Scene gatekeeping puts Grind and Metal (and by extension Hardcore or any kind of "core" music) are into an ambivalent and somewhat funny relationship. The longer the scenes co-exist (because they hardly can do otherwise) and the more they merge, the more some people try to draw boundaries around what they think is the genre's true essence, and impose conformity based on a rigid definition, creating their own elitist fiefdoms. Grind and Metal have coexisted for a long time and have gradually merged into the same thing (i.e. Death/Grind). Musically the differences are superficial and even the most seminal switch between sounds (CARCASS, to take just one obvious example, has records that are both 100% Grind, some that are 100% Death Metal and some that are in between).

But it's basically a law that as a musical genre evolves, it absorbs different influences. Take Metalcore or Deathcore, that was basically a reinterpretation of Death Metal by a generation of youngsters. They were ostracized by the "true Metal" fans only to merge as scenes a few years later (Deathcore nowadays doesn't really exist as a separate scene). Some Grind people are gatekeepers who will call anything that doesn't sound like REPULSION or INSECT WARFARE "false Grind", which ironically would make "false grind" many of the bands that have started the genre. And the gatekeeping in the "Metal community", as exemplified by Metal Archive's unwillingness to list Deathcore bands, or some Grind/Goregrind bands (and being super selective at that), is also pretty asinine.

COLLISION is a band caught, musically at least, between the world of Grindcore and the world of Metal. They don't synthesize the sounds Death/Grind bands such as PIG DESTROYER or BENIGHTED do, they're more about combining different sounds, in this case the noisy, chaotic grind riffs with Thrash metal groove, which is, of course nothing for purists. But why should it matter? I personally couldn't care in the least, and think the sooner the mentality described above dies, the better (I suspect it's spearheaded just by a vocal minority anyway, and most people really don't care about the stylistic "purity" of their music anyway). This Dutch band has been around for since the year 2000 and has four full-length albums under their belt and a number of other releases (among them a split album with my favorite local band MINCING FURY).

Two of their full-length albums came out on the acclaimed Dutch label Hammerheart Records, that is also releasing "The Final Kill". As the title suggests, this mini-album is their final release before they disband. The release has seven songs and the playtime is 14 minutes, so by grind standards the songs are quite long (i.e. around two minutes long). In terms of the sound this album is really all over the place: there is pure grind, but also some hardcore breakdowns or groovy, songs like "Frozen In Terror" or "Savage Executioner" sound like straight-forward Death-Thrash to me. The opener "Sweet Vermin" is one of the grindier songs, but this one too shifts between spastic riffage and parts with more defined riffs. The release as a whole is good, blast beat-laden fun, I'm tempted to call this party-Grindcore. You can say it sounds a bit generic, but at the same time it's energetic and tight enough to make you want to rock out to it. Unfortunately we won't see these guys live anymore, but at least we can have fun with their records.