This one is strictly for grind fanatics. Assuck blast through fifteen songs of straightforward, unpretentious grindcore in just a tad over fifteen minutes. Because of its shortness, I hesitate to call "Misery Index" an album proper, more like an EP, although, for me, it's a rather positive thing. I am not a grindcore zealot, which means that there is only so much of it that I can take. If I listen to an album with something like forty songs on it, I will inevitably get bored unless the band is very good, and we all know that for every good band there are two hundred thousand crappy ones. When I put "Misery Index" on, though, I get a quick quarter of an hour grind-fix and feel very happy indeed.

The music here is alright for a grind band. The sound may be generic because of the Morrisound production, but it's also very heavy and massive, so I really can't complain. Musically, Assuck managed to, some extent, avoid the usual grindcore blemish when the songs turn into one monotonous flow, and there is nothing you can do but give up on it. Here, the band came up with some pretty good riffs, a few start-stop rhythmic shifts, and tempo variations that go from slow grinding parts to the fast blast beats. I still can't tell the songs apart from each other, but that's how grindcore is, so... Grind fans will find this to their liking while everyone else can safely pass on it.

© 2000 boris