Animal Schoolbus "Going to Grammy’s House"

   To start off this review I am going to say that this is a great example of parenting done right. In a current day and age where children are listening to some extreme pieces of garbage in terms of music, I extremely am glad to see people out there getting their children into extreme metal music. 

   Animal Schoolbus is a father and daughter grindcore project that throws down a devastating debut release called, “Going to Grammy’s House.” This album is full of sickening sounding riffs and utterly pissed off sounding vocals. The album contains twenty tracks, 14 of which were recorded when lead singer Princess Beast was only two-years-old. There are a few new tracks along with some live recordings from a show back in 2019. Now, the guitarist, drummer and individual responsible for getting his child into fast bone grinding music is none other than Charlie Sad-Eyes who is the genius behind Crawl Below, which is an awesome band worth checking out. 

   I think what stood out to me most was the raw and honest aggression that comes from Princess Beast when screaming over the punishing instrumental compositions. At two-years-old most of us were just beginning to really grasp the concept of unleashing our frustrations and sometimes that also turned into tantrums. However, I cannot think of a better outlet for a young child than getting to unleash their inner fury by working on creating furious sounding grindcore songs. The titles of the songs alone are truly amazing with tracks such as, “Mommy’s Car is Blue,” “Stuck in a Tree” and my favorite which is, “Oreo’s My Favorite.” The music has that Napalm Death and early Carcass vibe, but also has that raw power violence approach made famous by bands like Charles Bronson and Spazz. 

   The three songs that were recorded more recently definitely turn up the heat, especially in terms of sheer musical brutality. “Everyone Had Mullets in the 80s,” “I Can Do One Handed Cartwheels” and “I Bet Taylor Swift Never Has to Clean Her Room,” are extremely ferocious pieces of pulverizing grindcore. The frantic sounding guitar playing from Charlie matched with Princess Beast’s more vicious style of singing would probably scare a group of pathetic looking metalcore kids right out of their skinny jeans! Also, the contrasting vocal parts during, “I Bet Taylor Swift Never Has to Clean Her Room,” injects a monstrous sounding element to an already chaotic sounding piece of music. 

   In the end, I was really impressed by this album and the strong collaboration between father and daughter made for such an enjoyable and impressive sounding release. I get sent a lot of grindcore promos for review that sound dreadfully awful, so hearing this was a breath of fresh air after getting suffocated by all those basement dwelling piss poor Napalm Death copycats. In a world being overrun with crappy music from artists like LiL Nauseating X, Cardi Beehive and that one guy who used to be in One Direction and now makes horrible films, Animal Schoolbus is here to save us with one brutal song at a time. The Grammys better give this album a nomination, or else Princess Beast and teddy bear friends are going to be coming for all of you!

Check out the song "I Can Do One Handed Cartwheels" : 

Link to their Bandcamp (Album comes out April 30, 2021) : 

https://animalschoolbus.bandcamp.com/album/going-to-grammys-house-2021-remix