FLUIDS – reduced capabilities – SPLATTER LP

Death Metal, Goregrind – Milk Clear with Gold Splatter version – Hells Headbangers

Since 2018, Arizona’s FLUIDS have been prolifically polluting the underground with their remorselessly disgusting brand of goregrind. While they no doubt made an impact with their first two full-lengths, 2019’s Exploitative Practices and 2020’s Ignorance Exalted, it was myriad short-length assaults where FLUIDS truly made their loudest / lewdest declaration of total goregrind purity: knuckle-dragging, ignorant, and intensely foul ‘n’ filthy. Come / cum 2021, FLUIDS would join HELLS HEADBANGERS’ dysfunctional family and release their grand-reckoning third album, Not Dark Yet, followed by a vinyl reissue of their Fluids of Death compilation and, a year after that, the all-new Fluids of Death 2 compilation. And still, the toilet was not empty…

Now, the sewers erupt again and FLUIDS expel their fourth full-length, Reduced Capabilities. Immediately, the full force of FLUIDS is felt – a characteristic stream of slimy, speculum-spreading, all-caps GOREGRIND in the grand, drum-programmed ‘n’ fuzz-toned tradition of godfathers Mortician – but more so is Reduced Capabilities the band at their most stripped-down. No intros, no samples – rather, a rugged & raw and totally streamlined approach to the foulness that is FLUIDS. Sublime simplicity defined, and then defiled: nothing but blasting and slamming, slamming and blasting, blasting and blasting, and slamming and slamming. Reduced Capabilities also marks the first album with newer vocalist David Duran, who plumbs the absolute depths of his throats whilst evincing slightly more articulation than most goregrinders. And then, surprise of all surprises, FLUIDS end the album with a cover of Moby’s “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters,” which actually isn’t so shocking given the band’s past dalliances in filmic atmospheres.

“Less is more,” more or less, and FLUIDS trim the fat with Reduced Capabilities!