I've been at a loss for what to post next, so I want to do something a little different and talk about/promote a band I got to see recently. I went in knowing basically nothing about the band except that they were from Seattle and described as deathgrind on the flyer, but that was enough to interest me since Seattle has been responsible for some solid grind recently. Cystic plays a seriously old school style, definitely very death metal, but I hear a heavy thrash metal influence as well. I'm talking the extreme, proto-death metal shit like Sepultura and Morbid Saint. I mean, I was thinking they sounded like early Sepultura reincarnated as a grind band even before they played the Anticop cover. To be honest, I kind of want to say they're essentially playing death/thrash metal with the intensity turned up to 11 and that's where the grind feel comes from more so than the use of grindcore riffs or anything. It's in the vocals as well, while they're harsher than what you'd generally hear on a thrash metal album (with the exception of Paranoid), there's often a thrash metal feel to the delivery of the lines.
In short, Cystic is a sick deathgrind band (or something like that) that puts on a killer live show, and also channels the spirit of 80s thrash metal better than any actual thrash revival band I've heard. They also get points for having a song named after a Jim Van Bebber short. I'm going to be looking forward to seeing what they do next.
I'm not going to post a download for this since the tracks are all up for listening on Bandcamp already. If you really want to get the songs without paying you can find a guide on how to do it somewhere, it's not hard.
