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Cretin: Freakery

13/08/06 || Lord K Philipson

“Mannequin
He comes to you again with penis in hand
Mannequin”

That, my friends, is poetry. It’s also written in big letters at Cretin’s official site. I have no idea where it’s from or anything, but it has “penis” in it and that’s all that fucken counts. And I’m not kidding. I should give Cretin a full 10 for understanding that the use and abuse of “penis” is where we are at here at GD. We just loooooooove penis. Anyways, back to the album at hand. Let me make a rundown on all the songs included, just to give you an idea of the sound:

Track 1 is grindcore. The remaining 15 tunes are… grindcore as well.

There. Done. Fuck all. Bzz-bzz… Bee Gee’s. Bono. Antfarm. Jo Fucken Bench. Gordon Ramsey.

I’ve seen Cretin being praised all over (oh yes, I’m exaggerating like a muthabitch) the net and got curious about them. I wonder why, I don’t even like grindcore all that fucken much in the first place. Not even in the second place to be completely Frank Andersson with you lot. After going thru “Freakery” a few times I can easily say that this album isn’t worth the praise and could be re-titled “Sneakery” for all I care. I don’t even know that that means… But anyways, Cretin was covered for about 5 seconds everywhere on the net and alot of reviews about them made them out to be something real fucken special. But think about it, how fucken special can one be when playing grindcore?

Cretin’s not special, Cretin’s just another grindcore act with little-to-nothing new to offer. After all, it’s fucken grindcore.

16 songs, close to 30 minutes… At least that’s a decent length when it comes to this genre. Exceeding it would mean it’d be too much to handle. Hell, half of the length is pretty much too much too handle. This specific type of music is a very exhausting thing to devour, but it works in small doses. There’s like 2 bands in the world that I can bare with when to comes to full-on grind and those 2 are Terrorizer and Nasum. Cretin won’t make this a list of three, as you might suspect from my writing so far.

From what I can make out of the lyrics (and titles) without looking, they seem kinda humourous. I hate humour in metal. UK gave us Acid Reign, that should have been the end of humour in metal dammit! Besides that, Dan’s vocals has a tendency to get really annoying after a few songs. Or verses. Not only that, he also gives me Cronos-vibes here and there. And my condolences goes to Dan for that. While pointing out some (there are plenty) of Cretin’s flaws, one thing they really managed to do right on this release is the bass-sound. I like it. Ugly, distorted bass is where my ass is at. Among other locations. I got a huge ass.

Cretin’s not all Teh Suck though, at times they actually throw in some slower, heavier, early Napalm Death groove. But it’s just too little and it’s definitely way too fucken late. In the end it all sounds like the same song to me (that’s pretty much the downside of all fucken grind bands), and when it’s not a great song to start with, a 30-minute tune of grindcore is not exactly stopping world-hunger. To wrap shit up: the title for track 15 is definitely written with yours truly in mind. That’s what The Almighty Me becomes when listening to these guys.

Cretin’s “hype” is not deserved.

4 half-assed things out of 10.

Information
Released: 2006
Label: Relapse Records
Website: www.cretanic.com
Band
Dan Martinez: vocals, guitar
Matt Widener: bass
Col Jones: drums

Tracklist
01. Tooth And Claw
02. Tazer
03. Daddy´s Little Girl
04. Uni-Tit
05. Cook The Cupcake
06. Cockfight
07. Object Of Utility
08. Creepy Crawlies
09. Walking A Midget
10. Uncle Percy
11. Dirt Eater
12. Mannequin
13. A Fowl Fetish
14. Making Roadkill
15. The Yawning God
16. Profane

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