Blood Duster

Australia's Blood Duster take their name from a song by John Zorn's Naked City but a tribute band they are not. In contrast to NC's shrill, cut-and-paste madness, they play a bottom-heavy mix of gore-filled Grindcore and grooving, southern-fried Death Metal. The former part of the equation comes through more heavily on their Relapse debut, 1996's Yeest (actually a compilation of two previous releases), as their music revealed a prominent early Napalm Death/Carcass influence. The subsequent Str8 Outta Northcote (1998), on the other hand, finds their hillbilly roots showing through to a much fuller extent. They've never taken themselves too seriously -- just look at their song titles -- but neither do they let things devolve into pure campiness.