Hirntrust Grind Media hails from lower Austria, supposedly, but it hits in many places globally. Hirntrust cloaks itself in a mystery, in anonymity and enigmatic reclusion – which is peculiar for music that seems to focus on one thing only: to hit as hard as possible and then annihilate as destructively and completely as possible. Leaving vast bombshells of disrupted eardrums and endlessly manipulated minds. Rumours and myths surround the label and the idea is easy to come by that HGM hides a lot more than they want to have seen in the clear wide open. A secret society of noise, breakcore, trash and digital power, stretching around the globe, contacting likeminded gangs, hordes and lonely wolfs, to... well, for what exactly is not really know. Only what is available on recorded material, and even here it is possible that these are manipulated to hide their true ends.

  Addictions are only problematic if you are trying to overcome them. Obsessions are only problematic if you try to resist them.

Especially the focus on short media (5“, 7“, 10“ slabs of raging vinyl) of Hirntrust Grind Media gives away their intentions. It hints at the self confidence these harmony-heathens have towards their self-appointed ammunition aka sales material aka cultural repositories. Seven Inch singles that are like mortar bombs, destroying what is still remaining of your ears and minds with raging destruction and blasts of power noise. I listened to Pink Floyd – „Animals“, Emerson, Lake & Palmer – „Trilogy“ and King Crimson - „Islands“ while writing this (and then some Count Basie while doing the layout...), all to have a remedy at hand to overcompensate these short, sharp shock tactics. Anyway. There are some things that the music, if we may concentrate on this alone for a paragraph or two, before returning to the worldwide conspiracy, on Hirntrust shares all over all releases. For instance that your colleagues at work won’t understand why you listen to this and disregard you as a little strange. The guy who seems normal and then goes out to kill a few dozen nuns, that kind. Your mother will think the same but she will still love you. That is the good news. There is also the amount of energy compressed into these small platters of destructed and disrupting music, that will erupt into your eardrums with a quick set of bursts. If there is a political message to Hirntrust Grind Media then it is either really well hidden or so open in the fore that it just evades focus.

To the disrupted mind, everything is equally disrupted. To the equalized mind, everything is in a constant state of flux.

Within the strict confines of the music that Hirntrust is interested in, they present the widest possible variety. Mix the following words to whatever three- or four-word-genre description you like, and not matter what you chose, you’ll be dead on to Hirntrust: Death, Noise, Core, Break, Power, Electronics, Psycho, Retard, Gabba, Insanity, Trash, Crust, Grind, Hyper, Proto, Violence, Killer and whatever (see illustration – they have a few more for you to expand the game on their website). But no matter what, it will be a blasting killer slap of vinyl, that much is for sure, and mostly carrying a name that you probably never have heard before and whose existence in the real world is very much in doubt. Maruosa or Rank Sinatra or Duran Duran Duran, to name just a few. And then some that you might have heard of, if you scourge the same virtual and real places like V/Vm or Bug or God Sent Us. Or, then again, probably not. How many of these  projects and arists are inside the Hirntrust conspiracy? How many are only affiliated or satellites doing their thing to add to the plan? How many are being used against their will or without their knowledge? (there is an important difference between being forced to do something and being manipulated into doing something to an unknown end!) Nobody will ever know, because there is noone that could tell – and the few that could would not. One of the few somewhat out in the open is 1bomb1target, which is also some kind of starting point for the whole expandatory disorder mailorder media rhizome that HGM has become in the last years.

In the course of a lifetime, sordidness and worry will lead you into all kinds of temptations, especially those that idle hands sit in stillness over. Never detest, if you can’t resist.

Hirntrust has been seen in many places from London to the Ukraine, shared many stages in many disguises, and whenever you think it might be the mysterious workings of Hirntrust Grind Media, then it probably really is. Even if, or rather, especially, when it is happening in various places at once. Some people say HGM is over a hundred people working part time at the global revolution noise, but then others say it is but one man, though this one is immortal. Or at least nearly invincible. Or at final least a very productive, flexible and always moving node in the worldwide DIY-underground of harsh noise and avantgarde lofi trash. The mere fact that there always has been and (hopefully) always will be a number of kids around the world that pour their juvenile exuberance of energy into the most far out music, be it trash or hardcore or noise or gabba or whatever, is a very important political factor in itself. One that guides the development of our earth society in so many important ways. Because these kids, when they grow up, no matter if they stick to their ideals and remain within the scene, or if they settle down somewhere with a partner, two kids and a steady job, they will never forget those ecstatic moments of complete liberty when the only thing that meant anything was the wall of noise in their heads and the ringing in their ears. Eventually, they will keep looking for that moment for the rest of their lives. (I just saw a beatclub recording of the MC5 on music television from 1969 and it is the same kind of drive for energy. Wayne Kramer R.I.P.)

