The time-honoured, warm and fertile nation of Portugal, once the ruler of the Southern seas, never gave death and black metal movements any immense impact but has nothing to be ashamed of in comparison to its vastly larger neighbour, Spain, which probably boasts an even more scant number of memorable little releases from the golden age of grindcore and death metal. While the country’s major global success story, gothic satanists Moonspell, shared thrash and grindcore roots with countless marginal demo level bands, mostly only to be found archaeologically from the pages of dust covered zines, the fruition of the style in the shade of Sintra forests’ timeless sylvan spell was conceived by Setubal’s Evisceration – who successfully, if unpretentiously, combined lurching doom with Carcass-inspired corpse-shredding chaos much like Blood did a thousand miles away in Germany, creating a devastating, desolate atmosphere by manipulating space and tempo across an album formed of short, intercutting scenes of violence.
Effectively a counterpart to the promiscuously eclectic and baroque sound of the earlier covered fusion band Disaffected from the same lands, Evisceration brings simplicity but tenderness to the face of the listener in morbid delight which united early grindcore in a heavy substance of evil, far from the trash entertainment jokes and putrid politics that later on caused a major collapse of interest in the phenomenon, alongside a tendency to musically overemphasize elements such as fast blastbeats and radically rhythmic growls, that used to serve as sensible pieces of an overall emotional, psychological and philosophical architecture. Simply put, this means that while there are no obtrusely “progressive” parts, Evisceration are alike agile in utilizing moody synthesizer akin to early black metal bands in “Consumed Act”, as a quasi-classical acoustic guitar in the intro piece “Farewell to Earth, Heaven and Sun”, not to forget short but gripping Slayer-esque leadwork in “Dead Foetus”. This 35-minute collection of short but easily differentiable songs doesn’t overuse any of its ideas, and this disciplined compactness is, as previously mentioned in regards to Blood‘s “O Agios Pethane”, a testament to the theoretically endless possibilities of grindcore which are rarely heard in action.
I can’t listen to this shit. This band clearly can’t decide if they’re black metal or grindcore.
Comment by militantidiotcrusher — July 25, 2010 @ 13:49
Somehow, I find black metal and grindcore very naturally compatible influences in ambient atmospheric darkness.
Comment by Devamitra — July 25, 2010 @ 15:20
cool, but that doesn’t stop this from being an unorganized mess of grindcore and black metal riffs.
Comment by militantidiotcrusher — July 26, 2010 @ 05:21
That didn’t stop us from enjoying early Beherit and Blasphemy; while this one is not quite there yet, I can see how this pursuit could have developed into full flower.
Comment by Devamitra — July 26, 2010 @ 22:41
Stuff sounds pretty great to me. The Blood comparison is spot on. It’s also pretty similar to the first Cadaver album. I can even clearly tell where one mini-song stops and another starts in “Torments of a Dying Victim / Hymn to the Monstrous”, which is usually more than you can expect from a Title 1 / Title 2 grindcore track.
Comment by anthony — July 29, 2010 @ 15:29