by Kurt Orzeck
The video was a sight to behold, really, if you happened to stumble across it 19 years ago when it was released — or even in the subsequent years, when it slowly fortified fanfare around a band endearingly named 3 Inches of Blood. Featured in the clip was a guy who would be typecast as a Dungeon Master in a movie that necessitated a Dungeons & Dragons (human) character, Cam Pipes. With a name that was too on-the-nose in the way that would elicit a smirk from anyone instantly in on the amusement that the Canadian band brought to the (gaming) table, he belted out vocals to “Deadly Sinners” — another ticklish indicator of the band’s personality, given the quasi-redundancy of the term. But as he sang NWOBM-worshipping vocals that reached flabbergasting falsetto heights — they would’ve made the bell at the top of that amusement park game where you swing a hammer that sends the solid circular object aloft go “ding”—another figure suddenly appeared in the video along his side: a clean-cut, short-haired bud who could be mistaken for a cousin you hadn’t seen since the last family reunion … or, at best, a hipster downplaying his eruditeness.
Suddenly, the handsome young man brings a mic to his mouth and belts out a bellow that immediately launches him into the echelons of Canada’s premier screamers. Could it be what we were witnessing was real and not some wild meta story line in a D&D game in which a normal dude had infiltrated the world of power-metal-fueled fantasy? Was this a real marriage between a gamer nerd and a strait-laced dude, their pact sealed in a secret ritual of heavy metal? Remember, this was two decades ago, when metalheads and indie-rock hipsters were at least suspect of each other’s camp, if not sometimes at loggerheads. But it really was happening, and the magic album that Cam Pipes and Jaime Hooper conjured with the song from which “Deadly Sinners” was derived, Advance and Conquer—and its successor, the brutal and underrated Fire Up the Blades—made 3 Inches of Blood a mesmerizing anomaly that singlehandedly made it safe for indie-rockers to revel in the ridiculousness of over-the-top heavy metal while simultaneously appreciating and head-banging along to its undisputed majesty.
Inevitably, the marriage of the metal-horns-throwing Pipes and the horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing Hooper had an expiration date: Hooper left 3IOB around the release of Fire Up the Blades—the Joey Jordison-produced album that earned the band a spot on Ozzfest—due to throat issues. Those of us who had embraced the band remained loyal, but Hooper’s absence always prompted theories of what could have been had the band continued in its previous incarnation. (Indeed, 3 Inches of Blood had a good run after Hooper’s departure until 2015, then broke up, and are now reunited sans Hooper.) Unless you were really in the know, you probably wouldn’t have been aware that Hooper had started another band, Congress, in 2009 and Erosion, in 2012. The latter didn’t make much noise, quietly slipping out just two releases over the course of 12 years: an EP called Kill Us All in 2013 and an LP titled Maximum Suffering in 2018.
Fast-forward to 2025 amid the apocalypse which we now find ourselves, Hooper is rising from the ashes having restored Erosion, from all indications. The band tickled us thanks to a split release with Altered Dead in late June — which featured eight songs by Hooper’s group and two by their fellow Canucks. But to the delight of those who fell for Hooper at first blush, his band Erosion then served up a full-length — the 12-track, 24-minute Invasive Species — just before summer came to a close. The joy and astonishment one felt upon hearing about the release was akin to Jon Snow coming back to life after holding your breath in abeyance for a full five seconds at the end of episode 2 in season 6 of Game of Thrones.
But the delight of hearing about the Erosion record turned out to be no matching for actually hearing Invasive Species itself. A filthy assault in which guitarist N. Yacyshyn leads the charge alongside his low-end rhythm-section backup of bassist D. McCrea and drummer D. Marshall, the record is a sludgy, grindcore-curious, d-beat slab with crust blackened to evil perfection. Defying all manner of science, Erosion also pack melodicism into this record, which should appear on every list of overlooked metal albums of the year, particularly on “Anti Life.” That humdinger is only surpassed by the slamming, textured “Only Cowards Bomb Children,” which is only outdone by “We’re All Just Corpses Waiting for a Grave” — a song that would make most hardcore bands put their tail between their legs.
“We’re All Just Corpses” is succeeded by the equally potent “Decadent Indifference,” in which Hooper proves he must’ve been lying about that whole throat-issues thing. And then there’s “Orbiting Tomb,” a PTSD-inducing song that probably was running through the mind of Jack Nicholson’s character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Oh, and did we mention “Garbage Future,” a consummate banger that would make most grindcore bands buckle? Or “Magma,” a blanket of bludgeoning brilliance that is tucked away deep into the album as if it were the weakest hitter on a baseball team’s nine-man batting lineup? Or the “epic” (3:25) closer “Salt the Leech,” which opens with an endearing sample from Alien 3 (“I say we grease this rat-fuck son-of-a-bitch right now”) and brings the record to a thunderous close, with some nifty maneuvers from Mr. Yacyshyn, as only a Cambodia bombing campaign could.
Not a second is wasted on this essential entry into the collection of every fan of heavy music who doesn’t like Disturbed and Korn. With that notion in mind, it’s no surprise that one of the most persnickety-yet-always-correct individuals in this sludgy underworld, Aaron Turner, gave Erosion his sign of approval by putting out Maximum Suffering seven years ago. Invasive Species comes courtesy of Canadian underground grindcore label Mechanized Apparatus Revolt, and boy did they luck out scoring this release. Get it here and thank us later — if your head hasn’t exploded by the time you’re done listening to it.