Archives: Reviews

1 - The Fury 2 - Three-Dimensional Defect 3 - Lying And Weak 4 - Sensual Sickness 5 - The Calling (instrumental) 6 - The Negation 7 - Long-Desired Dementia 8 - The Empty Throne

While no doubt a real mind shattering display of musical prowess and old dear – uncompromising brutality – there is at the same time nothing really new about the new Decapitated album. Luckily, someone would probably add with relief. Here we have another show of real over the top, or better – state of the art – as the bio suggests – Death Metal. Flawless production and razor sharp execution leave really little to imagination or atmosphere, Decapitated just strikes once more with a super-technical album full of their trademark chugga chugga stop and go riffs and superfast drum blasts, not to mention the classic virtuoso solos etc etc. However, I have to admit that unlike countrymates Yattering, this band has quite a personal sound, and a good groove which doesn’t bore on the long run. This might be easily an album that purists might come to adore and procliam as paragon, on the other hand the fact there are no visible flaws in the album doesn’t necessarily mean that it is destined to be a new classic for me as well. It’s just plain good, although well, I guess musicians will appreciate it way more than the ones who look after emotivity and real Death inspiring music, in other words you don’t really breathe and see the face of the grim reaper while liustening to this msic, not it breathes total sickness either.

1 - Gefolterd, in stukken gereten in geconsumerd 2 - In staat van ontbinding 3 - Ledematen legpuzzel 4 - T brute luquihelmus 5 - Penetrating a drill through your bones 6 - Man eating morons 7 - Carnivora I 8 - Brutally fucked with an awfully big chainsaw 9 - Smashing a posewimps decomposed brains in 10 - rancid deformities 11 - Ghastly repulsive offal 12 - Brains for breakfast 13 - Pulverizing impact 14 - Obscure gastritis 15 - Minced in my meatgrinder 16 - Introduction 17 - Vomitorial Splatter Parties 18 - Severed stoma 19 - Crippled baldy bastard 20 - Cumulative mass of crunchy stiffs 21 - Deceased imaginations 22 - Maimed 23 - My god is gore 24 - Eyeball eruption 25 - Ethe evil hand syndrome 26 - Strangled with your won intestines 27 - Carnivora II 28 -Introduction 29 - CCC 30 - Torture (Imhumate cover) 31 - Necrovomiputrepus 32 - Sacococcygeal Teratoma Outroduction

Hell yes, this is the kind of shit that made me want to restart with the webzine! I was very happy to receive a package like this becouse I could smell the underground feel once more, just as if these Cds were the xeroxed demo tapes of my tapetrading days. The package came with flyers in it and it was cool becouse I haven’t really had cool flyers for a while in my correspondence…

Tumour is a kind of solo project of Rogier of Last Days Of Humanity, Carnival Of Carnage, Intumescence, Vomit Sex, Progeria, Trauma Team etc. (the split Trauma Team/Anal Birth is still great noisy shit!), coupled with another guy named Jordi. You could have already hear them before since their discography is quite long. They recently released a split with Faeces Eruption on Last House on the Right which is widely available. “Goreaholic” (acronym for Gastric Oozed Rejects Embalming Abhorrent Heaps of Liquified Innard Cataclysm) is a collection of old works from 1999-2001, remastered and partially re-recorded ( I think just the vocals) for this 32 piece attack of totally sewage, liquid, pudding gargling goregrind. I have seen in their disco that they already released a Goreaholics in 2002 but it’s probably contained here.

