5 Slam Records that Won’t Insult Your Intelligence

Sometimes in between quests for the perfect transcendent meal, you wind up in the drive-thru.  There’s nothing wrong with that- not every action in life has to be one of self-discovery or grandiose vision- sometimes you just want to destroy yourself as a brief respite from analytical or introspective journeys, which actually provides a contrast that truly showcases the merit in the pursuit of depth but also gives an objective worth to consumables that are designed with much less substance in mind.  There is a place for what is now known as “slam” in the death metal pantheon, and as with any subgenre of course the progenitors are the best examples of it, as prior to its neanderthalic fall from grace it started as marriage of the percussive elements of Suffocation with the over-the-top imagery of gore-focused grind bands while limiting the use of humanistic elements like melody and cyclical structure.  This is a more than valid metal style as it does actually transcend a known formula through divorcing it from song archetypes and instead celebrates an ignorance that is mirrored perfectly in masochistic savagery. Given that is is more rhythmically focused than previous death metal styles is it natural that it would meet its downfall by travelling down an insultingly urban path that betrays the savagery it had once wielded, but it is still worth revisiting a few choice releases to analyze what may unfortunately be the last true movement in a dying genre at the turn of the century.

(more…)

10 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Dark Horizons: Upcoming Metal for 02/09/2018

As we predicted at the close of last year, a storm of power metal is coming at last and replacing the soon to be dead genre of post-metal.  With beta-male hipsters turning toward retro rehashes of classic metal they are at last abandoning the pretentious nasalings of post metal.  Let us rejoice in the death of post-black metal!

With Fridays becoming the new Tuesdays for metal releases (for reasons unbeknownst), let’s turn our attention to the next meaty drop of 2018 extreme metal.
(more…)

12 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Razor Rape – Orgy in Guts (2015)

RazorRape - OrgyInGuts COVER

Razor Rape is a grindcore band that focuses on gore for the fun of it. Whatever this particular style of grindcore is called out there is unimportant. It is only important to recognize that it is trying to be some kind of grindcore and describe it as groove-oriented, fluid, and offering no new thinking past the first two songs. By the third song, you are already hearing the band repeat itself. Then it’s just the same experience on a loop.

This makes Orgy in Guts yet another good example of how the limitations of the lyrical/ideological concept of the album affect the formation of art. If we start by placing the concept of this album, namely, the “orgy in guts”, an unabashed and obviously tongue-in-cheek gore comedy, with the music, namely, the bland and simple-minded rehashing of a couple of groove riffs in short arrangements that end not because the point was made already (as is the case with classics like early Napalm Death, and  all Blood) but just because grindcore songs are short and well, it’s a good excuse to not have to think about more riffs or sections.

Grindcore in presumption only, every song here is a cliche-collection arranged with little variation or purpose other than carrying  the vocal line enough so that screams out the mostly-unintelligible gore fantasies that serve to take listeners safely to a “dangerous” and “dark” place of the human mind. A project that does not take itself seriously can get away with presenting apparently controversial, taboo or shocking topics in a comedic way for the average Joe to approach it with a sense of morbidity without feeling that he is in any actual danger. Razor Rape forms part of the unnecessary fodder that plagues today’s metal landscape. Do avoid.

No Comments

Tags: , , , ,

RazorRape announce new album Orgy In Guts

razorrapeband

Swedish death-influenced gore/grind band RazorRape have scheduled the release of their upcoming album Orgy in Guts for August, 2015.

