it.

On Terror Cycle, Screwed churn their way through eight menacingly ugly songs, reminding me of something like Moral Void, on the hardcore end, or Primitive Man, for the sludge influence. The guitar tone is spot on HM-2 worship, but they tend to be slower and chuggier than a lot of the other bands that do stuff like this (see Barren and Mist of Doom, both of whom I covered recently, and both of whom are much quicker in tempo). I really appreciate Screwed's mixing of breakdown-fueled metalcore and nasty, scooped sludge, here. Once again, not two genres that I would have expected to work as well together as they do if you would have asked me a few decades ago, but screwed really bring them together nicely. 

This looks like their first album, and I highly recommend checking it out if you like any of the genres or bands I've mentioned. This is some really solid, churning, distorted stuff and I look forward to whatever they do next. 

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