Someone at Necropolis Records is on an A&R roll. If you haven't been turned on to this label's penchant for all things metal-related, here's yet another excuse to pay attention to this haven for modern day metal. Plucking five relatively young-looking lads from Finland and giving them worldwide musical distribution sounds daring to say the least, but Rotten Sound is anything but unfocused when it comes to finely honed grindcore, with chunks of hardcore thoroughly embedded in its sound.

This six song CD will give most of the metal public its first listen to this restless outfit, which has been around since 1993. Subsisting on a diet of early Napalm Death and groove-oriented thrash like Kreator, Rotten Sound does a superb job of blending the intensity of the former with discernible riffs from the latter. The result is a band that offers skull-crushing ferocity, as well as a melodic (as melodic as bloodthirsty metal can be!) side, coming off as multi-faceted rather than sounding confused.

"Perfection" speeds along so quickly that it almost sounds like your CD player is skipping. Only after the band breaks down into its heavy (yet still speedy, relatively speaking) riffing do you realize that this is like listening to Reign in Blood at double speed. The scalding "DisInterest" salvages a sneering barrage of pseudo-decipherable vocals, giving speed metal as well as hardcore a run for the money in its brief minute and twelve second runtime. Now that's execution. A great rendition of Carcass' "Reek of Putrefaction" caps off the CD, channeling the band's wrath into the next generation of brutalizing metal! Prepare yourself for another onslaught of Scandinavian metal that's not only extreme in nature, but also accessible enough to win new converts within a single listen.