"carceral warfare"
Year: 2023
Country: US
City: Ocean City, MA
Label: Closed Casket Activities
Format: LP
Tracks: 9
Time: 20 min.
Genre: rock
Style: Grindcore
Maryland's Jarhead Fertilizer formed right around a decade ago, with members of Full of Hell exploring a more punk/powerviolence leaning side of the band through a few EP releases and some light touring. Despite their relatively low profile and being more of a side project to the then steadily rising and constantly touring Full of Hell, they still gained a notable following and excitement for a full length release built throughout the years, culminating in the release of their Closed Casket debut Product of My Environment in 2021, which album that saw a revitalized lineup of the band careen towards an even heavier and uglier sound than their previous efforts by adding massive doses of death metal and slam to their core sound.
Their sound also changed with the constantly evolving and improved drumming of Dave Bland, who also serves as the band's main vocalist. Product of My Environment made waves both with longtime listeners and countless new onlookers, and is a record I still come back around to consistently and find strangely catchy and infectious despite it being a constant bludgeoning of everything extreme in metal from beginning to end. With their second full length Carceral Warfare, I'm happy to report that they've taken everything that made Product of My Environment stand out and made those things bigger and bolder than ever before.
While a fusion of hardcore's ethos with death metal, grindcore and slam certainly is far from unique in today's extreme musical landscape, what Jarhead Fertilizer does that many of their peers have yet to achieve is nail the composition and craft of all 9 songs with Carceral Warfare. This coupled by a clear understanding of jazz theory in the rhythm section is what puts them miles above many of their peers. Throughout the entirety of the record as a consistent barrage of low end death metal vocals, manic and complex drum patterns hit with bludgeoning force, every moment feels perfectly placed for maximum sonic impact.
This record flows in an impressively organic sense, with the menacing hip hop beat and police sirens of opening track “Blood Of The Lamb” or later album moments like the hypnotic intro/outro of “Wrath of Judas” making sure every song stands out in it's own unique way while never sacrificing a clear unifying theme throughout. This is far from an easy achievement on a record as extreme and dark as this, and the band should be commended highly for it.
Lyrically exploring the constant despair and survival above all else nature of a life of incarceration, Carceral Warfare is appropriately ugly throughout, with a constant bleak and foreboding atmosphere that I only recall being matched by sludge legends such as Dystopia or Noothgrush. An exploration of the depths of crack addiction in “Parasitic Pathology” is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the There is simply nothing positive about Carceral Warfare and that's the point, and it's rare for a record of this genre to explore something that impacts our overall society on such a deep level.
All that being said, it's important to note that despite the heavy themes throughout and the deep technical ability utilized on these songs that above all else, this record absolutely fucking slams. This is simply some of the heaviest and most memorable grindcore/slam your going to hear not just this year but in general, and if your coming into this with the full expectation of banging your head until your neck breaks and making the infamous “stank face” that only the hardest riffs in a song can bring about, you sure as hell aren't going to leave disappointed.
"product of myenvironment"
Year: 2020
Label: Closed Casket
Format: CD, LP
Tracks: 11
Time: 19 min.
Genre: rock
Style: Grindcore