Arsebreed - Munching The Rotten - 2005 - Neurotic Records

Well, it's taken me like...almost 4 years to hear this ONLY because the band's name is pretty horrible, and let's face it "munching" is basically the worst synonym for eating, devouring, etc. yet. I mean, even "masticating" is better. Excusing the terminology (fucking finally!), I entered this with an open mind and...well, I am pretty impressed, to an extent.

Essentially, this is the band that formed after Pyaemia's very sad breakup. Cerebral Cereal is an overall awesome slab of chunky yet catchy downtuned Suffo-worship on speed (with some great bass). This album honestly doesn't change too much. The vocals are a little different and, being on Neurotic, it is perhaps a bit techier in the rhythm department and has more wanky (if I can even call it that) guitar riffing. However, the overall feeling is relatively similar and I could say that if you're a fan of (old or new) Disavowed or Pyaemia, you'd be right at home with this one!

Now for a modern day connection: immediately upon beginning this to sit down for the review, I basically noticed that Human Filleted, new brutal deathers with a new album this year (actually a pretty good one marred by really stiff, lo-fi production but with very tight writing skills for such a young new band; review probably forthcoming[?]) are...trying to sound exactly like this. And I mean exactly...right down to the bass, which is loud but not all that "heavy" or low-end filled. It's chunky and slammy brutality that does not forget for a second that it is still death fucking metal and that it is supposed to be evil, groovy, and fast at times also. The quick changing rhythms are really good on both the HF album and this, and I can find myself appreciating the catchy vocalizations of both Joel and Robbe (ex-Pyaemia and Disavowed vocalists, respectively). This album does little wrong, and almost everything right. The production might be a LITTLE thin, but the songwriting and overall slammy brutality combined with fierce and technical catchiness are really satisfying together.

Also, I have to fucking mention that the lyrical approach is LITERALLY exactly what you would expect from a band with the aforementioned vocalists also writing lyrics in the contexts of the same songs! Philosophy meets gore, but never really fully combines...a stanza of gore, a stanza of random philosophy as only Disavowed could be known for. Hilarious, and strangely amazing.