Archives: Reviews

1 - Used, Abused and Left for Dead 2 - Pussy Lover (feat. Shawn LaCanne of Putrid Pile, lead vokills) 3 - Suffocation by Shrinkwrap 4 - Bled like a Stuck Pig 5 - Let's Eat!!!

This is the second Lividity 7″ I see since the one with Profanity a few years ago and well, what can I say, it’s always col to get 7″s, expecially nowadays that so few are made. The first two tracks are recorded live from the Illinous Metal Fest and consist in songs from the recently released “Used, Abused and Left for Dead” full length (review soon!) and the previous “Fetish for the Sick”. I love the saturated, squishy sound you got when you record Death Metal live, however the triggered drums are so noisy they basically overwhelm the rest of the instruments, and it’s not a nice feeling when the sound is that of an edge conveyor placed in the middle of the stage. I thought the drums in the last album were a bit too mechanical sounding but hoped things could change on a live recordings… but they didn’t. Whatever, the rest sound is raw and crude and the vocals sick and gurgling, here we have fast Brutal Death which has been played for over 10 years and it shows, since this is not a Suffocation-derivative band. The song from “Fetish” is a bit slower and has some slow bridges, you can also tell the style change that’s happened between these two albums (luckily I add). Last three tracks are basically unreleased tracks recorded in 1995 and shows the band’s very earlier, very different style, much more noisy oriented grindcore/death (the last track is as long as “You Suffer”) with freakish vocals a la Macabre/Melt Banana. There is not much to add as this is a live album and I generally prefer to concentrate the actual critics on studio recordings. Both sides of this 7″ have nice old school rough covers with colors similar to that of Judecca or that old Eye Gouger band from the same state as Lividity. Pastel colored and tremendously sketchy but this is a style I definitely have come to appreciate. The drawings are really ugly but they got an infantile look that’s always nasty to watch, the author might be the same kid who did the drawing in the “Deep Red” movie by Argento.

1 - Intro 2 - Frame of Mind 3 - Vanity 4 - Regeneration 5 - Dead End 6 - Manipulation Lines 7 - Aquiel 8 - Unsatisfied 9 - Distrustful

I was surely expecting more grindcore from the releases of Vladimir from Nice to Eat you, and instead I got yet another Brutal Death Cd to review here! Surgical Dissection play an interesting brand of Death Metal that relies heavily on a complex double guitarwork, and really succeeds in not sounding derivative at all too. I find it quite difficult to compare this band to others, as they sound quite separated from the modern keyed Brutal Death, more into the old school of early Damnable, Melancholy Pessimism, Pavor or Obscenity. You know, earlier attempt at brutalizing Death Metal eh. The guitarwork is excellent with a couple incursions into slightly melodic Swedish riffing, but always staying tight and brutish, with some fast blasting accelerations. There is a fair dose of harmonics and chugs a la Dying Fetus but also way more old school variations; it is really difficult to define clearly. This is a band that cleverly use the double guitar approach to create textures impossible to do with a guitar alone, there is an extra depth in the songwriting which sounds really fine, and the drummer does a good job here to sustain the song consistence as well. This is a band which cleverly uses technical skills to create solid Death Metal, not just to show-off their good musicianship. Now to the shit that hit the fan: the only drawback might be the vocalist that sounds a bit stiff, it tends to eat half of the words out from the lyrics and generally sounds more like shouting than roaring, like a shrunken and washed version of Barney from Napalm Death. Another minor drawback is the packaging of this album which is really ugly: I don’t know what the cover artwork is about (seems like a biomechanical interpretation of a human heart) but it just looks wrong, the logo is non-existing (just a font) and is nonetheless decorated with a million jelly photoshop effects; the inside of the booklet has pictures with pixels as thick as my fingers, and there is a ugly black or white glow just every fucking where. The major problem that appears here I sadly have to tell you is the work on the lyrics: there is a typo every line and sometimes you just end up wondering what these guys mean: just from the first song: “they will inject me with another drugs”, “they will insure me that” (insure???), “”everybody are talking”, and what is exactly like to BE a “frame of mind”? They are mostly about introspection and self consciousness but I wonder why Barret from Sevared didn’t check the booklet before sending the album to the Cd plant. So basically we have good and bad things to say about this album, it’s is surely an interesting tecnhical, tight Death Metal album but needs some polishing on the vocal and graphical depts… and please forgive me a bit of humour but I couldn’t resist making this image below… “Help! …It’s the Hair Bear Bunch!”.

