Archives: Reviews

1) Necrosis of a Rather Extensive Part of the Jejunum-Ileum 2) Inhalation Of Vomitus (Subsequent Pneumo-Interstitial Emphysema) 3) Happy Sickness Of Life (Exulceration) 4) Congenital Tumour Constitued By Embryonic Tissues And Foetal Residues 5) Multiple Induced Foetal Abnormalities In Embryopathia 6) Estimation Of Creatine-Phosphokinase As An Additional Method For Identification Of Seminal Stains 7) Intramyocardial Platelet Embolus Evidence 8) Growth Of The Mucous-Membrane Ill Vein Tissue And Stomach Subjacent Fiber Tissue Layer 9) Inorganic Variety Of Chronic Tuberculous Peritonitis 10) Malignant Tumour Resultant From Epithelial Cells Proliferation

The thing that makes LYMPHATIC PHLEGM so special is their ability to recreate a suffocating, emotional environment which floats somewhere between the total inhumanity of their drum machine and totally gore/hyper-pitch shifted vocals and a feeling to long after something distant, melancholic, echoing on the past. Although I’d feel more likely to make comparisons with LAST DAYS OF HUMANITY in sheer apocalyptic goregrind music, this split shows a LYMPHATIC PHLEGM in a terrific shape draped in an obscure layer of mucus and moist that was trademark of our beloved CATASEXUAL URGE MOTIVATION. The first song in particular (which is a remastered version of the one that appears on the split with FLESH GRINDER on Millennium and before that in their demo tape from 1996) makes a preponderant use of keyboard melodies, that paint a thick fresco of distantly religious colours and obsessive brutality. There is nostalgia and cold in LYMPATIC PHLEGM’s goregrind and more than all, EMOTION. That’s not something you meet every day in a music that often finds complacency in its narrow domain. My hat to this new effort.

1) The Sorcery of the Deepest Beauty 2) On a Blind Track 3) What Hates Will Kill 4) Mutàla Submission 5) The Shore of the Cursed 6) Fall of the Angel 7) Habit to Violence 8) Carnivorous Plants

An all Italian release, this time both band and label come from my country. The level of this Cd is heartingly also rather high. Flawless, nitid production and a stunning variety of styles melted into one single rather original concoction make this band one of the top ten from the country as far as I see it. All of the instruments are played with razor sharp precision and the variations are handled in a way to make sense even with all these continuous turns back and forth from haunting melodies to full accellerations. It has to be emphatized that MUTALA is extremely technical, so much skill paired with superior recording make this album even a bit too scholastic at times, resulting in a constantly evolving version of impeccable Death Metal a la old LOUDBLAST, falling with skilled grace in equal parts into hyperblasts as well as in whispering vocals and a bunch of melodic arrangements, and no, this time melodic is not used in a unrespectful way, although the overall feeling of this Cd is not of relentless, uncontrolled brutality but instead of well calculated musicianship. MUTALA’s main weapon is the way they manage different styles into one single blurred kind of Death Metal that never sound like a scattered patchwork of different music, but instead more of an entirely new brand, this is a Cd one has to hear to witness how often the drum tempos change in one single minute followed swiftly by all the other instruments in turn. For once, expertise is not used for overheated guitar virtuosisms a la latest DEATH (spit). Good things to hear discs like this nowadays.

But, on the other hand I have to be completely critical, so that’s my thouhts when we come to this Cd: I believe those involved into Death Metal can roughly be split in two big schools, and that’s summarily the one that is for sharp, crisp, technical Death Metal, display of ability and the talent to create brand new sounds, and the one that goes for the filth, gore obsessed, dirt, grime, basic droning and grinding old school Death, those that care for the emotions that the music create and not for the way it is executed; that’s why I cannot dive head first into this music 100%, but again, it’s just a matter of points of view. If you want to listen to a band that is giving its blood to create something different, this is one that fits the role.

