UMUR
"Bride of Insect" is the debut full-length studio album by US grindcore act Nuclear Death. The album was released through Wild Rags Records in 1990. Nuclear Death were notoriously know in the "underground" for their savage live shows and because they were one of the first (if not THE first) grindcore act to feature a female lead vocalist in Lori Bravo. The band formed in 1986 and released several demos before releasing "Bride of Insect". Their most "famous" release from those years are the "Caveat (1989)" demo compilation, which features tracks from the "Welcome to the Minds of the Morbid (1987)" demo and the "Vultures Feeding (1988)" demo.
"Bride of Insect" is in the beastly and noisy end of the grindcore spectrum. in fact the sound production is so raw and lo-fi that the guitar riffs are almost completely drowned all the way through the album. There´s a buzzing sound somewhere that you can recognize as a guitar, but very seldom are you able to hear what´s going on. The drums blast away and the bass rumbles somewhere in the mix too. Much focus is on the vocals by Lori Bravo and boy does she deliver...
Her vocal performance on this album is probably one of the strongest extreme vocal performances I´ve heard from a woman. Highly aggressive, sneering, growling and just filthy to the bone. Bravo takes no prisoners and few will be left standing when she is done with them. Damn scary lady this one. The lyrics and imagery are in the goregrind catagory which is of course obvious from looking at the cover artwork but song-titles like "Necrobestiality", "Corpse of Allegiance" and "The Beloved Whore Celebration" should give it away too.
...while the lo-fi sound production is noisy, raw and filthy it actually suits the music pretty well. It´s one of those rare cases where such a production is a means to an end. It´s almost unbearable at times, but the key word here is "almost". A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.