RazorRape - Revenge Of The Hermaphrodite Whores

Can we at least get a round of applause in for that album title? And then a standing ovation for the album sleeve? Haha! Anyways, RazorRape play a bludgeoning, thick'n'creamy variety of goregrind that is more akin to shades of death metal than the primordial ooze of say, Last Days Of Humanity. This particular "cross-over" style is very popular at the moment, as it blends the lines with pornogrind, which all the metal kids seem to dig in lieu of shit like Haggus or Hyperemesis etc. etc., but irregardless of that fact, Revenge Of The Hermaphrodite Whores (it was surreal typing that out, even after 7 years of doing this shit) is a solid record in this style.

the density of the drum production reminds me of the most recent Grunt album, whereas the rest of the music is very similar in the vein to 5 Stabbed 4 Corpses - which shares members with RazorRape  - give or take the odd jazzy passage, of course. All in all, this is a solid metal album, one which I'm sure you are probably already familiar with if you wallow in these decrepit circles of the underground.

Henker - Slave Of My Art

Henker are absolutely lightening fast! Imagine Meshuggah-meets-Braindrill in the same studio Cattle Decapitation recorded their last few albums in. Maddening drumming performances meet technical yet brutal guitar playing and dexterous bass movements that completely fuck with your head. I mean, those drums....Jesus Christ. I know they are triggered into oblivion, but you gotta be impressed by this shit.

Honestly though, due to the sheer speed and technicality of this thing, all the songs do kinda blur into one big brutal mass, which strikes an interesting duality with the fact that it is incredibly listenable; it is hard to get off the ride once it has begun. For those of you who like death metal to be a little bit cleaner than the old school stock, and with a progressive element; this comes strongly recommended. 

Hour Of Penance - Regicide

Hour Of Penance are an intensely fast and technical brutal death metal band from Italy. They have been going since 1999, and whilst their style has changed somewhat over the years (there are also, quite unusually, no remaining original members in the group) they have retained a relevance in the worldwide death metal scene. With regards to the sound on Regicide, think razor-sharp riffery but with a refreshing melodic edge, savage guttural vocals and lightening fast drum attacks.

If you like your metal with plenty of twists and turns, but also brutal as fuck, then by all means, do not look any further. Regicide is not the most recent release from this group, but it is my favourite (out of what I have managed to hear so far, at least!). On a side note, the band are also playing Bristol Deathfest, which is a fairly-local festival to us at LIW HQ. Check it out!

Necrosis - Catatonic Psychosis

There are a lot of bands that have been called Necrosis. This particular Necrosis (the second Necrosis that I know personally, although that first Necrosis was spelt Nekkrosis, not Necrosis) are listed as the 15th registered instance of the name Necrosis on Discogs. They hail from the Bristol area and play straight up brutal death metal. Their guitarist Jason also plays in Kraanium, so there is an inevitable slam feel to the groovier riffs when they present themselves, but Necrosis is an exercise in speed and brutality, rather than in the chug and the slam (and the inevitable ensuing hammers).

I might be wrong here because I'm an idiot but I believe that Catatonic Psychosis is the band's debut EP, containing five tracks of brutality to massage your innards into a lovely bloody pulp. It is recorded well, and packs a hell of a punch, but isn't too over-produced and still has an edge of grime, which is something that is very important I think, especially in death metal; it's easy to lose your way in immense studio trickery. I've seen it befall bands many a time; polished-to-fuck records, but messy, useless live shows, where the gimmick and effects don't translate over, and the triggers sound like someone stamping on empty milk cartons.

Thankfully none of that tomfoolery is present on Catatonic Psychosis, which is a strong offering from the UK death metal scene. I really hope these guys work on an album sometime.

Abominable Putridity - In The End Of Human Existence

Abominable Putridity are a slam death metal band from Russia (although they now have an American member) who formed many moons ago. In The End Of Human Existence is their debut album from 2007, containing 10 cuts of liquescent groovy guttural brutality.

As far as this type of shit goes, In The End Of Human Existence is a fairly no-frills record, but it has a solid, meaty production that hammers the heaviness home with impressive precision and a refreshing punch. It is hard, perhaps nigh on impossible, to be truly original within the genre of slam, but don't let that distract you from the fact that In The End Of Human Existence is a beast of a death metal record.

