You probably noticed that this review doesn’t have an album cover accompanying it. That’s because I couldn’t find a single reference to this band on the internet. I got this album from a friend on the Internet in digital form. Chalk was a two-piece death metal/rap hybrid from Detroit that released this album in 1996 and nothing else. I don’t really care for any type of rap, but there’s something about this album that entertains me despite how bad it is.

First, the metal elements are pretty superficial. The real emphasis of this album is the lyrics, and man, are they ever a doozy. They’re some of the most offensive stuff I’ve ever heard. The subject matter is similar to early Cannibal Corpse; if Chris Barnes had become a rapper instead of a death metal singer, he might have lyrics like these. (I would go into more detail, but my mom reads my reviews here so I won’t.) It’s like they were trying to go out of the way to cover all the bases of offensiveness; in addition to the typical lyrics about rape and murder, the occasionally throw in a few anti-Christian lyrics. The rhyming is pretty insipid; a typical example is “surgeon” and “virgin”. Profanity is way over used; I counted 40 F-bombs in the second song, which is six and a half minutes long. There are also some samples from “true crime” shows, including a truly sickening one from a child murderer that I had to skip over. They also lifted the opening from Black Sabbath’s debut album for the beginning of the last track, something any fan of real metal would recognize, but which would go over the heads of nu-metal fans.

I’m not entirely sure why I reviewed this album. As mentioned above, there’s barely any metal in it even for a nu-metal album, I hate rap so I can’t really judge it by that genre’s standards, and it’s so obscure that no one’s likely to find it anywhere. I still kind of enjoy it despite its lyrics, but I’m definitely laughing at these guys instead of with them.

Jig-Ai at MySpace

First things first, I must say how great the Czech Republic is for metal. You have incredible bands like !T.O.O.H.!, Duobetic Homunkulus, Mincing Fury And Guttural Clamour Of Queer Decay, Negligent Collateral Collapse, Eardelete, and Ahumado Granujo who really know what they’re doing in the elements of death metal, grindcore and goregrind. Respectively, the group that I’m talking about today has two guys coming from the last three bands I just mentioned, and the third coming from a band I’ve never heard of, so those three are the crazy bastards that form Jig-Ai, who goes underneath my microscope of brutality at the moment.

For those of you who are aware of when this album dropped out of the sky, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m reviewing it now rather than two years ago. The main reason is because I’m sure most people just skimmed over this album as the usual goregrind fanfare with a Japanese and hentai*/guro** twist. Well morons, you’re wrong.

In the opening paragraph I already said these fellows are from the Czech Republic, but I neglected to tell you about how insane Czech Republic goregrind is. Ahumado Granujo alone turned me on to what I consider the only genre where experimentation is acceptable. Jig-Ai‘s bass player, Burak, hails from Ahumado Granujo, and one of the most notable things about that band is their utterly bizarre sound effects and electronica/techno remixes (i.e. their cover of “King Anus III”, originally by Cock And Ball Torture, and complete overhaul of Pete Sandoval’s drum track off of Morbid Angel‘s “Heretic”).

The reason I mention them in the first place is because you can definitely hear the sound effect influence from Ahumado Granujo, and I’m almost certain that Burak was the creator of all those glorious noises. Now, the main difference between the two bands with Burak is that Ahumado Graunjo‘s noises were much more quarky and fun, all while Jig-Ai‘s are actually strikingly cryptic and haunting. They range from random anime characters yelling incoherently (“VogelGrippe-N”) to bizarre noises (“Final C(u)nt” ,”Japanese Gut Cake” and “Injectator Kruto”), and they just add to the carnage that is already invading your ears.

As much as I’d like to compare all of these riffs and song structures to those of Impetigo, Gut, Cliteater, and Dead Infection, I just can’t. There’s just something about Jig-Ai that makes them the ultimate goregrind band in my mind, and I think it’s all of the different elements they use in their music. I’ve already mentioned the weird sampling, but there’s also the varying degrees between Mozek’s pitch-shifted vocals. He never sticks to just the usual low and guttural voice, but also changes it up to make him sound like a swarm of locusts, or even say my mother-in-law belching at dinner in a higher tone. I would honestly give somebody $20 U.S. (***NOT A REAL OFFER!!!***) if they didn’t start tapping their fingers or feet while listening to the beginning of “Sadomasochistic Practices Manual” or “HN-Islam“, or if they didn’t even laugh at Jig-Ai‘s wonderful take on the Brujeria classic, “La Ley de Plomo“.

Jig-Ai have come into a world where goregrind can get so repetitive and stale and turned the guidelines inside out and wore them as a hat. They really have put themselves on the goregrind pedestal because of their originality, groove, and let’s face it, their song titles are pretty damn funny (who the hell thinks up “Suffocated Between Gigantic Utters” or “Extruding Testicles Through Garlic Press”?). “Jig-Ai” is definitely for somebody who wants something extra with their gore, and Jig-Ai have an all-you-can-eat buffet of it.

*Hentai: Anime cartoon characters having intercourse. There may or may not be a shortage of tentacles depending on the film.

**Guro: Hentai cartoons that involve lots of dismemberment, vore, sadism, and other wonderfully violent acts. I hope you get a boner from it.