Tracklist:
1. Bonesaw Facefuck
2. A Beast of Human Waste
3. Holy Gory Glory Hole
4. Spinal Cord Impalement
5. Vomit Drenched In Mucus
6. Choking On Feces
7. Orgy In Guts
8. Black Flood Of Body Fluids
9. Bitch Butcher Boogie
10. Grinding The Dead
11. Rampage In Red
12. Rot In Excrement
13. Lady Gagball
14. Hey Whore, Let’s Gore
15. Tennis Racket God

No Comments

Tags: , , , , , ,

Corruption – Demos

corruption_hn

Following in the steps of Repulsion, mid-period Blood and Napalm Death, Honduran band Corruption write mid-paced Grindcore with lyrical content ranging from the socio-political to the more gore-oriented character. Corruption’s music also features tonal guitar solos that stress a dark mood rather than a wild outburst of chaos.

This self-titled demo released in early March 2015 is the culmination of a 5-year interaction between guitar player Manuel Velásquez and vocalist Ángel Mejía. The demos were recorded in december, 2014, under the following line up:

Manuel Velásquez – guitar and vocals
Christhofer Ayestas – guitar
Roberto Molina – bass
Arnold Flores – drums

The band has made this demo freely available. It has been reuploaded and can be downloaded here.

1 Comment

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Autopsy – Macabre Eternal

The last couple of years have seen a artistic renaissance of a genre that throughout the best part of the mid- to late 90′s, and the early reaches of the millennium, was perceived to be a ghost that had long outlived it’s most glorious moments of artistic clarity. Great quantities of ‘gore’ and ‘brutal’ Death Metal acts have over the last two decades, dumbed down the mystical perversity that gave a genre the likes of Blessed Are The Sick, Legion, Cause Of Death, Onward To Golgotha, Imperial Doom, has in years past given way to acts that aim principally for shock value, sidetracking any of the compositional and dynamic attributes that were the essence of what made Death Metal so vital in it’s 1989-1993 heyday.

It’s great that Autopsy should record such a gem as this, as it serves to vanquish the plasticity and dross that once great acts such as Morbid Angel and Deicide have spluttered forth. Not only does it filter out these negatives, but it also does great justice to many artists who embrace an archaic yet craftsmanlike and refreshing interpretation of Death Metal.

In addition to having put out the excellent ‘The Tomb Within‘ EP last year, Autopsy have eschewed the notion of ‘re-recordings’ or filtering previously released material onto this new record. Instead what we have is a colossal, quite lengthy record, lasting greater than an hour but never straying from momentum and vibrancy.

It wouldn’t be unfair to say that in terms of intricate song structuring, Autopsy have perhaps even upped on what they originally achieved on Severed Survival and Mental Funeral, with a more obvious sense of grandeur. This exhibits itself on tracks such as ‘Bridge Of Bones’ and ‘Sadistic Gratification’, which sound somewhat like a logical conclusion of what was being hinted at on their second album. Eric Cutler’s riffs and modes are the usual tritonal, Black Sabbath meets Hellhammer-esque death dirges, which occasionally recycle patterns and forms familiar in early material, yet also giving the album a renewed sense of consistency. It is this grasp of orthodoxy within the metal genre which always makes for contributing to the collective framework of the artists work, which Autopsy fulfill here.

This is however not to say that there are flourishes of ‘experimentation’. Luckily the band have played a good hand of cards, and have not fallen into the ludicrous corner of ‘evolving for the sake of it’. Particular songs on ‘Macabre Eternal’ show the band using greater song lengths than before (‘Sadistic Gratification’, ‘Sewn Into One’), and also display a greater sense of direct melodicism (‘Dirty Gore Whore’). Whilst Autopsy have never been associated with playing at fast speeds, large stretches of this album are more uptempo.

Chris Reifert is on top form as a vocalist. His ability to evoke majestic visions of dismemberment and perversion seem to contain a greater dynamic than usual, as to suggest that nearly fifteen years of prolonged absence has only allowed his strengths to re-accumulate.

Though certainly not a complaint on behalf of the reviewer, what may potentially put off some fans of earlier material is the production, which is undeniably modern in tone. Whilst Chris Reifert’s drumming is still top notch the only minor complaint being that the compression on his drumkit seems to somewhat nullify the sense of ability, flair and aggression that a more analogous production would bring out. Whilst Macabre Eternal possesses all of the right atmosphere and conviction worthy of great death metal, the more aesthetically orientated listener will notice that the overall tonality is not as analogous as what was committed to tape in the 80′s and 90′s.