Cool fact: later Abominable Putridity recordings feature the vocalist from Pathology (who are fucking ace).

Whoretopsy - While You Were Sleeping

What a gem! Brutal death metal is over-saturated as fuck (and I've made no secret of mentioning that in nearly every death metal post I do) and every time I load up a YouTube vid, a Spotify link or even put a CD in the stereo (imagine such sorcery!) that has some spiny logo and a compromised / disemboweled female on the cover, I sit there and wait for the disappointment to come, to wait for the OMG-we're-super-serious mediocrity to wash over me for a few minutes before I inevitably turn it off thinking "What a shame that I didn't like that, the album cover would have looked great on a shirt". But not this time. Oh god no.

The hilariously-named Whoretopsy are brutal as fuck. That might seem like a fairly narrow-minded thing to say about a death metal band or project but that is simply what it is. It doesn't pretend to be, or claim to be "brutal", like many of it's peers - it simply is. That's an achievement in itself. I tend to prefer the nastier-sounding slam acts to the more polished ones (probably stemming from my undying love for goregrind, which isn't exactly a thousand miles away, stylistically) so it's really refreshing to listen to something with a professional production job and really enjoy it. While You Were Sleeping rolls back and forth from headbanging slams to brutal blasting passages like waves of nausea after a Hepatitis vaccine.

Seriously though, check out this little-known Aussie act, you won't be disappointed. Loads better than most of the more well known slam death metal that's about these days.

Splattered Entrails - Undercooked Intrauterine Delicacies

Boy, am I happy this saw the light of day! Initially I mistook this release as a new Splattered Entrails album. I was thinking - "shit, they've gone back to the gory stuff!?", but alas it was not to be. Instead though, Undercooked Intrauterine Delicacies turned out to be a compilation album of impossible to find splits that the band did back in the Myspace days. It includes a three-way split/comp on FDA Rekotz and their splits with Chainsaw Dismemberment and Disgorgement Of Intestinal Lymphatic Suppuration (yes!), which were both put out by the now sadly defunct DIY goregrind label, Mental Abuse.

So, what I am so happy about here is that I get to hear a whole bunch of gore-drenched, slamming br00000tality, which for me, is much more entertaining than the band's later, more polished and more sci-fi orientated output. Splattered Entrails is truly a lesson in "bedroom music done right", as this entire compilation, despite spanning three sessions, boasts a stable and chunky production (give or take the odd farting low end on the chug), and a punishing display of drum programming, guitar slammery and vocal putrefaction. Yum yum. 

Granted, there is the odd stinker or two, and now and then I feel that the "ree ree reeeee" vocal style is used a little too much for my liking, but on the whole this is a solid selection of tracks from a legendary brutal death metal project. Out on Sevared Records. 

Prepare your diddlyhole! 

Epicardiectomy- Abhorrent Stench of Posthumous Gastrorectal Desecration

It's ridiculous to expect originality in a genre as limiting as slam. The name 'slam' itself is daft, but it signifies a slightly more slower, groovier approach to the death metal template. I personally welcome a 'slam' record now and then because it really breaks it up for me as far as death metal is concerned; sometimes I can just get really tired of super-super-fast death metal, and it's always nice to slow down and chug out a fucking spectacular riff every now and then (for further reading on the power of riffs, see: doom metal).

I first heard Epicardiectomy in an underground bar in Prague, in the Czech Republic. The guy working there was either in the band or his friends were, I can't remember, I was properly shitfaced even though it was like 4pm. Hearing it blasting through speakers and deafening the ten or so patrons of that particular hole in the floor in Eastern Europe will stick with me forever. In my house however, Abhorrent Stench of Posthumous Gastrorectal Desecration doesn't sound quite so epic, but it is still fucking heavy as hell. It kinda reminds me of Cephalotripsy, everything is fairly similar, although the vocals differ a bit.

It is all a bit one dimensional (it is a slam record, after all) but if brutal music to bang you head to is what you want (and/or need) then I'd recommend Epicardiectomy any day of the week. Also, I bet they are fucking shit hot live!

Stream the entire record below. My favourite track is no. 3, "Gobbling the Erupted Intestinal Mush".

