Stench Price – Stench Price – Album Review

Source // Stench Price

Picture the scene. You’re sat in a dark, dingy club, sipping something intoxicating. The air is thick with smoke and the stage is barely visible through the fug. You’re here for the music, something different, something mind-altering but so far, there’s been nothing that even comes close to capturing your imagination.

A Tony Clifton-esque compere cuts through the milieu and ushers a new breed of supergroup onto the floor. “Hmm, heard that before” you cynically mutter to yourself. Through the haze, you barely notice 9 semi-recognisable individuals sauntering on to the stage. The hum of electricity fills the air, the band ready themselves and….all fucking hell breaks loose as an avant-garde grindcore onslaught flattens the assembled throng as though Naked City and Pig Destroyer had furiously started rutting with a bossa-nova addicted lounge act.

You spit your drink across the table, you clean your ears out with whatever’s nearest (candle, napkin, some lady’s high heeled shoe), you rub your eyes furiously and you quickly realise that grindcore in 2016 has met its match; Stench Price are here and they’re fucking with your expectations!

So, who’s who and what the fuck is what? Two very important questions and here’s the low-down. Stench Price mastermind Peter Shallmin (Kamlath, EscapeTheCult) has assembled a veritable feast of extreme metal talent to accompany his avant-garde, lounge-core(!) blitzkrieg.

The roster includes the inimitable likes of: Danny Lilker (Brutal Truth, Nuclear Assault, S.O.D), Dave Ingram (ex-Benediction, ex-Bolt Thrower, Hail Of Bullets, Echelon, Down Among The Dead Men), Shawn Knight (Child Bite), Rogga Johansson (Ribspreader, Paganizer, Echelon, Down Among The Dead Men), Max Phelps (Exist, Cynic, Death DTA), Karina Utomo (High Tension) and last, but not least, Max Максим Константинов (Kamlath) and Romain Goulon (Agressor, Necrophagist, Disavowed).

Stench Price is mad, it’s furious, it’s bewildering, at times amusing and it mashes your nuts like all good grindcore/death-grind should. Almost indescribable in its melding of classic death-grind with lounge music, the combo shouldn’t work but its sheer bravado and canny use of dynamics carries it gloriously over the finishing line.

So, that’s Stench Price in an elaborately described nutshell then…..brilliantly, brutally, bonkers! 9/10