So I'll admit it. When I stumbled upon Mammoth Grinder, I thought I knew what to expect. With a name like Mammoth Grinder, a big menacing pointy logo, some album artwork on another release depicting a corpse being mangled by meat hooks, I was expecting a grindy, death metal-esque album full of tremolo picking guitars, blast beats and songs about bodily mutilation and what not. Which is fine because I love that shit. And lets be honest, I know it's stupid to judge things by the cover, but in the underground music scene, when you see band with a certain style of font and gruesome imagery, more often than not, you're gonna get some grindcore or death metal. It's not rocket science, its all pretty straight forward. Look at any Cannibal Corpse or Cattle Decapitation album cover. I know, I know, stupid of me to make assumptions. How wrong was I? Very wrong. It's rare to come across an album this musically diverse. It's really quite amazing. Speedy hardcore punk, slow, pummeling doom metal, massive gang vocals and just a touch of southern sensibility. It has it all and it blends so well together. The first time I finished listening to Rage and Ruin, I thought it was so damn good, I listened to it again. If this album is any representation of how their other releases sound, I will definitely be picking them up as soon as possible.