Cuff is a duo from Oshawa, Canada. Several years ago, after their previous band split up, they wanted to kill boredom and started this grindcore act. At first there was a lot of humour. Like many porngrind and goregrind bands they incorporated sick but hilarious samples into their music. However, gradually the band became a bit more serious. 'Interstellar Deviance', their latest e.p. is actually quite a varied mix of grindcore and brutal death metal with intestellar samples and atmospheric elements.
All the necessary elements are available; a deep, guttural voice, vigorous guitars and pounding drums, often to the extent of blast beats. These ingredients alone mostly stand for some quality grindcore but Cuff incorporates some awesome electronic and dark ambient elements as well. These make the music quite unique and extremely enjoyable, even for someone who things all grindcore sounds quite alike.
'Pulsations In Anti-Matter' quickly turns into my favourite track on this e.p. The riffs are immensely powerful and crushing, especially supported by these hammering drums. The dark ambient piece at the end is brilliant, impending even. The song that follows, 'Archaic Mysticism' is a strange, intense and dissonant but nonetheless stunning piece of grindcore and 'Bypassing Evolution' is even more bizarre.
There's even a bit of beautiful, completely non-grindcore music at the end of closer 'Prophecies Unexplained' which confirms my premonition that there is some serious musicial craftsmanship hidden beneath these layers of noise and blasts. I was already thinking about this while listening to the opening track but now I know for sure, we're dealing with talent here.
As far as grindcore is concerned, this is currently my number one of 2015. The originality and amount of variation make this definitely a high quality extreme metal release that absolutely deserves your attention if you're into that stuff. If not, well, start praying to be saved from all this sonic punishment that comes from somewhere up there.
Serge