Artery Eruption - Reduced To A Limbless Sexslave

(Apologies for the crappy art image, Google crushing the life out of my shit once again...)

This thing has been in Spotify "to do" list for absolutely fucking aeons, and every time I open it I am reminded why. It is if my brain, in some mad coping mechanism, blacks out all memory of ever hearing this album. Usually the human mind reserves this sort of thing for deeply traumatic events in life, like for instance, a car accident or a horrifying sexual assault. But, Reduced To A Limbless Sex Slave is so nauseatingly, traumatically, unbelievably awful that my brain seems to class the experience of listening to it as a horrific life event. 

I mean, I listen to gorenoise for fucks sake. There must be like, what, two hundred people on the entire planet who like that shit. Despite it's tiring tropes, I am also partial to slam and brutal death metal. But this....this is something else. Whoever sat down and thought "yeah, this is a perfectly acceptable sound for a professionally released album" needs their head checked. The absolute crying shame of it all is that I don't think Artery Eruption are all that bad, I just want to know who decided to release an album that sounds like it was recorded inside a decommissioned industrial oven on a Windows 95 laptop with a £5 webcam microphone. 

Pass. For the love of God, pass. 

Vulvulator - Obscenario

Vulvulator are (or were) a pornogrind band from the incredibly-metal-as-f sounding Uzhgorod, which is in Ukraine. One of the greatest tragedies of the 21st century is that they only ever released one album and a couple of splits. Obscenario is a bizarre blast through the usual pastures fermenting in these particular genres (slam / pornogrind / brutal death metal), but the production style chosen by the band (or maybe the studio producer?) really adds an interesting twist to proceedings. The songs are led by the bass, which strong and prominent in the mix, followed up by the guitars and held together by the odd drum sound; an unique twist on the ol' tighter-than-your-average snare sound.

If I had to sum up Vulvulator in one song I believe I could easily do this with track two on this heffer; "Oestrum Ecstasy". It perfectly sums up what I mean when this band ride the slam/BDM sound but also incorporate an odd, bass-driven sound. Other highlights include "Boy In A Boat", "Horror Of P.M.T." and the quite-excellent cover of GUT's "Dead Girls Don't Say No". It frightens me that this album is nearly ten years old. Hopefully I will still be listening to pornogrind from beyond the grave, but we'll see.

Brutality Will Prevail - Forgotten Soul

Brutality Will Prevail are a long-running Welsh hardcore band that have, over the years, gone through several styles and line ups. Forgotten Soul is the band's 2009 debut album (they self-released a few things before this, but this was the proper debut) and it catches the band when they were playing a really down-tempo, super-chuggy style of hardcore. I guess it is almost like slam death metal, but with the endless double kicks taken out. BWP are a decent hardcore band in their own right (Root Of All Evil is the tits), so it's a bit of a shame that this record conforms so strictly to the chug-style, which was, if I'm totally honest, just what everyone did back then.

There are so many fucking awful trendy chug bands in Wales, even now. Kids are still listening to mindless bollocks like Oceans Apart and it genuinely baffles me - I mean, is it still 2007? Why is this genre even still a thing? Anyways - on to the album. I won't pretend that making it through the whole thing in one go isn't a bit of a task for me, but then again, I'm a bit out of my comfort zone here. But,that doesn't necessarily mean that this album is bad. The vocals are fucking class. On first impressions, (musically, not so much vocally) I can make a lot of comparisons to the early sound of Annotations Of An Autopsy, who made waves in this style of music before jumping ship before shit got too stale.

Perhaps I shouldn't have reviewed this album, because I've gone off on a massive tangent, but fuck it, it's written now so it's getting posted! Stay tuned to Lines In Wax kids, for super top quality content like this!

Throw down or fuck off, or something.

PS Mad props for that album cover though, top stuff.

Cemetery Rapist - Plundering Into Vaginal Demolition

Cemetery Rapist is perhaps the wiggerest of all slam projects. I guess if you’re gonna listen to this type of stuff, go straight to the most ridiculous, insane project of the lot. He might not have gansta grills like members of more recent slam bands, but Cemetery Rapist is also probably one of the longest running projects too, and according to my I-used-to-spend-too-much-time-on-Myspace radar, he’s probably been going for about a decade. When your game is super chuggy pornogrind-tinged slam, you gotta give the guy props for still managing to churn out fresh and relevant music. 

Asides from a brief foray with superstardom (lol) by releasing a record on Rotten Roll Rex, Cemetery Rapist has been releasing and supporting his own filth in a true DIY style ever since the project’s inception. In that respect, Plundering Into Vaginal Demolition is no different; it is a self-recorded, self-released CD that is an absolute fucker to get a hold of at a decent price outside of the USA. The pros and cons of the self-funded underground, folks! 

Plundering... offers up another slice of what Cememtery Rapist is all about; sludgy slams over ticking drum machines and str8-from-da-cornfieldz cricket vokills. Skreeeeeeeeeee, motherfuckers, skreeeeeee. Top off the whole circus with some frankly disturbing artwork and hey presto, another fuckin' slamming porno groove gem in the bag. That's how he do. 

Props, homes. 

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".

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! 

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.

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!

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. 

Disembowled Corpse - Chronic Disembowelment

Nothing screams "redneck death metal" more than having a CD out on Sevared Records and not being able to correctly spell your own band name. The label too, it seems, has issues with spelling. One shitty photoshop smear of a logo and boring cover painting later, we have Chronic Disembowelment, which despite all my sarcasm is actually fucking excellent.

The intro sample is a fucking bore but as soon as this bastard kicks in you won't be sorry. The sound is fat and the tunings are low as fuck! The drums are full and prominent in the mix, and the vocals are interesting enough to keep me going (for death metal). I accumulated a whole bunch of crap death metal in my label days and I almost threw this out before I did a quick search on line and was reminded that Disembowled Corpse play slam death. My wigger-ass tastes of today can dig that mad shit yo, so I fired up the CD player and took this album for a spin. This is good shit, and a keeper!