Absolute Torment: QUALM – S/T Cassette Tape Review + Stream

Holy fucking shit. It’s when you hear shit like this that you realize we are in the future. Today, even something as vile, macabre, ill and fucked up as QUALM from Amsterdam, Netherlands, can make it out of the gutter and be heard. The Internet, social media etc. have enabled even the purest filth to emerge from the sewers it was birthed in and plunge into the world of men to scare you shitless and abuse your senses with merciless spite. I guess there is a counterpart to everything in life. There are bizarre, violent and totally tabu forms of porn, art, film, literature etc that should not see the light of day, but do thanks to technology and the freaks who have access to it, and just in the same way there is the same sphere of absolutely abusive, unwanted, and tormenting entities in the world of music as well.

And what QUALM brings you is just that: abuse, endless fucking abuse, something not far from what bands like Condition, Raw Nerve and Cult Ritual would bring you, but possibly even worse and even more fucked in the head: completely rabid, desecrating, vile, blown out, caved in, caustic and suffocating raw hardcore punk. Riffs that feel like razor wire, rhythms that try to strangle you, vocals that feel like the gutting of a moribund animal who’s just been slaughtered, a rhythm section that feels like a bludgeoning. Songs that last just a few seconds, rarely even hitting the minute mark, because that’s all they need to pour buckets of rotting bile down your ear ducts. Sounds so tense, noisy, abrasive and scraping that even at low volume the music sounds annoying, irritating and unbearable as fuck. You can’t really mitigate this shit in any way – turning it down does absolutely nothing it’s so blown out and pushed to its breaking point. All you can do is either sit through it and suffer or turn that shit off. QUALM really doesn’t give you a choice, because they hate you, for no reason, and want you to know. Is there anything else to add? Not really – just press play and judge for yourself. You can get the tape from the band or from The Tide of the End.