Waking The Cadaver - Waking The Cadaver

So I just found out that WTC split up, which is a shame, but IMO they have never been able to ever top their first album, Perverse Recollections Of A Necromangler. This final "goodbye" CD is quite misleading, as the title and the high quality cover art suggests a new record, however all we have here is a bunch of demos cobbled together onto one CD. Now, if you are a massive WTC fan, I guess you could get excited for finally owning the original versions of "Chased Through The Woods By A Rapist" and "Blood-Splattered Satisfaction", if it were not for the fucking abysmal remaster/remix job.

Yes, for reasons unknown to man, the demos appear to have been drenched in shitty reverb, as if this were a late 90s ambient black metal cassette. The other four demos do little to really add to the package, as does the 17 minute run time (especially considering "Blood-Splattered Satisfaction" appears twice). Disappointing send off. Definitely for collectors only.

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! 

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.