There is a place for overdrive and a place for distortion and a place for fucking shit up, and a place for every kind of noise under heaven.

It is probably true that no matter which pieces of equipment you ever buy, which pieces of vinyl, how much you crank up the volume or whatever, the true destructive and cathartic experience of this kind(s) of noise can never be appreciated if not blown at you by a proper piece of club PA. Especially if you take the appreciation of noise to a level that is slowly fully overcoming the notion of music traditionalism and turns into a full blown obsession about noise. With this kind of subculture it is almost impossible to say where it came from and where it is moving, because it has always been working almost solely in the lower and most peripheral parts of the subculture. No fixed location, no fixed personnel. It is even further than the far out parts of the outer limits in the Wire review section. It is anything from well aimed explosiveness to chaos poured into a formless form. The only easily achievable manifestation is (of course) www.hirntrust.at, where you may shop, learn and listen to your full satisfaction. Enough said, this kind of mystery will forever remain to be discovered bit by bit by multitudes, but as long as it has its own wikipedia-entry still waiting to happen, not even the first steps have been undertaken. Over and out.

Recent releases on Hirntrust Grind Media that all share various facts, such as being vinyl seven inch single and not having any kind of notation on their inner labels. Which means:

We don’t care, because you don’t either.

	DEATHSTORM „Bringers of the apocalypse“ 7“ An international two-piece with Maruosa (Japan) on vocals and Bong-Ra (Netherlands) on what is called „blasts and chainsaws“ on the cover. From the obsession with all kinds of locusts and creepy insects on the cover to hate evil blasting digital grind of the six tracks on this grey-shaded vinyl, these release breathes what is the inner life of Hirntrust Grind Media in many ways. (see above) This obsession with things that eat other things when they are dead is a hindrance to find the pure magical freedom of Zen, but I guess these two don’t want that. They revel in the psycho-blastological melée that comes with brutal noise whose structure is basically trigger on / trigger off / blast / trigger off. The japanese screams form a real good contrast to the heaving evil breathing noise in between songs or in the more „atmospheric“ parts.
	EUSTACHIAN „mngwa“ 7“ A deathstorm of metallic grind with those yawp-yawp-yawp vocals everybody likes, from death metal fiends to those hardcore kids. Insanely fast and nevertheless clear guitar lines and riffs that stand out. The two songs on here, „Cryptoid Globster“ and Trichopoatho Skeleton“, do have definite structure and dynamics. The first one is about a movie with evil mummies made of semi-liquid matter with big eyes. The second is about a prehistoric fossil come to live. Or something. It is the closest that Hirntrust has come to fame in the world of the global metal underground (which is probably a hundred times bigger than the global noise underground). Sort of an evil bastard between Agoraphobic Nosebleed and your local epic metal band. Probably too bastardly for Terrorizer magazine, too.
	HENTAI LACERATOR „chelsea charms r.i.p“ 7“ Three Californian kids blast out their stupid jokes and nihilist party-lifestyle in a hyperspeed noise-core attack that makes me relive all the fun people used to have with Dying Fetus. The band, not what you think. Theirs, though, is an obsession with sex and porno, with the title of their six song EP mourning the passing away of porn-star Chelsea Charms who choked on the weight of her own inflated breasts, or something. „Killed by Cum!“, „Fatal surge of tits“ or „stripped in the slimepit!“ tell you most of all of what you need to know about Hentai Lacerator. Oh, and if you google them, don’t shut off your safesearch feature when still in the office or of the paranoid type, because theirs is amongst the top5 „unsearchable on the internet“ bandnames. Number one is Child Pornography. You find out the other three by yourself. Hentai Lacerator probably marks a first on Hirntrust for not having any kind of electronics. As a soundsource mind you, otherwise they rely heavily on electronic amplification. It is still some time off until Hirntrust will release an „unplugged“ set.

You have been warned.