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IRON FRONT
Hooked

Creator-Destructor (2024)
Rating: 7/10

It’s good to see that these Oakland, California-based youngsters have crafted a second album in the form of Hooked, and comes after the decent 2022 debut Left Out To Rot. The five-piece started out in 2016 as Dire Wolves, before morphing into Iron Front in 2019. I do think the name change is relatively un-deathly, but the music most certainly is.

Despite this sophomore outing running for just 22 minutes it packs quite a murderous wallop. Although there are slam elements – something I’m never fond of – there are plenty of old school infectious riffs to digest. There are hints of Suffocation, Cannibal Corpse, Skinless and 200 Stab Wounds as the quintet rattles off each track like meaty machine gun fire.

Drummer Max Mahmood frantically slaps his sticks like some maniacal killer stabbing a victim, although it’s more a case of tin-pot tumult than out and out bludgeoning. It’s all gore-soaked, guttural and somehow groovy in its unhinged assaults. It’s also interesting as to how Iron Front injects hardcore elements too, adding a further ingredient of savagery, but for me it’s the slower deathly grinds which get the saliva dripping.

The opening brutality of ‘Slug Rounds’ is a fine example of such grotesque churning, as are the closing chugs of ‘Pig Splitter’. Vocalist Topey Plourde has a really slurping premise to his vocal style, as if he’s gasping though clots of phlegm and blood in order to puke over the monstrous riffage that in turn grinds off large clumps of juicy flesh.

I stated that it’s all too short of an opus, but there is still plenty of chunkiness to chew on; the eye-gouging slop of the title track, the rabid pulverisations of ‘Burned By A Crack Pipe’ to the goofy goo of ‘Intestinal Siphon’. It’s all good gory fun from the pustulous posse and an ideal way to spend 22 minutes without getting off the toilet.

Neil Arnold

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