by Greg Prato

There is absolutely nothing subtle about Salt Lake City noisemongers, Gaza. On their second full -length offering, 2009's He Is Never Coming Back, the group is all about growls and screams, and extreme metal music that instantly jumps between sludge metal and near-grindcore. For extreme metal that reeks of cold, hard reality -- heck, just take a gander at the album's title -- Gaza are a supersonic blast to the noggin, especially such sludge-speed-sludge-speed (get the idea?) ditties as "Bishop," "The Meat of a Leg Joint," and the album opener, "How It Is. How It Is Going to Be." There once was a time where it seemed like extreme metallists were trying to be either a musical replica of the speedy rabbit or the slow turtle. Gaza's He Is Never Coming Back succeeds in mutating the two forms together as one.