Archives: Reviews

1 - Manifest Blasphemy 2 - Consecration of the Heathen Messiah 3 - Deglorification of the Dogs 4 - (Tale I) Satanic Storm 5 - (Tale II) Rise of the Possessed Ones 6 - (Tale III) The Apocalyptic Catharsis 7-65 [empty space] 66 – hidden track. There’s surely a cover of a famous band I have listened a thousand times but I cannot remember which one…

Receiving this promo really thrilled me in the beginning. Having recognized Eric Neyra’s artwork on the cover, an old-school line art painting of blasphemy all demons and inverted crosses, and knowing the average quality of From Beyond releases (really one of my favourite labels today, unforgettable the releases of Pentagram [from Chile, not the gay ones], Necro Schizma, Anal Vomit or Morbosidad), I was expecting a fucking holocaust of chains, gas masks, leather, blood, sweat and spikes. I already knew the band from their split with Impiety but really I couldn’t call to mind much about them musick, and that should have been a nasty hint that something was wrong… and indeed it was. Surrender of Divinity is dramatically average. The worst of this disc is those terrible screeching vocals that damn ruin all the rest, they sometimes have that strange effect that Tom Warrior used in the old Hellhammer, but amidst this I can0t really see its use. The music is fast, no bitching on this. I admit the drumming is not static either, and the guitar work is not just boring chord progression as in the gay “Norwegian” black style. There is wasted potential because the intentions are surely of writing some savage hymns. However the thing has no chemistry at all. I can’t dare to advance comparisons because I am just not much into this stuff and I tend to delete it after one listen, it just doesn’t catch. Maybe a better vocalist, a slightly rougher production, anything that can add some spice to this dullness can raise its worth. No good this time, no good….

The booklet is nice, much on the line of the other From Beyond releases, its elements professionally combined, good print, a sober but effective work.The booklet is a thick 8 page thing with blood red old-school frames and nice choice of fonts.
I have heard this record a fourth time now but still can’t find good things about it, some bestial bursts do exist but I won’t waste a cent on this stuff. I feel like having listened to this stuff a million times, and what’s worse, I don’t usually care much for innovation as far as there’s beastly brutality, dismal blasphemy or savage fierceness. This is a badly missed chance. Gay.

11 - Incest Mutations 12 - Salvation Through Visceration 13 - Dick Head Erosion 14 - Vomited Guts 15 - Human Evisceration 16 - Roasted Alive 17 - Empathological Necroticism (Carcass cover)

Rigor Mortis (oh the name, the name!) sounds much more serious in intentions, as apart from the drum programming the music sounds strictly Death Metal, with some strong resemblance to Mortician or Atavism, maybe for the contrast between guttural vocals and real mechanical sounding drum beats. The band uses long downtuned swings of distorted guitars to give some breath before the blasts… hey the more I hear them the more I recognize the clear Mortician worship. They use some intros as well, even if I am not sure they’re all from movies, one just sounds like a guy regorging his dinner, might be everything. The picture in the booklet deserves some words, as it’s really painful to watch. The cover art has definitely been resample at the wrong resolution for print, and right over it the logo has been filled with green and yellow shades, outer glows and embossing… but the best part comes in the inner picture, as the three members wear black shirts with their names digitally mounted on them as if they were shirt logos!! That’s the most fucking kitsch thing I have seen in years since Mind Snare’s “The Noble Ancestry”, dramatically funny! It’s a pity a label that releases an album doesn’t take care of the graphics a bit carefully.

1 - Cum-Cyclone 2 - Fecal Stew Filled Piaata 3 - Clit Guillotine 4 - Granny Gang-Bang 5 - Anal Birth Cover (Guess which one) 6 - Intestinal Caress with a Speculum 7 - Hyperspeed Fist Fuck for Easier Chunky Diarrhoea 8 - Sprinting Blowjob Marathon 9 - I Cum Donut Filling 10 - The Greed (Human Greed cover)

