Haggus – What’s Your Excuse? EP

Artist: Haggus

Title: What’s Your Excuse?

Release: Tape / Digital

Year: 2023

Label: Grindfather Productions, No Time Records, Fuck Your Life Records

The mincegore powerhouse that is Haggus has been unleashing their new and particular brand of mincy goregrind since 2014, inspiring countless similar bands and arguably starting the trend of combining mincecore’s political themes and punk-style crusty riffs with goregrind’s intensity and lyrical obsession with the utterly morbid. This year, on March 13th, they released their latest release What’s Your Excuse? in collaboration with one of the most active grindcore labels at the moment, Grindfather Productions, and also with No Time Records/Fuck Your Life Records, both doing a cool limited cassette edition.

The EP contains eight tracks of their signature gory mince sound, this time with a lyrical concept revolving around animal rights, an issue that many mince bands have tackled, it’s a staple of the genre after all. But we already know that, as the angst-inducing artwork depicts a very despondent looking monkey being tested with some kind of machine on its head… It is an ideal audition for the sheer brutality and militant animal liberation themes that this EP revolves around.

Haggus have definitely stepped up their game production-wise, and although compositionally they stick to a similar formula of writing short and groovy songs with sudden tempo changes and simple yet catchy heavily distorted caveman riffs, they certainly show a level of progression on this latest EP of theirs. The drums go from fierce blastbeats to crustcore style rhythmic changes and it all fits together perfectly. And it has to be said, even if some people don’t like the style of their vocalist, he has one of the most original and wild vocal techniques in the genre, which might be hard to get used to at first. At times they reach almost unheard-of levels of muddy and gurgling deep growls.

Keeping in mind that the band is quite prolific and productive with making new music, it is hard for them not to get stale and boring, yet Haggus still somehow manages to keep the listener engaged and interested. There’s just something unique and special about their unapologetic sound that keeps us grindfreaks hooked, and I don’t think they’re going to stop doing what they’re doing anytime soon, as they’re probably at the peak of their career right now.

The mincegore sound they helped create spawned so many other cool bands with their own fresh take on it (which is hard to do given the formulaic nature of the subgenre) like MxMxMx, Bloat, Casket Mush and so on. We have them to thank for this sudden revival of mincecore, and we fans are certainly very grateful. In a way, they are a continuation of Archagathus’ legacy—inspiring and reviving a genre that was considered very niche 15 years ago and is now flourishing with new fans and music.

Haggus continue to run with their signature blend of mince and gore without staying strictly within it. Some of their material is more on the goregrind side, this EP is more mincy and crusty—they have found a perfect balance between the two and it seems that their immense creativity is not only about quantity but also about quality—as is perfectly and undeniably shown on the What’s Your Excuse? EP. If you’re into chaotic and lo-fi extreme music and grindcore in general, disappointment is not an option with a release like this. And we can’t wait to see what their next step will be—because with this level of undying commitment to the DIY scene, they won’t stop unleashing more noise on us anytime soon and are already considered one of the biggest hopes of this generation of grindcore, and rightly so!

Ⓐ NOISE NOT WAR Ⓐ

Source: diyconspiracy.net