Great People, Awful Noise, ROTTEN SOUND!

Saturday 9th May 2026

Written by Tom Wilson
Photographed by: Rashid AlKamraikhi, Charlyn Cameron, Tahni Davis

Finnish grindcore legends ROTTEN SOUND are finishing up their first Australian tour in well over a decade, and things are looking a bit … country? The Valley is a sea of trucker hats and R.M.Williams tonight as American country star KOE WETZEL plays the Fortitude Music Hall, but SENSE is a block away, surrounded by battle vests and in the mood for something uglier, and much, much faster.

Opening tonight are Brisbane goregrind crew CEREBRAL EROSION, who are about as subtle as an I.E.D., and no one in the Crowbar tonight is out of the blast radius. A devastating maelstrom of guitar, drums and pitch-shifted vocals, each track is counted in on the snare in the classic grind style, and it sounds absolutely berserk. The vocal effects even give us an unintended laugh, when the vocalist talks to the sound desk between songs in his normal voice and still sounds like a demon. This is my second time bearing witness to CEREBRAL EROSION, and I still can’t shut up about them. Awesome!

Up next are local bruisers AWFUL NOISE, and if you can find a better-named band to open for ROTTEN SOUND, I’d love to hear it! With their bags packed for a tour of Japan, they’ve still got time to drop some new noise on the Crowbar tonight, and the deathgrind crew spare absolutely no one. Even the sample of Samuel L. Jackson from Jurassic Park telling us “hold onto your butts” doesn’t prepare us for the onslaught of Massive Passive Aggressive, and we are at the mercy of their snare drum and Lindon Faynes’ feral vocals. Horrible music made by lovely people – what’s not to like?

The next band might call themselves “DESCENT”, but there is no dip in quality when the Brissie bruisers take the stage. Their vocalist looks ready to front a hardcore band with his white longsleeve and baseball cap, and there is definitely a hardcore tinge to what they do, but the furious noise spewing from the speakers is unmistakably death metal. Last time I saw them, they were treading the boards at Miami Marketta opening for KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, and tonight they are somehow even more savage. In the midst of writing a new release, they field test some brand new tracks tonight, including one with the working title Goat Penis, which I'm really hoping they don't change. They tell the crowd that their merch didn’t arrive in time, so we should console ourselves by buying everyone else’s merch instead, and sign off with Resolve. An absolutely scorching set.

There are a lot of things on CHOOF’s to-do list tonight, and “fuck about” isn’t one of them. Before they even play a note, they’re in our faces, pointing out every single person hiding up the back of the venue and berating them until they come closer. They could be forgiven for their hesitation, because if you’ve read anything I’ve written about CHOOF over the last five years (including calling them “the most dangerous band in Australia”), you might be safer up the back. They start to strum out the slow, malevolent opening of Blasphemous Execution as vocalist Jake stalks the stage, swivel-eyed and maniacal, before the power-violence kicks in, and we’re off – Jake swigging a beer and spitting it over our heads. Does having beer spat in your face count as breaking sobriety? No? How about drinking beer off Jake’s bare feet like Salma Hayek in From Dusk Til Dawn? Yes? Glad I passed on that one then. Jackson’s bass sounds like Shane Embery hitting bridge cables with a sledgehammer, and SENSE is damn near throwing our neck out in approval. But it isn’t enough. “Is that all you’ve got?” Jake asks. Cheeky bugger.

Bonus Hot Sauce Review: CHOOF have collaborated with SUNYATA HOT SAUCE to bring you **DEMON SEMEN**, a spicy little number, packed with devilish habaneros. The vibrant colour of the sauce will match the shade your face turns once consumed, possibly your arsehole too, but we’re not looking to find out. As well as being bloody hot, it is styled after a Bloody Mary, celery notes included. For those who are timid on your spice, go easy, but if you drink lava on the reg, you’ll find a healthy burn and a strong flavour punch from the habies, which gives way to subtler acidic flavours as the heat tempers out. I slathered it on Hot Wings and it was gooooooood -Rashid

After over a decade in the military, I know that I’ve got a different attitude to being on-time than a lot of grindcore bands, but normally the problem is that they’re running late! With a half-hour break between bands, we brave the Valley to get something to eat, but when we arrive back at the venue we hear the booming music from the top of the stairs and realise – they’ve started early! We knew ROTTEN SOUND were fast, but we didn’t anticipate how quickly they’d want to come onstage, so I ended up missing them opening their set with my favourite track, Self. Their latest release Mass Extinction knocks out eight tracks in under ten minutes, so we should have anticipated they were in a hurry! Performing as a WORMROT-style trio of guitar, drums and vocals, each track is a short, violent explosion of sound – drummer Sami Latva rattling off blastbeats behind Keijo’s rapid-fire vocals. This is the last night of their first Australia tour in over a decade, and they hold absolutely nothing back, particularly during a ferocious rendition of Targets. They take us on a punishing tour of their discography as the pit churns and swirls, and then, barely half an hour since they took the stage, it’s all over, and we’re left shaking our heads and smiling. ROTTEN SOUND were here for a good time, not a long time, and hopefully we’re not waiting too long for them to come back!