Various Artists
This Comp Kills Fascists Vol 2
Relapse Records

The impatiently-awaited second instalment in the “This Comp Kills Fascists” series strays no further from Volume One’s passionate and hugely respectable tuning-in on underground grind, powerviolence, fastcore and all manner of nastiness, while still attracting larger names on to its back cover.

This time around, Lack Of Interest, Despise You, Hummingbird Of Death and other firmly established names from the hardcore and grind underground grace the track listing and beef up Volume Two to be the bigger and tougher successor, rather than the half-arsed, disappointing successor that it easily could have been. The amount of tracks has also risen from the fifty-one tracks on Volume One to a beastly seventy-four tracks, resulting in just over an hour’s worth of destruction. But as with Volume One, and compilations as a whole, the whole thing becomes quite a hit-and-miss affair. Most people will find themselves skipping to whichever band appeals most to them rather than listening to the album as a whole, which unfortunately wastes most of it. But rather than being a sort of willy-nilly approach to a grindcore compilation, TCKF really zones in on the underground. Bands on here like Marion Barry give the compilation the punkness that is really what TCKF seems to be about. And while the occasional deathgrind band crops up along the album, it is definitely more of a punk’s grind album than for a metalhead who likes grind as well. There’s far more sub-minute songs and a far more straightforward and raw approach in the majority of the bands’ music than the fret-wanking and pretence that metalheads generally require.

Personal favourite: Extortion. Most pleasing new discovery: Marion Barry. A very well-made, successful follow-up to Volume One; if they failed to kill fascists the first time around, Volume Two has destroyed them and defiled their corpses.

Buy this album from AMAZON

Review by Samuel Hunt