Gaf
Cultivate Disdain

January 2011
Released: 2010, Scrotum Jus
Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewer: Aaron Yurkiewicz

Get ready to get gross. Finland’s Gaf have returned with their second full length platter of party gore, CULTIVATE DISDAIN. On the surface, the album could be mistaken for just another sloppy Grindcore effort from a batch of Euro perverts. But mom always said never judge a book by its cover – Gaf do appear to be a batch of Euro perverts, but CULTIVATE DISDAIN delivers the goods with 34 minutes of grind madness executed with ninja like precision. Combining rapid fire pulsations in the vein of early Napalm and Rotten Sound with the tonality and flair of early Swedish death metal, Gaf have taken the best parts of the genre, soaked them in a barrel of whiskey and pressed the results onto a compact disc. Nice…



One glance at the song titles and you can pretty much figure out what Gaf’s modus operandi is – gore, perversion, and partying. Sure it’s been done to death, but Gaf makes it fun again. The tunes last anywhere from 7 seconds to 2 minutes, so they blitz along at a good clip but survive getting blurred together. “Slaughterhouse Science,” “Random Penis Encounter,” “Necrophiliac Coroner,” and the title track are all fine examples where Gaf experiments with typical grind foundations, rhythmic crust and even a wee bit o’ groove metal. It’s an unexpected good time.



The production on CULTIVATE DISDAIN is warm and dense like a pile of bloated rotten meat, and the riffs come off fat and dirty as a result. The packaging looks sharp and builds on the freakazoid monster theme on the cover, and if you’re up for a little bedside reading, peruse the included lyrics for some “wow, that’s pretty disturbing” moments. I didn’t have any real expectations when I first popped the disc into my stereo, but I ended up enjoying CULTIVATE DISDAIN more than I could’ve anticipated. For some nasty, goodtime fun, check out Gaf’s website for more details.