1) EVIL INCARNATE - Smoke of the Holy Ones Burning 2) AVULSION - Unjustified Insanity 3) UNBLESSED - Religiously Raped 4) ABOMINANT - Pinnacle of Hate 5) AVENGER - Evil, Hate, War 6) SIGNS OF DYING - Impaled Within the Cerebral Vortex 7) MAD COW - Theory of Conspiracy 8) VORE - Host of Abominations 9) REGURGITATION - Repulsive Genital Disfigurement 10) DEMONCY - The Obsidian Age of Ice 11) OSSUARY - Kill Your God 12) APOTHEOSIS - Innocence’s Lost/Nocturnal Adoration 13) Vastion - Bring to Pass 14) UNHOLY DEATH - Swingin’ by a Rope 15) DARK CYCLE - Full Circle 16) INNER WAR - Each Day lost 17) DEEDS OF FLESH - I Die of my own Terms 18) FOUR SEATS FOR INVALIDES - Human Wreck’s Container 19) AMOEBIC DYSTENERY - Sipping a Cup of Urkel’s Shit

Like every good reviewer I tend to hate compilations becouse your point of view tends to be a bit dissonant from song to song, yet we have this Deathgasm comp here, and the bands featured herein are some of the most varied you can think of. Dedicated to the memory of Maxìmilien Varnier, this Cd just feature a 2 sheet heavy red carboard cover with a list of addresses (written in gleaming silver hmmm…), so that’s all the infos you’ll get. Bands featured vary all from Black Metal to Grindcore to Death (DEMONCY, AMOEBIC DISENTERY, REGURGITATION to name a few), with some more or less renown names such as DEEDS OF FLESH and some more obscure like MAD COW, which is total crazed grind with some South Park-like vocals. Constantly changing not only in style, but in recording level and quality as well (some sound like demo tracks, some sound like Cd rips) it is quite difficult to find a common element or coeherence in this compilation. Not sure what it was meant to symbolize but the overall level is quite Ok, especially the great DEMONCY song taken live. If you want a bit of all genres yet sticking to non-melodic stuff, a comp like this might be a good choice.

1) Into the Chaos 2) Aborted 3) Blind Eat the Blind 4) Geneticide 5) Fifth Victim 6) Here I Lay Rotten 7) Malpractice Makes Perfect 8) Curbstomp Execution 9) Injecting Utopia 10) Baptized in Excrement 11) Infanticide 12) Iron Hook Purification 13) Tortured Existence

One of the best things one can say about THORAZINE is about their gift for variation and constant changes which also characterized other country mates like KATAKLYSM, CRYPTOPSY or GORGUTS in the past. Fundamentally Death Metal yet adorned with ever-shifting vocals (gruff for the most of the time, squeling, and throaty at times, with all the range in between) and a proficient drummer which at times burst into acts of berserker rage on the drumkit which reminds me much of beloved CRYPTOPSY. While not unpredictable and utterly hectic as KATAKLYSM (“Gate…” era) this is a Cd which spots a good range of originality, with ever-changing vocals and abundant use of trademark hyperblasts. At cost of sounding repetitive I think one more note goes again to the drums because they’re really the strong point in this release, dry and metallic as GODLESS TRUTH yet played with the loose style of DEVOURMENT or CRYPTOPSY. Add some keyboards and clean guitars when the music becomes too knotted, and you’ll get a good idea of what THORAZINE now stand for. I was not impressed by the previous Cd, but this one rocks, the guitars have developed in a intricate, in your face style of their own. Good stuff.

1) Za Branami (Behind The Gates) 2) Vyhnani Z Raje (Banished From Paradise) 3) V Okovech (In Chains) 4) Zlo, Nenavist, Valka (Evil, Hate, War) 5) Papez Ukrizovan (Pope Crucified) 6) Volani Bitvy (Call Of Battle) 7) Zajatci Nocni Strany (Captives Of The Nightside) 8) Opus 666

While the idea of writing/playing black metal in Czech was indeed interesting (while it would not have been the first attempt at such lyric trialing), I must admit I am not paralyzed by AVENGER’s identity or originality. For sure they have quite some variety musicwise, with the right flow of semi-epic technical parts and monochord hyper-fast riffs, but yet they don’t really thrill me, wish they had even some vague feel of darkness, chill, pain in their music, instead of this constant floating in mid tempo changes. I guess the last BEHEMOTH tried to be of some influence here, with the half speed cymbal playing, the hurried pace that never bursts, and with these screeching vocals which could be right out of a vulture, the main mistake of a band like this is lacking completely of any kind of feel. I have listened two times at this Cd, so uninterested I have completed a miniature galleon in the meantime. Not bad nor good, just a loooong streak of dullness.