Gortuary - Manic Thoughts of Perverse Mutilation - 2008 - Sevared Records

Barrett's at it again. Here's another slab of brutal as fuck death metal, this time from a Cali-slam band by the name of Gortuary. Formed a paltry year (+ a few months) ago, these guys have clearly demonstrated their worth, enough to make a label like Sevared snap them up for a great new release!

Right off the bat, the obligatory sample, this time a serial killer talking about the look in his victims' eyes as the knife penetrates their flesh...really evocative stuff, but then you're blasted with intensely fast slamming, twisting and turning with everchanging precision and technicality. Stylistically, this sounds Italian almost, with some sections being made up of pinch harmonics a-la Putridity, but the band is clearly American with their California-style technical melodic flourishes and random lead solo bits. A few of these could be seen as nods to Ancient Necropsy, particularly on his first album where he would stop in the middle of songs to randomly do a tapped lead or something else. It just sets the stuff apart.

The second song has a full solo over a chunky, odd-rhythm chord and just goes into wacky epileptic wankery (in a good sense) after the first well-composed seconds. It's funny, because that kind of stuff even reminds me of what the sample spoke of initially; a killer plans out his whole night, gets to that moment of murder, and just goes nuts with an intense mania and adrenaline rush. Very tight stuff there, A+ for originality, and even a well-deserved reference to the crazy solo styles of Necrotic Disgorgement's own Tony Tipton (and sometimes Ben Deskins!)

But enough about solos and the like, you want to hear about the meat-and-potatoes, the slamming breakdowns and utterly devastating groovy downtuned sludge that makes up this genre we worship at the altar of. The more I listen to it, the more I get the feeling that these guys really really like Necrotic Disgorgement, but the funny thing about ND is that there are no big slam breakdowns on Suffocated in Shrinkwrap that stand out to me, but I fucking love that album. As such, this might not be the Down From The Wound or Abominable Putridity kind of slam with ultra-chunky slam rhythms at sluggish paces, etc., but it's a solid slab of modern California-meets-TXDM-meets-originality brutal death metal, and it should be very easy to get since Barrett's got more than a few on hand. Snatch this one, ladies and gents!