1 - Enter the Doctor 2 - Cancer of Spinal Cord 3 - Bloody Wound Infested by Bacterium 4 - Covered in Blood Defecation 5 - Visceral Infection 6 - Blindness due to a Glaucoma 7 - Purulent Bag 8 - Craniofaringioma 9 - Epileptic Fit With Convulsion and Sick 10 - Ematemesi

We had a long period of complete slumber here in Italy for what concerns the Death Metal scene. Ever since 1994 or so, up to late 90’s, everybody was moving towards easier listenings, be it for more melodic kinds of Metal or entirely new genres like that shitty, horrendous Prodigy phenomenon etc. Until late 90’s, it was mostly impossible to find grind or real heavy Death Metal bands which were not influenced by wimpish technical evolutions. I am happy that we’re finally releasing good violent fucking Metal bands once more. On the top of my mind, Anatomy is the first Italian Gore Metal band I hear since Necrosis or Necrobestiality. Thir sound is more evolved and the accent is now weighing more on the double vocal assault of Carcass and the groovy riffs of Relapse-era Exhumed. Completely devoid of grindcore destructiveness but also of the horrible Carcass post-Amott melodies (which ruined completely all of Impaled‘s works), these songs are solidly written with a bunch of good, churning riffs which remind more of second generation Gore Metal bands (they also firstly cite Impaled and Exhumed as main influences) by leaning towards a more Death Metal approach than, say, Gruesome Stuff Relish or The County Medical Examiners. The band does its best with the faster riffs, as when the music slows down things start losing some density. I have to say Anatomy lacks a bit in pure aggressive force when dealing with this kind of music, there is good taste and for sure also technical competence, but there is still need for some more thickness to make the music really stand out. I think a second guitar would HUGELY improve this band’s sound and would really raise it to a different level. When we talk about the instrumental department here we have already a solid songwriting, it is really impressive to read that the band formed only three years ago. I heave heard bands much more incomplete after years of practice. What is the only really serious drawback of this band, is that these high pitched screams are really disastrous. I won’t say all the Death Metal singers should sound like Marc Grewe of Martin Van Drunen, or even that this band had to carbon copy Jeff Walker’s style note by note like Ghoul, but these vocals are really terribly flat, and sound just weak instead of malignant. This is definitely not Jeff’s roar like tone, and basically suffers from a complete lack of modulation. It seems as if this singer is just straining his vocal cords to agony, but ends up more sounding like suffering than menacing. I won’t say they had to drop them altogether in favour of the Steer-like growls, as the double vocals are invaluable to create the atmosphere of multifarious crushing confusion that Exhumed‘s full length debut captured, but I think they should consider changing completely this vocal style, into something lass shrieking and possibly heavier. There is some chugging which is probably a legacy from their more standard Brutal Death origins which are a bit out of place but I can confirm that the tools of the trade all readily set for something interesting in the near future. Hell, give me this band anytime instead of Gorerotted. One thing I have to comment is that despite their claim, there is not a single ounce of grindcore here, this sounds like 100% Death Metal to me! It is also interesting the fact that this is not a demo but a self produced full album.

The packaging is decorous for a self-release, simple but neat apart from the logo which has been butchered by a million photoshop filters. It is sadly lacking of lyrics, but some song titles are enough to raise in me some doubts (shouldn’t it be “Libido Medica” for a start? or “Cancer of THE Spinal Cord”, “Bloody Wound Infected by BACTERIA” etc.). In the pics, the band members wear medical suits like General Surgery or The County Medical Examiners, just for coherence. Always cool to have some gore!

1 - Intro 2 - Mudbag Massacre 3 - Swiss Family Cannibalism 4 - Gash Gnasher 5 - Weapons Of Mass Defecation 6 - Guttus Adulterous 7 - Vile Piles 8 - Cuffed & Snuffed 9 - Hippie On A Stick

Was not for that horrendous bright yellow and red logo and the gelatine candy effect on the album title, the cover art would have been impressive. This style reminds me a lot of Miran Kim’s work on Incantation, with that disturbed feel of nervous, murky brush strokes. Body pieces lay strewn on a table, with corpses hanging from the ceiling and floating in big glass containers. And a young blonde bitch is looking horrified at the carnage from behind a window. Cool. The colors are also indistinct and vibrant of sickness; this is a nice work for sure.

