Dead Church/Faction Disaster - Split 7"/CD

Seriously, what else is there to do on a Wednesday night when there's no football on? Mind you, I watched the England world cup qualifier last night and it was terrible! Oh well, there's always the comfort of heaviness to keep me company. When planning this review I was thinking that's it's been a long time since I've featured any grind/power-violence bands for a prolonged period of time, i.e. more than one band in a month. That's where Mannequin Rein come in, as they've given me the honour of checking out and reviewing some of their latest releases, starting with the new Dead Church/Faction Disaster split. I recently reviewed Dead Church's split 5" with Suffering Mind, but this split gives me the chance to hear more tracks by the band. It's also the first time I've featured Faction Disaster.

For those who don't know, both bands come from Michigan. Dead Church hail from Detroit and Faction Disaster are from Gaylord, which may explain why they decided to play grind!

Tracklist:-

1. Dead Church – Trust fund Punks
2. Dead Church – One To Blame
3. Dead Church – At War
4. Dead Church – Victim Of Praise
5. Faction Disaster – Liquid Lunch
6. Faction Disaster – Throw Up
7. Faction Disaster – Commander Cody's Dreads 

Dead church put four songs forward on side A of this split. In spite of being a PV band, Dead Church have got riffs! Those riffs are immediately apparent in opener Trust Fund Punks. One To Blame is seventeen seconds of thrashing, grinding mayhem. Nothing more, nothing less. With At War, Dead Church conjures up that rock n roll swagger with some ace down-tuned guitar, which at times is syncopated. The drums flail madly in the background and when they groove towards then end, it all just swirls and moulds together in one big slab of distortion. Closing with Victim of Praise, they sound as thick and as loud as they did at the start. The screams are higher and more squalid and counterbalance the low growls perfectly. These four tracks don't last much more than six minutes and that's just how we like it.

So it's onto Faction Disaster, who only contribute three for some reason. Liquid Lunch starts with some ringing, chamber music style noise before unleashing some raw as hell, feedback-ridden noise. They have more of a live sound on their side of the split and he guitars sound pretty gruesome. Throw Up will make you do just that throughout it's forty-nine second expanse. Commander Cody's Dreads begins with a sample and then blasts like mad. The closing fifteen seconds are filled with a short but awesome groove section and then more of the piercing guitar feedback. Both bands offer up different variations of grind/pv. Dead Church are slightly more polished and focused if I may be so bold. Faction Disaster are more stop/start and the live sound gives you the sense of their energy. Both are awesome though!

You can't stream the whole of this split online, but you can stream the Faction Disaster side via their bandcamp page. As always, I've put it below:-

Also, as you'll have worked out from the title of this review, this split is out on both CD and Vinyl.

You can pick it up from Mannequin Rein Recordings here - http://mannequinrein.storenvy.com/.

Dead Church Website - http://www.dead-church.com
Dead Church Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/deadchurch
Faction Disaster Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/factiondisaster
Mannequin Rein Recordings Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/mannequinrein