In spite of this minor specific, this album is superb, and rightly deserves to be considered a beacon of the revivification of a dark and morbid art form that until the turn of the new millennium, was considered a dead horse. Hail the new dawn. Not only in terms of structural and grandiose perversion does this album triumph, but fragments of it’s lyrical scope only serve further as to compliment the metaphysical and transcendental nihilism that death metal eternally symbolizes.

“Under the sign of a skull faced moon

We rise from abysmal embryotic doom

Existence as torment, yet locked in a grave

A sick fragile cycle from which no one is saved”

Within the recent decade, this is the best ‘comeback’ release that has emerged from any of the elder practitioners of the genre. Undoubtedly, this shall also be a worthy contender for being the best album of the year.

-Pearson-

No Comments

Tags: , , , , ,

Autopsy – Severed Survival

Although Chris Reifert’s work on the now legendary, but perhaps over hyped Scream Bloody Gore was compelling, it is hardly worth mourning the fact that this death metal genius would leave Death and form the mighty Autopsy. On the contrary it remains a blessing, and while Death would continue to churn out a few more solid death metal records, Autopsy would themselves create a few classics whose extreme visions of death would underlie much of the philosophical vision of countless metal bands. Undoubtedly, Autopsy would also influence the worldview of many fans who would learn to eschew the illusion and flight and fantasy of modernity, in favour of a sober glimpse into the workings of reality in all its horrifying and powerful glory.

Autopsy’s barbaric and seminal album Severed Survival offered the listener what would by 1989 arguably represent the nihilistic and amoral apex of the burgeoning death metal genre and thereby cement their place in death metal history. Primitive and raw, the power with which Autopsy frantically bash out these energetic incisions into the human psyche, indicates a desire to transcend and break down the perceived but illusory moral world order and come to terms with the cold harsh realities of existence. On Severed Survival, Autopsy unabashedly presents the listener with a sometimes shocking but nonetheless candid and unmitigated reality, smashing to pieces any presupposition of a cosmic moral world order. As listeners we are forced to come face to face with death, desperation and the unspeakably twisted and cursed elements inherent in the mechanisms of reality and in the collective human consciousness, which Autopsy, like a skilled pathologist expertly dissect and examine. Exhumed are the intense, destructive and “degenerate” elements that are not spoken of in civilized society but which nonetheless drive reality and remain active as motive within the omnipresent but subterranean catacombs of the human mind. Unquestioningly suppressed out fear or an inability to place these depraved realities within the context of our currently constructed, illusory but ubiquitously advocated a priori moral world-view, it is Autopsy who courageously revel in exploring the obscene and who seem bent on destroying illusion in favor of discovering, conforming to and coming to grips with the power of reality.

A bloody pile of discharge flesh

Is what you see as you face death

 On the ground is the lifeless meat

Stillborn child lays at your feet

Musically, Severed Survival is a conceptually flawless album that offers insight, contrast, and dynamic through its expert use of eclectic influences and moreover, succeeds in synthesizing musical and lyrical expression to form a complete experience also made possible through the phrasal composition inherent in the songwriting of all good death metal. Drawing on Celtic Frost and the simple power chord progression that made the latter’s work so completely unified and clear, synthesizing it with heavy metal’s tendency to express impending doom through the use of slower meditative riffs, and drawing on the frantic and schizophrenic lead guitar work of proto-death metal or speed metal giants, such as Slayer, Autopsy on Severed Survival  executed an effectively simple, dynamic and epic work whose elements united  to create a gripping journey that remains to this day, compelling, interesting and perspective altering. Highly recommended!

-TheWaters-

1 Comment

Tags: , , , ,

Classic reviews:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z