Album Review: Escuela Grind – Dreams on Algorithms (MNRK Heavy)

USA extreme metal powerhouse, Escuela Grind, will release their new album, ‘Dreams on Algorithms’, on 18th October via MNRK Heavy.

This new Escuela Grind album finds the band in an interesting place, clearly wanting to experiment a bit more, but not quite capable of realising what that means or how to deliver it. Especially when expectations are so heavily based on this band delivering manic and nonsensical blasts of brutal heaviness. Which is still an important aspect of this record, but it’s also fair to say that this isn’t Escuela Grind at their most coherent.

Playing it safe, albeit with a just touch more ‘core’ (something that will become more prominent elsewhere), Escuela Grind come out swinging with the mean sounding DOA. It’s a solid opener that has plenty of fire and fury alongside some stompy beats, but there’s little in the way of risk taking to be found with it, or the following Always Watching You. Although the thrashy and hardcore blend is exciting and vocalist Katerina sounds immense.

Unsurprisingly, there are many moments of this album that can be summed up as ugly sounding, as is the Escuela Grind way. With an early contender for the ugliest of ugly being Constant Passenger. Personally though, this is the s**t that I’m here for. I want my Escuela Grind to sound unpleasant and a track like this, or a track like Moral Injury with its two-stepping encouraging ways, pleases my vitriolic side.

It’s about here that Escuela Grind start to flex some more of their progressive muscles, looking to infuse a certain amount of discombobulation to the sound of extreme noise. However, with Concept of God, they don’t so much as sprinkle it in as they do pour it in. This is an example of Escuela Grind being all over the place and that lack of coherence hurts the overall enjoyably, even if the manic approach is still lovable.

It’s back to being a bit simpler with Animus Multiform and its bursts of breakneck drums and riffs are pretty damn great. The stompiness of this one will make you gurn. Then there’s Scorpion, the sound of undiluted rage, and Planned Obsolescence, the sound of undeniable danger. Leading to Toothless and easily the album’s weakest track overall.

Where garish and grim riffing can’t hide the lazy core vibe that this track has. Sure, it’s still well and truly based in the extreme, but there’s nothing unique about it and Escuela Grind always prided themselves on being unique within the extreme metal world.

Whereas the finale of Turbulence can be called unique, but is sure to be the most polarising track on the album, if not the most polarising track Escuela Grind have created to date. There are new layers to Escuela Grind’s sound, it even has clean singing. Still, it is a track that goes very hard, it just so happens to be a more varied and challenging listen. There’s no harm in trying new things out, but it would have been nice if it resulted in a better track.

This latter part of the record does slow down the momentum of the album, but when you consider it’s a runaway train on fire, that’s not saying much at all. Escuela Grind promises extreme noise, and once again, they deliver, for the most part. Some misses, some odd experimentation, and some directions that just don’t work, stop this being an instant classic, but it’s still a very good extreme metal record.

Escuela Grind – Dreams on Algorithms Track Listing:

1. DOA
2. Always Watching You
3. Constant Passenger
4. Moral Injury
5. Concept Of God
6. Animus Multiform
7. Scorpion
8. Planned Obsolescence
9. Toothless
10. Turbulence

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