Billed from Portland, Oregon, grindcore quartet Transient unleash a devastating barrage of blast beats and shredding guitars. Their debut LP is nothing short of intense; fusing together the edginess of crust with grind that makes for a sound containing the energetic spryness of enthusiasm while maintaining a level of seriousness like they’re veterans of the genre.
“Bottom Feeder” and “Goad” open the album up and completely lay waste. With a crusty bassline on the latter track, Transient kicks things into gear and what comes out is a sound completely driven by speed. Krysta Martinez’s vocals are raw and unfiltered, throat-ripping at times but her coming from a metal act gives her the grounding needed to do grindcore. “Narcissus Nemesis” is where the listener can feel the might of Jesse Schriebman’s drumming. All these blast beats make for a gigantic wave of noise, culminating in a breakdown towards the end of the track before picking up speed again. Transient’s punk roots are certain; sure, there are blast beats that make their LP grindcore, but their infusing of crust punk into their grinding assault makes for something more interesting than the typical grindcore act. They have an inkling for structure instead of breaking all the conventions of it; “Antipositivism” isn’t just a fast song — it contains a lot of structure that Transient supplants with speed and intensity.
But that’s not to say that the act is just resting on their speed and intensity. There’s breakdowns which put together elements of hardcore with some tinges of metal. This fusion of these working parts together is what makes Transient’s attack sound alive. A lot of it might be the same cutthroat grind with peppered blast-beats but who cares? “Positivism” is the sum of all these parts. The track alone contains some extremely tight riffing, and it glues itself together from the wreckage and mayhem that has ensued on previous tracks. Of course, no grind album would be complete without a 30 second track, and “Van Grinder” fills the void.
Overall, Transient hasn’t created a masterwork of grind. What they have done is transfused their influences to create an album that drives itself without the unnecessary baggage that other grind acts seem to thrive upon. They’re a quartet that has a lot of enthusiasm for their music, which is astoundingly rare these days. While they might not be the heaviest to exist in the underground, they have a range of technical ability that shows up on certain tracks, and they are eager and earnest, and that’s something that makes them unique. A crushing release from the Northwest.
The album is available September 10th from Six Weeks Records.
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