Musically, I have to admit I am not impressed much however, and I am already at the third consecutive listen as I write this. Life at Zero plays emotionless, technical Brutal Death in incessant uptempo, with a shitload of guitar harmonics, some slams and a double vocal style that alternates between the usual deep growl and the ordinary high scream. As it’s often the case the higher screams are really useless and a bit annoying, I am always in for the deeper ones. The music is convulse and intricate with constant tempo changes and basically NO blastbeats at all. They throw in some solos to spice things up but even here they seem just to be studied for showing off some musicianship. The music sounds brutal at first but then it rapidly becomes monotonous since we have the sound that contracts perpetually without ever releasing the energy. The most annoying element here is however the drummer which constantly moves areound the drumkit hitting every possible cymbal and drum surface he can to make as much impression as possible. Even if fundamendally we’re a bit on the style of Mortal Decay, the music doesn’t sound an inch as tight. Completely ordinary, hypertechnical stuff with no pressure at all. I can’t say this is completely bad becouse we still talk about a competent Death Metal band, but honestly this sounds as if it was all done as a homework instead than being released from the guts. New Hampshire is a small state but I hoped this band was going to benefit from the Canadian madness to combine aggression to the schozoid songwriting.

1 - Smashed Brain Collection 2 - Carnal Affection 3 - Experiment With You 4 - Disgruntled 5 - Total Zombie Domination 6 - Mutants 7 - Supporting the Chaos and Hate 8 - Graveyard 9 - Awaiting the Death

The word Enthrallment has been a nightmare for my distro for a good year or two. For some reason their debut MCd was a boulder weighing immobile among the other records, nobody ever cared about buying even one copy. I had to use them as a trade resource at every occasion and still there are copies nested up there in the stock. I wasn’t sure this was the same Enthrallment becouse they have changed logo since the Ep, but once I recognized they were the same band from Bulgaria I was sweating cold. Now exactly, dear Michele, what the fuck was wrong with that Cd? Because, as far as I can tell, this “Smashed Brain Collection” is a damn fine album, damn! I don’t remember having heard the mini but if the stuff was so good I should really nut-kick myself for not having pushed it before. First of all, the Cd cover looks good and nasty, there’s this sort of African chieftain with greasy dreadlocks contemplating his blood encrusted tools in front of a table chock full of brains, and the poor guests lying with their craniums split wide open. Ah ah. Great shit. I wonder when is that cannibal going to feast of the soft gray matter. I cannot tell anything else becouse the promo came with no sort of packaging at all, even the Cd was burned. Fuck. But this cover looks good indeed. Tony Koehl (which also worked for Goratory and Abysmal Torment) looks more focused than usual here. This way I cannot say anything about the lyrics, but I remember the grammar of the Ep was at the level of MX from Brazil (eh). The Cd also offer some surprises from the start. There is a strong multimedia section, with one crisp videoclip (nicely done, especially the bald guy eating entrails, ah) and half an hour of live footage, plus samples from upcoming label releases (well I am not much happy about adverts withing a cd, but this time at least this looks new). Musically, Enthrallment play tight and brutal, but absolutely not mechanical, Death fucking Metal. For once I really like the singer’s vocals, they remind me a cross of Mike from (ex) Sinister and very early Necrophagist (“Onset of Putrefaction” era before they turned intolerably gay), they’re utterly deep and understandable as well, with a strange tone that makes them sound as if they’re recorded multiple times and then layered. Structurally, Enthrallment can be considered solid Brutal Death with some real neat Barnes-era Cannibal Corpse vibes, tremolo picking and slam chugs, early Deeds of Flesh blastbeats, and a concrete, structured framework. It is weird hearing two bands like Enthrallment and Lust of Decay play the same music and sound so completely distant from each other at the same time. This is Brutal Death with soul and a warm, wrapping sound, with that delicious wood block snare drum which helps cutting the songs pace. The riffs here are not just the TXDM kind of “invent some riffs and scatter them randomly across an album, doesn’t matter which song they end up in”: the songs have a clear beginning and a clear end, while sounding every inch guttural and gore soaked. This is real good Brutal Death from a country that maybe lacks some solid referral since maybe Corpse (which to my memories were not that good at all, not to mention the R.U. Dead? ripoff logo). Sometimes the golden age Cannibal Corpse resemplance becomes truly flattering (some riffs in the second half of the album almost sound as if they were taken from “The Bleeding”… Take Total Zombie Domination for example… Now that if that name alone isn’t a tribute…), but that’s a good thing to this day and age, considering the big cannibals now play so different. They’re better than Putrilage in this, at least. Ehe. Solid, crunchy and with a load of heavy Skinless like breakdowns that don’t sound like tarantella, this is a good broootal release, no, really!