RazorRape - Slaughter Sluts Supremacy

RazorRape are a Swedish groovy goregrind band that have been going since 2004. This 2013 EP is a short but sweet journey through some twisted tunes of gory love. Boasting a chunky but honest production job, SSS is a heavy-hitting record, mixing chugging slams and beatdowns with polka-style rhythms and blasting goregrind. The track "Drillbit Defloration" (what a title) is pure CBT-worship through and through, with an absolute massive riff and grooving mid-section. 

My only gripe with this EP is how short it is; it's literally over in a matter of minutes, which sucks, but what can you do? With tracks as amazing as "Severed Cock Lollipop", "Ballsack Blastfuck" and the previously mentioned ditty about the drillbit, who can argue? Groovy goregrind at it's best! This is the 3rd RazorRape release out on the excellent Rotten Roll Rex.

Waking The Cadaver - Perverse Recollections Of A Necromangler

I keep forgetting how much I love this album. Waking The Cadaver seems to be a household name in terrible music, and mentioning to almost any metalhead that you like them usually results in laughs, but for anyone who actually listened a bit further than that Shredded Wheat song ("Chased Through The Woods By A Rapist" is the correct title, which is much more grim) would have discovered an absolute gem of a metal record. Perverse Recollections... is jammed awkwardly between the worlds of deathcore, slam and even goregrind (think piccolo snares and watery vocals), and what a glorious fucking mess it is.

This shit is literally all over the place. The drums, in the fast bits at least, are nothing short of spastic. The guitars are razor-wire sharp, twisting and chugging through the tracks like barbed wire twisted around a fence. The vocals are a hydra-headed beast of different styles of grotesquery; drowning in bong water one minute, disemboweling a pig the next, and then barking at you like the frontman of a straight-edge hardcore band, before some amphibian-like creature emerges from Cthulhu's depths to spit a couple of lines too.

Some kind and conscientious soul has uploaded this entire record to Youtube, so tuck in and throw down, gorehounds! 

Nile - Annihilation Of The Wicked

I love absolutely any band that can keep death metal especially fresh and vibrant, without becoming too gimmicky. Nile have a hit and miss discography, in my opinion, but 2005's Annihilation of the Wicked on Relapse Records is a monolithically heavy recording of blasting ancient Egyptian brutality. If there is a world in history that was particularly grim and unforgiving, ancient Egypt ranks pretty high on that scale. With sarcophagi bursting open with mystical and disturbing subject matter to fuel Nile's song-writing fire, the "band what like does songs 'bout Egypt and that" have given us thus far seven albums of Pharoahcious (I went there) death metal. 

The first thing I noticed through the chunky, Relapse-budgeted production was the immense, seemingly unstoppable wall of drums provided by one George Kolias. On sheer performance, discipline and astounding stamina this record is aeons above other death metal records alone, but couple said drumming wizardry with immensly technical riffs and super-complicated songs about stuff you can never begin to understand, and Nile take the crown with this record for the most elitist death metal performance that wasn't boring or even maybe contrived. 

After a brief intro, the first proper song, "Cast Down The Heretic" blasts a fucking hole in your skull. "Sacrifice Unto Sebek", the single from this album, oddly reduces the pace a bit, before we get the first of three 9-minute epics, "User Maat Re", which is mind boggling in scope and duration. There's always time for more ultra-elitist Egyptian tunage - "Chapter Of Obeisance Before Giving Breath To The Inert One In The Presence Of The Crescent Shaped Horns" (lol) - before "Lashed To The Slave Stick" comes in. This track is one of my favourite death metal songs of all time. The album closes off with two more (approx) 9-minute epics, making Annihilation... a long but ultimately satisfying trip into a world of unstoppable death metal force. 

If you're into this shit and haven't heard this album....Well, I dunno how that's really even possible, but check out the link below.

Vaginal Penetration Of An Amelus With A Musty Carrot / Teen Pussy Fucker - Split CD

Wow! Now isn't the name of this band a mouthful? It's almost as thick and penetrating (that's what she said!) as their ultra-chunky death metal / goregrind crossover sound. Austria's VxPxOxAxAxWxAxMxC pack one hell of a groovy punch, something that is completely evident on this sick little split CD. Boasting one of the nastiest programmed snare sounds ever, the band chug and groove through 4 apotemnophiliac hymns of gargling gore destruction, my favourites being "Baptized In Clammy Scat" and the gorgeously-titled "Mucus Of A Giant Anal Papilla". Sexy.

