Disastrous - Slavery of Disgusting Torture (Brute!; 2009)

Another month, another Filipino slam band gets coverage in S-M! Disastrous are no exception of course; hailing from Panabo City, these guys are here to devastate with 9 tracks of raw slamming madness and 1 very surprising choice of a cover song.

Starting off with a weird, kind of off-kilter acoustic intro, "Rise of Freddie the Blamer" morphs into a slam assault with alternating slow rhythmic sections and weird, haunting leads and channels some of the better moments of countrymen Down from the Wound, combining these aspects with a strange and appealing sound of their own. "Flesh Feast Orifice" was the first song of theirs I heard, and I like the first very Inveracity-ish riff, combining blastbeats and a slightly melodic phrasing, but the band quickly sounds a little tired, including the drummer who actually unfortunately misses a few hits here and there. Regardless, you can tell these guys are out to make some heinous brutal blasting noise and probably don't care about being inventive or technically proficient, so it's excusable for sure. The vocals are also a kind of featureless growl that doesn't have any particular phrasing to it, but instead just sounds like one-syllable vocalizations emitted over and over again. Pus Vomit showed how to add excellent vocal phrasing to slam earlier this year, and they are also Filipino, so it can be done!

"Embalmed and Bleed" has a chaotic riff structure that almost sounds ad-libbed, but it quickly morphs into an excellent slam and lurches back and forth again to encapsulate a lot of what this band's modus operandi is, in a nutshell. Slam and blast, slam and blast. Some of the riffs are more thought out and, indeed, more fleshed out, but a lot of them are amateur-ish and don't quite sound as developed as I wish they'd be. The title track begins with the requisite torture/screaming sample (I knew it had to be on this album somewhere, I mean check out the title). This song is a little longer and more interesting, and the pinch harmonic-laden slam breakdown is akin to something likely to come out of some Midwestern US state in the US slam climate at the moment, which is always pretty cool.

"Hacked Up For Mutilation" has a fucking epic riff in it, and this band's penchant for writing these is an unfortunate sticking point because they're so few and far between, buried in marring and strange, raw production and stuck between actually featureless slams. More great, melodic, driving riffs would help to offset this disparity, but writing heavy, accentuated slams instead of lax and listless slams would also assist this band in reaching a status closer to the top in this genre we worship.

"Desolate Way" is, yes, a Morbid Angel cover...of the acoustic song "Desolate Ways" on Blessed Are The Sick. A very weird choice for this band to cover...it's a song by an American non-brutal death band and it's acoustic...but it's quite well done here. Very interesting choice. I like when bands do this kind of thing, as it also shows influences, and I can tell in some parts other than this song that Disastrous are being influenced by something older than slam (the breakdown in "Vaginal Impalement Sodomy" hints at a veeeeery evil and sinister influence which could likely permeate future works by this band), which is cool.

Overall, this is a pretty good album that takes a bit of warming up to, and one that I have plenty of constructive criticism for. Look out for future releases by these guys and, closer to home, an interview we'll be doing with vocalist Delon in (approx.) the coming week! In addition, keep your eyes peeled for new released on Brute! Productions, operating out of Bangkok. Always good to have a dependable new slam label in tune, especially one with a slightly silly name. That's all for now.