1 - Intro - City of Satan 2 - Psychic Killer 3 - Beware the Goat 4 - Dead Swine Army 5 - Preachers of Grind 6 - Come Get Some 7 - Hellbound 8 - I.F.H.Y.A.A. 9 - Gas Mask Society 10 - Denim Demon 11 - Night of a Hundred Pieces 12 - Mope 13 - Live Cemetery 14 - Nuns Guns and Rock'n'Roll 15 - Mrs. Firefly 16 - The Final Insult 17 - Confession 18 - Skyggedans

The first thing I did when I opened the promo package containing this Cd was clenching my teeth and rolling my eyes swearing “oh fuck, another hilarous grind band from Eastern Europe, and this cover art is so fucking lame too”. I took it to the toilet to analyze it a little bit more like I always do before making the actual music reviews, so I can check notes, thanklists, studios and producers, you know, same old shit. Well, I have to amdit a few things came out: first off the whole layout looks lame becouse of the concept but technically it’s one of the most professional layouts I have seen in months, and that’s thank to Szymon Siech’s masterful hand. I seriously believe this guy is the best gore artist since early Vincent Loce, it’s a fucking genius. Too bad for the annoying, run of the mill, banal, overused, overcooked, seen a million times before fun concept that plagues all the Eastern European scene today. Seems like there has to be some joke at all costs. To me, it didn’t make me laugh at all, anyway. Szymon took pictures of 70’s blaxploitation, police dogfights, south American wrestlers a la El Santo, and combined them all in a pyschedelic green and fuchsia vintage looking concept. I could barely recognize his style on the cover but he evidently used a lighter approach so the drawing came out a little cartoonish, with his trademark eyes bulging from the shadows. Wasted talent. One thing I was wondering however was, what does a grind band do with 11 straight days in a studio? Well, I understood it when I placed the disc in the player: this sound is fucking HUGE. I was also afraid of some shitty fag rock’nr’grind a la late Mucupurulent but this music definitely rocks. I won’t call it gore for sure, and maybe not properly grindcore either. There is a crusty, energic vibe that remind me a lot of Genocide S.S., with some blastbeats that just pump up the energy level (think a bit of Wolfpack, Skitsystem etc.) and huge groovy power chords, this is really one of the wonderful fun bands to mosh with in the snakepit. The main problem with me is probably the fortunately rare high pitched screams which not only sound shitty in themsleves, but are recorded so low they mostly disappear in the grossly fat mix this “Bubba Luciferi” has. I don’t recall much of “Graveyard Cowboys” (I was rather taxed by that cover artwork too) but I don’t remember anything as powerful as this. Big sound, great production, great Swedish crust riffing. Even if I recognize good ideas and high level layout work, this packaging looks like shit. If we talk aboout the music in a strict sense, this is a definite powerhouse, punkish grindcore hammering with huge force and powerful vocals. Lots of the dissonance and dirt of the early days of grindcore is non present here, but it’s been replaced by a crushing, punishing groove. You also get covers by two gay bands called Turbonegro and Satyricon here, but I admit they’re barely recognizeable, this band has come to a good level so they manage to add peronality to the songs, they’re not just xeroxes. “Skyggedans” sounds fucking weird, a mix of crust and black metal I could barely recognize. Heavy, happy music for serious fun.

1 - Taste of Death 2 - Midnight 3 - Recognized 4 - I Raped a Rapist 5 - Gummies 6 - There's a Time to Rape 7 - There's a Time to Kill 8 - I The Baby of Hate 9 - Fucked in the Forbidden 10 - Forest 11 - Bitch 12 - Jane Doe 13 - Silovanje

Australia has its good share of solid bands despite the relatively rarefied population, it seems every genre is played down there in a totally different, reinvented way, be it Death, Black or Grind or whatever. Even though I am more into disgursting shit a la Intense Hammer Rage of Kutabare (man what a masterpiece that one is), I can’t but recognize there is also a new thriving scene of whacked, fucked up grindcore bands which shamelessly use the drum machine to create cockeyed, nutty, oddball music and good shit comes from the cauldron indeed. I thought Fuck… I’m Dead was a mild choice for the Razorback roster with its fake sounding drum machine but this Silovanje sounds a pinch more savage and well, their guitar riffs are just plain good, with a small dose of micro-solos appearing in the middle of the chaotic frenzy of downtuned grindcore we have here. This is a good example of musicianshp gone for the better. There is a battering, headbanging vibe in the riffs that just helps the whole songs push forward with strong pressure. Take the song “I Rape a Rapist” and you’ll certainly understand what I mean. The whole groove comes from the arrangements and not some cheap breakdowns and that is a definite turn over. The vocals here are the already tested to be efficacious mix of incoherent screams and a more masucline, full body growls and the whole thing just has the right chemistry. I think this drum machine is quite good but as always a real drummer would make this band really stick out. The “album”‘s concept (man, 19 minutes is really too little to call this an album without using quotation marks) is about rape. Aussies really have no shame ahah. I remember the shit that fell when Intense Hammer Rage released Holy P… whatever. The pics are not overly sharp and in the end I am not able to tell if it’s just computer graphics or just a combination of real life photos. In any case this time we have an efficacious mix. A tidbit difficult to read sometimes but nice packaging overally speaking.