 

Sharing this disc with the Amelus Boys are long-running cyber/gore/porngrind maniac(s) Teen Pussy Fucker. This questionably offensive outfit, along with sister band Pigtails, have been around since the early Myspace days, maybe even sooner, and have been spreading the groovy porno vibe all of this time. Unfortunately, alongside VxPxOxAxAxWxAxMxC's polished and enormously heavy studio sound, Teen Pussy Fucker's bedroom-grind sound initially sounds a bit flat. I'm under no illusion that a lot of this stuff is produced this way, it's just alongside top quality studio quality tracks, it can take a while for your ears to adjust. Teen Pussy Fucker's material here comes on a bit like GUT vocals meeting CBT's grooves, and a drum machine. Dodgy song titles are the order of the day ("I Like Your Pussy Shaved 'Cause That Makes You Look Underage", "Paedophilic Love") but it comes part and parcel with these genres so what can you do...

 

All in all a pretty good fuckin' split, finally glad to own some TxPxF / Pigtails material after all these years, but the Amelus Boys definitely take the crown here! This CD was released earlier this year on Kaotoxin Records.

Here's an highlarious video that's a bonus feature on the CD. (Obviously NSFW)

Intestinal Disgorge - Dripping In Quiet Places

I always welcome more Intestinal Disgorge. I should make a crappy Sean Bean meme with the text "One does not simply have enough Intestinal Disgorge". So, when I got the sexcellent Hyperemesis / Pulsating Cerebral Slime 7" lathe from Goatgrind Records I had to pick up their release of Dripping... at the same time; it would have been criminal not to! I have three Intestinal Disgorge records now (at the time of writing), so I might as well get serious and get locked into collecting the fucking lot.

Holy shit, Dripping... is one polished motherfucking record! The sound here is absolutely monumental. The production values just get better and better with each record, but ID have also tidied up their sound here. Gone are the funny/worrying samples, as are, for the most part, the trademark bitch squeals. The Depravity record showcased a much more stream-lined approach for the band, replacing silliness with outright fucking brutality, and Dripping... takes the band even further in that direction. There are 25 songs here instead of the usual 50/60 you'd expect from an ID full length. The trademark frenzied-shredding is still evident in many of the songs, but I find that the tracks overall are much longer and structured, resembling a very interesting brand of brutal death metal rather than anything more grind-related.

On the other hand though, things get really experimental with the inclusion of what sounds like a fucking saxophone popping up in the mix. The album credits "J" to "vocals, clarinet, violin, trombone", but all I hear is something sax-sounding, but I'm not really educated in classical instruments and the sounds that they make. At times it sounds like a death metal Dead Neanderthals, which is very unusual to say the least. All in all, this is a fucking epic and absolutely tight as a duck's arse record. The lack of samples / worryingly misogynistic content and crazy-weird goregrind may initially baffle some old ID fans, but the more-focused and heavier than heavy sound more than makes up for it.

Prostitute Disfigurement - Deeds Of Derangement

Before I start, let me just say that this band has one of the most awesome names in the history of all that is grindcore and death metal. Fuck! It's such a brutal name, and one that still gets thinking "dayuuuum, that's nasty" even after years of immersion in this type of shit. They are from the Nederlands too, so they must hate the window-based red light districts there with a passion, with a name like that. Shit, imagine the customer / working girl conversation that could potentially unfold if one of the band visited a window! Imagine this tiny little Romanian blonde letting this huge, burly and sinister looking death metaller into the room and asking innocently enough, "so honey, what do you do for a living?". "Well, I'm in a death metal band called Prostitute Disfigurement and I think we are going to have a lot of fun..." Hahaha! She'd be popping that police alarm with less subtlety than Edna Krabappel and her independent thought alarm.

