Album Review: Blissfucker by Trap Them

If there is a musical equivalent to the film genre New French Extremity, characterized by body horror and grotesque violence, it is the combination of extreme hardcore with the towering walls of buzzsaw guitars wrought by Trap Them. With their third full-length, Darker Handcraft, in 2011, the abject four-piece created an exquisitely horrific balance between relentless energy, blistering pace and monstrously well-crafted songs. Three years later, Blissfucker is the product of a rebuilt band featuring an entirely new rhythm section, with Brad Fickeisen on drums and Galen Baudhuin on bass, and is much weirder than its predecessor.

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The fourth album from crust/hardcore/sludge/grind outfit Trap Them may contain some of the catchiest songs they’ve ever written—see the smokin' hot riff of “Gift and Gift Unsteady,” reminiscent of Entombed’s classic “Seeing Red” lick—but it’s just as heavy as always. Heavier, even: The grindcore of late album cut “Former Lining Wide the Walls” (two, maybe three, of the 11 song titles make sense, FYI) takes their D-beat-drenched, feedback-laden horror to new levels of extremity. As always, the Kurt Ballou production gives the album the depth and punch that it deserves, making this the band's most dangerous declaration to date.

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In a guest column he wrote for Metalsucks in 2010, Trap Them singer Ryan McKenney confessed, “My sense of humor sucks.” Even back then, this was not news. Trap Them released their Filth Rations EP that year, and it was as complete a statement as any full-length they’d recorded to date—and just as joyless. Darker Handcraft followed in 2011, and that album elevated McKenney and crew to a new level.

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