Band: Sayyadina
Title: The Great Northern Revisited
Label: Relapse Records
Distribution: Rough Trade Benelux.
Release date: March 16th 2011
Review: compilation-MCD

Sweden’s Sayyadina consist of current, former and session members of e.g. General Surgery, Birdflesh, Jigsore Terror, Nasum and Acursed. Yeah, this might cause erectional lust to every Grind-freak, not?!
What’s more, this release is an important one because of the material compiled on it. It collects stuff from different 7”EPs, tracks that appeared on different compilations and samplers, and four previously unreleased songs as well. Fun and pleasure! It is a merciless bull’s eye-hitter and an enormous intelligent thing to do, seen from Relapse-staff side, because: with the knowledge that Sayyadina might be one of the strongest upcoming bands within the Grind-scene, and with the knowledge that vinyl- and sampler-material are usually meant for just a limited audience…
The album, consisting of thirty tracks, all of them having an average duration of about one minute, starts with one of the earliest efforts, the five tracks taken from the 2001-split-EP with Bruce Banner. The band’s musical style was more Hardcore-oriented back then, yet with the same artistic precision and grinding madness. Nicest part on this compilation might be the 2003-7”EP Solace Denied, which was (and still is, of course) some Crossover / Crust / Grind release from the highest order. Yet also the material from different other splits or contributions to samplers is highly interesting.
Sayyadina play harsh and uncompromising straight-forward Grind with elements from Crust, Hardcore, Punk and Death Metal with a rare experimental outburst and a modest injection of extra additions (samples, a handful of sudden slow-down parts, and so on). I prefer the more recent material, which is more Metal / Grind-oriented and somewhat more experimental, than the Punk / Hardcore-basics from the early years.

---/100

Ivan Tibos.