HAAPOJA / DEPHOSPHORUS – COLLABORATION LP

So a band from Greece and a band from Finland walk into a bar...okay, not really, but Greece's Astro Grinders Dephosphorus and Finland's rising stars of the Unparalled Sense of Violent Groove have teamed up to release "Collaboration" LP - a nine song, discordantly brutal masterpiece that explores the more tortured, emotional and existential side of the contemporary extreme underground. But don't worry, it still totally grinds and pummels (and there's even a slow jam for grandma!)

Far more than a mere split, this is a trve kvlt collab: each band exchanged singers on each opening song and guitarists – AND the solo by Haapoja’s Pekka Kivela on Dephosphorus' tribute to Slayer "Shades of Reality", after all the release is dedicated to the late Jeff Hanneman.

Dephosphorus hail from Athens, Greece and play a unique musical style known as astrogrind: they endorse a cosmic, mind expanding aesthetic, striving to forge a creative damage path through the underground scene.

With “Collaboration LP,” Dephosphorus return hot on the heels of 2014’s “Ravenous Solemnity” with 5 tracks of their signature hybrid of grind, thrash and underground delights. Vocals dragged from the corpse of just-dead banshee, a multi-verse of blast-beats and glorious riffs that seize you like a rabid bear hug.

On the other side of the wax we have Finland’s Haapoja, who bring a bit more of a blackened approach to their fierce renditions. Contributing 4 tracks to the “Collaboration LP”, Haapoja return to form heard on their 2011 and 2013 lps, spitting angular, befowled and almost mathy riffs over nuclear-clock precision beats and raw-throated howls.

Borrowing musical sensibilities from black metal, hardcore, thrash and grindcore, Haapoja expound on themes of existential and cosmic plights – man lost in an unknowable universe with nothing but a few bleak stars to guide him.

Viral Graphics is responsible the stunning artwork, and the wax comes with a lyrics insert printed on gorgeous cardstock, with reverse board/uncoated paper jackets.