Gorevent - Abnormal Exaggeration (Macabre Mementos; 2008)

I first heard Gorevent on the Internet when their demo was shared on Soulseek, so I warmed up to this heavy Japanese slam band with that material. As I recall, it was pretty good, straightforward grinding slam/brutal death with nothing particularly outstanding. Well, aside from their odd moniker of choice. Regardless, I was familiar with the final track on their new album, "World Septic", before I heard this. However, due to previewing the new songs they had on Myspace, I was pretty blown away by how much better the production and writing got between the demo and this album. Now, forcefully pushing ahead with the power of a steam engine driven by breakdowns and rhythmic brutality, Gorevent takes the world by storm with their incredibly well-written, produced and realized debut.

The name of the game here is total Devourment worship. In fact, it actually sounds like Abominable Putridity worship to a major extent, so I'm going to refer to this as 2nd generation Devourment worship, and this places the band probably right on the "2nd tier" of slam, below bands like Wormed but above a lot of American crap and especially above horrible stuff. So, it's good, in other words. Every song transitions between sections very fluidly and the sound is thick and full of beatdown slams at every corner. Besides that, you'll even get the odd mid-tempo-blasting section like in "Flesh of the Dead". I like the atmosphere here, Gorevent don't overdo it with dumb song titles or attempts at violence, we just have simple, aesthetically vague but worthy song titles like "Bleeding" and "Insanity" which just add to an aura of mystery.

There are no lyrics that I know of, none are in the booklet, so there's another point of obscurity here. There's even an atmospheric, 40-second track called simply "Gate of Hell" that is pretty similar to what Wormed did with "Fragments" on their album, but longer. "Bleeding" showcases a similarly ambient, creepy breakdown with hard-panned guitar and vocals before launching a stereo-slam attack. Well done for sure. In addition, the songs are all a good length, usually 3-4.5 minutes and full of changing structures. The one pitfall is a big lack of memorability here, but it's not really necessary to make memorable sections when every song is brutal and full of expletive-inducing breakdown sections. It's also short enough at 26 minutes to keep you satisfied the whole time. If this was a candy bar, it'd be like the Snickers made by some random seedy company trying to compete with Mars Inc., working out of a factory in Japan, its workers facing brutal conditions that make them want to lay down the brutality when they escape its clutches. Satisfying. And isn't that something you want? Looking forward to new material!