Finland has been bringing some of the sickest loud bands since forever, and everybody knows it. There was a period there circa '86 I want to say when it seemed like every week at the local punk emporium was This New Finnish 7" Is The Sickest Thing Ever week. Finnish metal bands are always last in line behind Norwegian and Swedish bands, and in fairness, Norway and Sweden are always going to be the final bosses in some senses, but reliably, every couple of years, I'll get some record from Finland that makes me want to say: get yours, Finland. You have always brought your own thing, and sometimes your thing hits everybody else's thing on the head with a hammer, and eats the brains on national television. And so it is with Irritate's Ten Stabs of Demented Violence, whose title will surely turn off anybody who must have something artsy in his metal, and whose cover is practically custom-made to fill me with glee. I'm not gonna go into a huge thing about it, what's the point, either you go for filthy sludge death about blood or you don't, but anybody who ever had some guy in a 'hawk tell you about the latest & fastest from Helsinki & remembers the experience fondly might wanna check out the slower, dirtier latter-day version of that impulse, because it's rad.