Category Archives: Necrospectives

Necrospective: Gutted Records, USA/IL

Gutted was one of the first record labels that released a bunch of 7″s of the first wave of Death Metal from its headquarters in Illinois back in the early 1990’s. In Italy, probably due to Contempo and Nosferatu, we saw most of these in stock in basically every catalog that circulated in those years, and don’t get me started on how many Internal Bleeding flyers we got in every envelope when tapetrading. A couple of catalog numbers were reused used when the label changed its name to Metal Merchants, although I never understood what happened to GR006 (if you know, please write me at nuclearabominations@gmail.com). I originally intended to take a photo of the records but my 7″s are not currently in the best condition in terms of sorting and cataloging. Maybe I’ll catch up later. Maybe.

GR001

The first 7″ that was released on Gutted let’s face it, was not that great. An unripe band that in its earlier form was trying to find out its identity and decided to do so with a couple of demos and this 7″ of Death Metal all chunks and bites, as they used to do in the early 90s where giving two chugs that today we would call “slam” was tantamount to being hard and heavy. Not so, this proto-slam borrowed from Hard Core Punk works 1% of the times, the rest being boring shit that in some years would lead to aberrations like Machine Head and co.

GR002

To say that I was surprised when I saw that Symphony of Grief was still around in 2022 would not be true, the band was excellent and I remember well at the time this 7″ came out that they were determined to continue, pursuing a contract with a label, on their musical path (they wrote me too even if I didn’t have a label at the time). I’m going from memory but it seems to me that Frank from Voices from the Darkside managed this band along with Immolation in the early ’90s, which should be enough to recognize that they were a band with the right numbers. But to find out that they have made ELEVEN albums, well that just left me dumbfounded. I haven’t felt like listening to the latest stuff because I have long since dropped that early curiosity for the more mellifluous Death Metal-related genres (imagine the enthusiasm I have for the post-O’Malley crap) although I think I’ll provide out of curiosity in the next few days.

GR003

Leaving behind Laceration/Symphony of Grief in Illinois, with Eternal Torment our own Gutted Records resumes a path begun with Laceration (badly) in the city where Suffocation, Pyrexia, Internal Bleeding really perfected that kind of Death Metal all elbow and spade strokes: New York. It’s not like it takes much to figure out where this band is coming from, because every stone-scraping instant calls out to NYDM, with that dirty “Human Waste”-type pitch. I grew bored of the evolution of this genre somewhere during the turn of the millennium, but I still like to listen to these bands sometimes. For the lovers of this more angular and squared breed of Death Metal, this is a band to rediscover.

GR004

I’m not going to lie I’m not a fan of Acheron, they have the kind of ideas and stylistic solutions that for some reason a great many people like but to me seem bafflingly banal, not to mention a singing style that goes nowhere. For being 1992 in Florida, though, this 7″ has a point. I think their best efforts came out much later in their career though and their latest album on Listenable was one of the best works they have done. Still, we are talking about that moment in history when Black Metal was changing its skin becoming a genre in its own right proproposed in those years, from a purely scholastic point of view these are recordings that should at least be known. These guys hated Christianity with quite some passion.

GR005

This 7″ was released on Metal Merchant but having still a code number starting with “GR” I thought I would include it here. In the beginning Funeral Nation was a Venom/Sodom-inspired band that somehow transitioned into the Professor K machine along with Rigor Mortis, a strange version of a particularly raw Thrash Metal that over the years has unfortunately lost some of that more primitive and barbaric vein typical of that genre, just like Sodom, to say. Yet here the band was at the top of its game, and the 7″ is particularly beautiful to have, ivory-white and with nursery-level illustrations. Probably one of my favorite recordings by Funeral Nation.

GR007

I talked about NYDM earlier when I mentioned Eternal Torment and here we are, talking about the masters of a genre that may not be my favorite but that until the arrival of Deeds of Flesh, which changed the game cards forever, stood in stark contrast to the bands going queer and the whole melodic goth strand that was slowly eating all extreme genres from within, from Black Metal to even the whole HC/Punk world with their internalist “emo” variants (no, not “that” emo, but distantly related in spirit). So here is a handful of songs that you could basically hear in different releases on different labels, chugging shit with their bossy NY accent. And their flyers were killer, I wish I could find some in my boxes one day to scan.