I already heard Spermswamp on the nice 3 way split with Radikalis Amputacio and mighty Plasma on Rottenpyosis, and just later I recovered one copy of the funny demo Cdr this guy released on just 50 copies “If Abortion is a Murder, Masturbation is a Genocide” (probably to be repressed one day by Mexican label Sindrome). Well this guy has progressed quite a bit from sliding mixer levers and pushing buttons to assemble some fucking noise. The first demo was a kind of amateurish experiment that featured computer effects of all kind and distorted vocals yelled in a microphone probably stuck right into the mouth. However this time he’s back with some interesting cyber-goregrind with a head and a tail, even though the resemblances with Libido Airbag in the beginning are a bit evident (rave disco distortion and porn samples, you know the formula), somewhere in the middle of the Spermswamp side the disc changes style… well I have to tell something about this turn, something weird happened to me when listening to this split: I put the disc on before going to wash my dishes and suddenly when I was still cleaning the pans, I heard this fucking noise that was totally out of style, and I thought “well this really sounds like damn Anal Birth!). Well, I was right; I would have never bet I could recognize one of their songs one day (aha!)!! After the cover the music changes a bit, the vocals become completely fucked, gargles and throat cleaning that remind a toilet flush a la KOTS, and the music sometimes become total chaos with superfast drum machine. Less calculated but more intense in my opinion, I somewhat prefer part two.

The booklet on this Cd is a triple fold of which two are dedicated to Spermswamp. These are probably the best thing is this packaging because the Rigor Mortis side is a fucking pain to watch, crisp pics of cartoonish porn with pastel colors, simple but effective.

11 - Why!!?? 12 - Sarcasm Denied 13 - The Inner Skin 14 - Point of Anger 15 - Raised in Misery 16 - Life Through My Eyes 17 - Capacity Outrage Channel - 18 I See the Lies

Demisor is not Death Metal at all of course! It is curious to hear them after the two Chinese bands that precede them on this disc, but the owner of Mort seems to have checked well to put a certain progression between Regicide and this, as the middle band had a unrefined sound that was a good prelude to this grinding violence. The Demisor songs are a good display of total madness, the vocals are just so fucked up they jump around incoherently whenever the music starts blasting. Though grindcore with some grunts and the classic, well honed formula of following crustly riffs with hurricanes of blastbeats in the best of the old-Napalm Death ways. Demisor’s songs are obviously much shorter than Regicide or Operating Table, and they just hit the guts and disappear in a flurry of nonsense screams the dear old Japanese grindcore/hardcore way (Rose Rose, Slight Slappers, Senseless Apocalypse etc). Winds of the past blows in these songs.

6 - Autopsy 7 - Cutting Throat 8 - Annihilation 9 - Dreaming 10 - Diray of a Madman

Operating Table are overally a bit less tidy and calculated than Regicide, and hell, I don’t really like the vocals than much, expecially the backing screams, they remind me very fairly old demo-era Vader (then the vocals were still distorted), but anyway there is a good structure behind these songs,. They all scream Brutal Death, yet they’re a bit more varied within, also spiced up with some solos and nasty distortions. The recording isn’t impeccable so you kinda miss some bridges at times, but this is a band which has some good potential, good to listen even if I prefere Regicide so far, I tend to reward good production in this kind of Death Metal.

1 - Criminal Jail 2 - Charity Disappearance 3 - Massive Haemorrhage 4 - Behead 5 - Dismember

Regicide is obviously enough a damn good surprise to hear. This band plays great fucking brutal Death Metal the US way with a lot of density, powerufl riffs and a LOT of headbanging groove. A good half of the songs are made up of forceful slamming (but not “tarantella”-metal like many US bands have begin to play), much in the vein of early Dying Fetus (remember – that – groove?), however, and much appreciately, the vocals are a constant low, phlegmy rumble, and that is much more efficacious if you ask me, than splitting it with high screams. I like the guitarwork a lot, there seem to be no real weak spots to exploit in these songs. Sane Brutal Death, better than Vomit Remnants if you ask me (and this drummer, Gang-Wu, is goddamn fast!). I wait for more from this band, very bad there is no contact whatsoever.

The packaging of this triple split Cd is Ok, not special but adheres to standards which never fade. The print is not as fuzzy as old Erebos releases. I would have just used standard characters on the Demisor picture, that fading effect is pretty useless.