The first note go to the vocals, it’s like recording a guy singing beneath the water surface in a bathtub, it’s just a totally liquid noise of bubbles gargling frantically. Musically, this is not excessively advanced but definitely more coherent than Trauma Team for instance. It’s basically mid-paced 85% of the time, with distorted guitars but the overall sound is not excessively dark or suffocating, maybe some more distortion would have added some depth. Anyway apart from this, the music is great fun to listen. There is a lot of irony in the riffs of the first 5 or so songs, which almost remind of tv jingles… however they disappear in the rest of the Cd, you hear the heavy guitars penning one heavy note at a time, and in the background sometimes weird, acute, sometimes it sounds like a keyboard but I can’t really tell, maybe it’s just high guitar notes or the scratching of the cords. Even if I said the sound could have been a little heavier, the production is perfect. The boiling water vocals are pervasive but do not cover the rest of the instruments and that is definitely due to good mixing. The blasts are few and in between but I really like them, they’re really a wall of sound, especially if you add this sick vocals over them, total mess! Even if this is not fast grind we’re far from bulldozing “slam” goregrind in the German style, here every note in the riff is clear and distinct. Remember to follow Carnivora I and II becouse they’re greta hits. Ah!

Packaging is good, the embossing on the logo and writings could be removed but I am sure they did it to give the effect of sickly green spittle, which is not excessively effective. However the cover art is sick, a grisly humorous massacre drawn by the famous Jake of Tales from Uranus comics. I started to become a bit bored of humorous cartoons but they really fit to perfection in this release.
Klysma rex: Lievekamplaan 52, 5341 GX Oss, Holland

1 - Intro 2 - Fleshripper 3 - Drowned In Your Own Blood	4 - Mass Mutilation	5 - Mauled Beyond Recognition 6 - Rabid	7 - 	Bloodshed 8 - Decayed 9 - Final Bloodbath 10 - Island Of The Dead 11 - Brutalized 12 - Slaughtered 13 - The Crazies 14 - Silent Night, Bloody Night 15 - Chainsaw Dismemberment	16 - Psychotic Rage	17 - Funeral Feast 18 - Wolfen 19 - Dark Sanity 20 - Camp Blood	21 - Tormented 22 - Slaughterhouse (Part II) 23 - Barbarian	24 - Rats 25 - Mater Tenebrarum 26 - Splattered	27 - Obliteration 28 - Lord Of The Dead (Mortician Part II)

Second official full length from the absolute neanderthal purveyors of Brutal Death Metal, and possibly the most complete and tightest work they ever did. The dance is opened by the classic, creepy, intro excerpt from – “When a Stranger Calls” (an American classic Horror by Fred Walton, 1979), the same movie which was also featured in the previous – “Hacked up for Barbecue” – (remember the scuffled voice at the phone?). Let’s cut this short: Mortician are an absolute certainty for every Gore Death Splatter freak who lives in the Death Metal scene, they’re simply incredible. For the very few who are in for a description, their vocals are absolutely the lowest, the bass and guitars are so down tuned they pull out a frying sound out of your speakers, the drum machine (which is a factor somebody finds hard to swallow but to me is absolutely OK) blasts through the songs with a speed unknown to human ear, good luck to Roger to play songs like these… as routine, the tracks are preceded by short samples taken from Horror/Splatter flicks, although the main concept of the Cd is naturally one in particular, the cult “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” serie. For those who looks for originality (yawn) in a Mortician Cd I don’t reccomend to buy this one as well, but if you, like me, need some references, some solid point who never betrays your lust, then every Mortician release is a must, like a friend of mine claims, they’re the absolute kings of gore… when they are on stage, they sit upon the throne and rule. Opinion which to an extent I can agree, if you exclude Impetigo from the challenge. Anyway their songs are not thorougly blasting, as sometimes they slow down abruptly and start a painful, slow grinding mosh who only Catasexual Urge Motivation (now Vampiric Motives) can hope to share. Slow… pounding… like a hammer that blows a crushed body to a pulp… “Island of the Dead” (which is also the title for a B-movie flick with Malcom McDowell about a swarm of cannibal flies, but also an AKA for Fulci’s Zombie 2) – is a fitting example of such inescapable doom laden tunes… always keep in mind their unearthly low tuning… to complete the family picture, the artwork is always signed by the genius of Wes Benscoter, on the theme of the aforemementioned movie… the lyrics are damn essential, straight to the point, 8 or 10 lines maximum, which again spouse their philosophy of basic, barbaric brutality. Desmond Tolhurst, who later left the band as well, fills the guitar duties this time.