But, as usual, I digress. On with the music! Deeds of Derangement opens with a million-mile-a-minute blast-a-thon, throwing you right into PD's sick and twisted world. The vocals are a strange mix between a guttural low and a pig squeal, the guitars are audible, chugging pools of mud and the drums are surprisingly clarified; the blasts are equal, moderate in volume across the board and rock-steady, yet the use of triggers, if any, is very understated indeed. Great production job! As the songs sail by I notice an almost melodic edge to some of the riffage here, harking back to more traditional death metal approaches, rather than sticking to the ultra-brutal template and soldiering through an entire album with little to no variation.

It freaks me the fuck out that this album is nearly 11 years old, as it was only 3 years old when I first downloaded it back when I was still in school. It sure as hell doesn't sound 11 years old. Sometimes death metal work, whilst staying relevant, can sound rather dated mainly due to the production styles used, but Deeds of Derangement is an extremely organic sounding record that could have been recorded yesterday for all I know. It's great shit. You can stream the entire album in the link below. Originally released on CD by the defunct Morbid Records, which is now merged and under War Anthem Records.

Splattered Entrails - Flesh Out Of The Oven

Back in the Myspace days, Splattered Entrails set the bar on how to sound if you were a bedroom death metal or grindcore producer. I've never been too keen on their, how should I put it...typical death metal vocal style, but music-wise Splattered Entrails is the shit. This guy blew most of the other bedroom musicians out of the water. I think Splattered Entrails is still active, but it isn't really as "dank" as it was back in 2006 on releases such as this. There was this other Splattered Entrails album with a bunch of tentacles on the front, I forget what it was called (edit: it was Choking On The Rot) but it was one of the most unrelenting things ever; an endless world of high-pitched snare blasting and chugging guitars. It was a perfect mix of brutal death meeting the world of drum-machine powered goregrind.

Flesh Out Of The Oven however, is a bit more of a mixed bag. It has a bit more variety to it, for what it is. The whole thing comes on slow in a fade-in with a dissonant riff and double-bass drum programming. What follows can only be described as a veritable journey through all that is bedroom brutal death metal. It sounds ridiculous, and it probably is, but this is some cool shit. I was really lucky to pick this up off Dissected Angel Records, whom I was in contact with on Myspace for a good few years (the guy running it taught me a lot on starting out with a DIY label), because the label seems to have disappeared into thin air, which is kinda sad. 

I really do miss the Myspace days. No current social network exists with the power of promotion for musicians and labels that Myspace had. Those were the glory days of the internet-age extreme metal underground, and I'm still proud to have been a part of it, even if it all fell to shit. Mad feels.

Seeing as this is well out of print here is a download link for it right here. Otherwise, enjoy this Youtube video of slamming goodness. 

Cethalotripsy / Membro Genitali Befurcator - Split 7"

I'll be honest and admit that I only bought this 7" because Cethalotripsy were on it; they are one of my favourite "slamming" brutal death metal bands and are a total guilty pleasure of mine. Man, this shit is so sick! I'm a total sucker for this stuff when it's done right, and Cethalotripsy have yet to fail to deliver the gore-drenched slams. "Ulcerated Mass Of Pestilent Engorgement" is a fucking amazing song name.

Membro Genitali Befurcator are pretty decent as well. Lots of blasting going on here with nice heavy chugging mixed with some more-traditional metal riffing. The vocals are of the usual brutal death stock and the tracks lurch along at a fairly slow pace (for brutal death metal, at least) but the perfomance is more than interesting enough to keep me hooked until the wax ends. I'm not entirely sure what a Befurcator is, and I'm not sure I really want to find out, but these are a band I'll be keeping an eye on. I figure they are fairly new as they don't have much stuff out.

Coyote Records is a name that keeps popping up on my forays of filth into various underground genres, so I'm gonna have to give their entire release catalogue a look over when I get a spare minute or two, but for now you can check 'em out on the above hyperlink, and check out a tune from this split in the below video.

Lividity - To Desecrate And Defile

You just can't fault Lividity for delivering on the sick, twisted death metal front. As I'm sure I've mentioned many a time before, my death metal listening is very limited, but when it is done right, it just cannot be ignored. The sheer number of death metal acts out there never ceases to baffle me. Thankfully, Lividity are one of the best from the huge American scene. Tits, gore, hilarious samples, gruesome vokills and blasting drums. A true list of the finer things in life, no doubt!