GR008

Another Metal Merchant release, filthy raw and cheesy like all the very early Meat Shits. Here we hear them in their less noisy version with shitty riffs and great vocals bringing it all together. Worth noting is the cover art by Rob Smits who had already done the 7″ Broken Hope, Excavation, etc. We were all collecting all Meat Shits releases back then, don’t be fooled by anyone who tells otherwise. They went a bit over the top with sensitive 2000-something sensibilities AH AH AH AH. But yeah, I think these vocals are so SICK for the genre. Great stuff as usual for all earlier Meat Shits releases.

Necrospective: Terrorizer

I decided once more to hurt myself by continuing the all-personal all-unbiased analyses of the discographies of the giants of death/black/grind/noise and related genres. There will be moments of great discouragement in the future, maybe a few names that some people don’t remember at all, and certainly many releases that I had managed to avoid for years without knowing how low a historical band can dig but had to discover the hard way. Let’s start here, with a band that donated the world a timeless classic and a forgettable comeback. And had to stop right there.

But remember, god can, when you ironize about the metalheads who complain “it was only good on the first album and the demos” because that’s exactly what happens here and so many other times. Though the situation here might not be as tragic as in other cases, going from being fathers of a genre to releasing average grind records that play in the background while eating Churby’s falafel at Obscene Extreme is a completely different situation.

World Downfall, 1989

I really can’t add anything about this album that hasn’t already been said, it is an absolute milestone in the grindcore genre, able to distill those particles of primal rage recessed in Death Metal to refine the most violent breed of punk and noise into something never seen or heard before. THe FLOW here is beyond description. The bass lines have such a fleshripping force that just a handful of thrash metal classics like Illusions or Pleasure to Kill could compare. Terrorizer here created a familiar yet new generation of violent groove, a compact and breathless album that once reached the limit goes one step further with Oscar Garcia’s perfect vocals reinforced by a Vincent at his peak. And then he, the drummer par excellence. What can be said, really, about the greatest grindcore record to come out of the USA?

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Darker Days Ahead, 2006

I recently closed by shop when I heard of a new Terrorizer album and given the state of extreme music at the time, the premises were quite bleak. Here, as predictable, Terrorizer loses everything despite the nerve of Jesse Pintado, who on a guitar level could honestly hold the fort with an even darker sound compared to the 1989 classic, a grim sound typical of some early British industrial-breed grindcore. What does not work, or rather is completely eclipsed by the debut, is everything else. The drum sound is criminal, the vocals too static and with those fucking machocore choruses this is a shadow of something vaguely reminiscent of “World Downfall” but lost between hopefully forgettable releases like Nailbomb and Asesinos, which to me personally represent the lowest moment of this music during the ”90s.

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Hordes of Zombies, 2012

Six years ahead and another stab comes with this album that should not be. The cover art as well as the layout are those of a third grade band on some obscure east european label, no. If the cover is ugly, the logo miserably modified with subtle yet unnecessary photoshop maneuvering, and let’s not talk about the chouce ot font for the title, on the turntable the record is even worse. This sad Karina can’t hold the reins of Pintado and any grind element despite Sandoval cranking, is gone. Rezhawk as always is grounded on a single note, plus the terrible modulations on the riffs are just hammering nails on the casket of the debut.

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Caustic Attack, 2018

The sadness of the previous album’s boiled Vincent and the lack of Pintado left no glimmer of hope open for this umpteenth and final stab in the back of World Downfall’s green Christ, not least because this Molina guy doesn’t sound much better than Rezhawk. Fortunately, the riffs have awakened a tiny bit and Sandoval really goes for the throat here. It’s still average fast Death Metal far from the grindcore of the first great record, but it is not indecent stuff like Hordes of Zombies. I would buy it? no. Would I listen to it again? No. I mean guys, you could have ended it with 1989, eh.

Screening inside my mental schemes with honesty this one, as well as the second album, would not be ratable as 5s, except that there is the shadow of a perfect album looming over everything. Could they do anything that could stand the test of their classic debut? I don’t think so. Nostalgia is not always a good thing.

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