1 - Relapse into Sickness 2 - Addicted to Smothered Throats 3 - Flayed, Dismembered and Feasted Upon 4 - Wretched Stagnant Blood 5 - Befouled with Zest 6 - Epoch of Methodic Carnage 7 - Death Bound Conundrum 8 - Lurid Iniquity 9 - Battered into Nothingness 10 - Gratification Through Castration

Ok, first off let’s say that this really looks like a complete release from every corner. It has relatively strong elements in music, packaging, layout, production and lyrics. They really could not resist adding a shaded fill to the logo but that’s the way with US-style brutal bands I guess. I have been out of the scene for an year and when I’m back I feel so damn ignorant, as I have never heard of this band before and everybody’s bragging about how good they are. It’s the first band I hear from Malta except for the band that starts with B, Ktinodia and the great Stench of Necropsy. I thought a nation barely twice the size of my city could hardly breed one metal band, but I was wrong, metal is definitely everywhere. The cover art is a cute detailed painting of a landscape covered with rotting, screaming corpses and what could be two zombies walking in the wasteland, imagery clearly inspired by the lyrics of the title track… good artwork which is very cleverly embedded into the layout, I like the idea of adding some corpses in the band pic.

Musically this is a massacre, as foreseen. Maybe not very obscure but fast and with a double thick vocal attack which sometimes shift into a long “ree”. Abysmal Torment plays Brutal Death Metal, with lots of consistent tempo changes, crazy super-technical drumming, and a clear American direction, however compared to say, Pyaemia or Disgorge, I think they’re definitely more straightforward. The good thing is that they have very little or no pure slam parts, but compared to a fast-only band like Deeds of Flesh or Liturgy thay struggle a few inches back. Even if they are real good I feel like something is missing… The mixing is maybe not perfect as I had probably liked the vocals a bit higher (and maybe more guttural, at times it seems the vocals are just distorted by holding the mic down the throat) and the drums recorded a bit lower… but I like the metal pipe sound of the snare drums, and the drummer here is really doing wicked things, with proficient use of cymbals and shit, this really a good musician; I think with a slightly fuller sound and a more compact sound engineering the whole product would have been much heavier.

One special good note goes to the lyrics: they’re damn well written. might be their English domination until the sixties left a good mark, but apart from a couple of typos (one of which made its way up to the back cover (“lutrid”?), they’re really elluring stories which you can read without having the music in the background (a bit like Broken Hope’s but a bit less varied). They’re long and with rather long periods, I haven’t seen this long lyrics that I remember of since Malevolent Creation‘s first 2 albums… while all centered on gore topics, they all have individuality, one is about the end of the world, one is about rape, one about mental sickness… they’re real good indeed. The final song, “Gratification Through Castration”, a song about mass ritual nighttime castration, is obviously a silent tribute to Cannibal Corpse’s song “Gutted” from their masterpiece “Butchered at Birth”.

1 - 	Meat Hook Sodomy 2 - Gutted 3 - Living Dissection 4 - Under The Rotted Flesh 5 - Covered With Sores 6 - 	Vomit The Soul 7 - 	Butchered At Birth 8 - Rancid Amputation 9 - Innards Decay