 

To Desecrate And Defile opens with one of the funniest samples ever used in the history of music, before "Sword of Sodomy" hits you in the face like a ton of spiked bricks already dripping with the AIDS-infested blood of 10,000 dead hookers. And the pace is set from there! Ha ha! There are some brain-melting songs here; "Gut The Slut Before I Fuck", "Engorged With Blood (To Fill You With My Semen)" and "Orgasmic Flesh Feed" are absolutely amazing.

Production wise, this is the most clean and "modern" sounding out of all of Lividity's albums. The drum sound is fat and dark as fuck, despite the clinical triggering. The guitars are very polished, giving a hefty metallic chug more reminiscent of mainstream metal genres than the usual distortion laden riffage of death metal. I would recommend this Lividity record to any fan of metal music, especially those lost in a world of shit deathcore. I think this might appeal to people like that. Then they can work their way backwards to the more dank sounding, gruesome as fuck Lividity albums.

All in all, an excellent modern death metal record by one incarnation of a legendary band of the genre. You can't fault Lividity and you can't fault this type of metal, unless you're a feminist or something. Hopefully I'll be getting my paws on some more Lividity records soon. Remember kids: It's not about Satan, it's about pussy! Out on War Anthem Records and Epitomite Productions.

Lividity always pick the best samples ever ("are you fuckin' retarded?")

Devourment - Unleash The Carnivore

I've never really considered myself a proper Devourment fan although I am quite partial to their heavier-than-the-mass-of-9-planets mix of slam and brutal death metal. When I saw this absolutely stunning Goatgrind picture disc version of Unleash... at Obscene Extreme I knew it had to be mine. Just look at it! Damn! That's metal as fuck! Ha ha. Unleash... boasts quite a polished and clinical approach to things, and is a far cry from the band's cult classic sound on 1.3.8.

I can't decide if the music needs more slams or more blast beats, as the songs tread the line carefully between the two choices. One minute it's all the bodyslamming, next minute it's all the waving of the fingers in the air at the blastbeats! I guess I don't really need to tell you how Devourment sound, but I just love this slamming mess so much. On that note, I'd like to quickly round off this review before I have to listen to any more Devourment. I am currently in no shape to be chair-dancing to this shit ha ha ha! Finally, massive kudos to Goatgrind for putting this on vinyl and making it much more appealing for me to buy. Legend!

Merciless Precision / Toecutter HC - Split 7"

Toecutter HC kick things off with a super-fast punky grind assault, and after all the non-grind I've been reviewing recently I find it rather difficult to keep up! It's all kept rather simple here, there is a no-nonsense approach which seems to be missing on a lot of records these days. Straight to the point and over before I've written no more than a few sentences, Toecutter HC are ones to watch in the volatile world of British grindcore.

 

But it's Merciless Precision, the South West's current go-to support act for grindcore shows, that takes the crown here! Lolling about crazily between the boundaries of brutal death and blasting hypergrind, it really is hard to think what to write about these guys. The drumming is a stand-out point; it's mental fast and the gravity blasts are absolutely shit hot. The vocals are all over the place, from gargling grunts to spastic screams and yelps.

 

This record was released under a massive collaboration effort by the following the labels; Placenta Recordings, Reduckulous Records, Dick Head Records, Vulgar Records, Dead Chemist Records and Brute! Productions.

PS - There are no tracks from this on Youtube, so you're going to have to live with this instead. 

Waking The Cadaver - Beyond Cops, Beyond God

I absolutely loved the first Waking The Cadaver record but I could never truley get my chops around Beyond Cops, Beyond God. I feel that everything I love about the WTC sound is missing here; the razor-wire guitar work, the out of time gravity blasts and THAT picalo snare drum! Here WTC take their Devourment-by-numbers slam death sound and bash it head on into the more traditional brutal death studio sound. The quality is a massive improvement, but the polished as fuck drums and well rounded warm sound only serve to help disguise the charms that this band had on a rougher recording.

Also lot more time is spent this time round blasting away rather than chugging down. A good thing for some, but the endless slams in WTC's songs is what I loved so much about them! A great death metal record, but a bit too typical for me to love. Reet Reeeeeeet. Out on the gloriously shite Siege of Amida Records.