“Butchered at Birth” is the second full length by the now huge band Cannibal Corpse, and besides, it is also my all-time favorite. After an unripe “Eaten Back to Life” in which Chris’ (ex-Leviathan) vocals were still half-deep and understandable, on this album the vocals have become a real paragon for gore-metal bands to come. Some mag even nicked Chris Barnes as “the sink”, and it was not far from the truth, the vocals here really sounds like two big rocks grinding one against the other. One second step that has been taken further from the debut is the lyrics which are now not just all-out-gore but also intrude into pornography (meathook sodomy etc.), it was quite difficult for me to retraive the lyrics for this album back then, as I had to get them from France as a meager photocopy. I don’t think they have ever been printed on the new digipack version either. But they should, Chris’ writing style about gore were really fascinating and fluid, standing to straight gore as Carcass were for pathology and medical matters. Some of the songs are true classics on this masterpiece, strating from “Vomit the Soul” which featured Glenn Benton as guest backing vocals, to my favorite “Under the Rotted Flesh” (brilliant drum tempos) or the great “Covered with Sores” which starts out with a real dark and slow, grinding pace. I wonder why isn’t Cannibal able to release abums like these. After this absolute masterpiece, and the following, even more complete “Tomb of the Mutilated”, Chris took a change in the singing style, the music got more easy listening, and the even the cover artwork become always more bland. “Butchered at Birth” is in my opinion the best Cannibal album to date, the cover artwork is simply revolting, I have lost hours contemplating it, it has been a swansong for both Vincent Locke (the cover artist, also on Dead World comics and recently illustrator for Dungeons and Dragons) and the band itself. It is so dark and brutal it is almost choking, with powerful rhytmic sections and vocals that really comes from the grave. Great classic and absolute buy for lovers of splatter and gore soaked Death Metal.

1 - To Strong for the Strongest Lord 2 - This Great Summer 3 - The Only Gods 4 - The Inhuman Aberration 5 - Open the Gate 6 - Come No Tomorrow 7 - Watch Your Own Eyes 8 - Liberation 9 - Forsaken 10 - The Pressure of Our Jaws

Hearing this kind of bands is an endless agony. I don’t know exactly why but they really move something within my nervous system. This kind of new wave of thrash metal made in northern Europe really puzzles me. The riffs have not the weakest inch of power, let alone the pretense to produce “primal force” as the name Urkraft implies. Thrash Metal in the 80’s enclosed a dose of raw energy these bands on the line of The Haunted and faggotry are not even dreaming. The only good thing I can find here is the guitar sound which is mildly old-school Swedish, but then these clowns start throwing in keyboards, horrible half-screamed vocals and other gay elements such as the spoken voice that spoil the little good one has to struggle to find. Modern thrash with no hooks. And their haircuts are among the worse I have seen since The Dilliger Escape Plan, have a laugh here!

1 - Downward Spiral Into Madness 2 - Complete Demise 3 - Better Grieved than Fooled 4 - The Great Juggler 5 - Cold Heart Forged in Hell 6 - I Would Dream of Blood 7 - Disobedience Pays 8 - Children's Laughter 9 - Renunciation 10 - The Conductor's Departure

This is Anata’s fourth album… Wll, I didn’t really care much for the previous three and I admit I still don’t care much for this either. The vocals are maybe the only good thing in this album, classic Death Metal growls (why nobody descrives this band as death metal? they’re clearly a death metal band, even if warped), but other than that I cannot really get into this kind of super-technical stuff. It’s an album that stands a bit close to Necrophagist “Epitaph”, although much slower (wich Necrophagist were still playing as in their first demo, sigh), or Gorgut‘s last two albums, although not that dissonant, or maybe Oppressor. The guitar work is horrendous, the riffs some kind of banal modern thrash with some wicked twist, but basically really sloppy. I know there are several listeners which can get into this technical thing but I realy cannot stand skill showoffs in Death Metal unless musicianship is used as a mean to give order to extremely brutal music (i.e. Suffocation, Monstrosity, Nile), and here we songs which are, sadly, neither. Splendid arrangements in its own genre (everchanging riffs, crisp production) which don’t meet much appreciation here at NAHQs. Other than ugly riffs, there is some melody as well spinning at times, which only renders it all less memorable. I am intolerant when I meet this kind of “hey, I can play this difficult” bands.

Interesting artwork on the cover, looks like Killustrations! work, but not sure, there is no cover info the promo sheet. I am very interested in hearing Rotinjected instead, the band’s real Death Metal side project (I hope it’s not bollocks like Chaosbreed), if anyone has a recording please let me know, it might be worth checking.