Suffocation and the Roots of Brutal Death

For good reasons Slam-Minded tends to focus on newer bands and newer releases. If we just talked about old material, the blog would get stale fast. However, I think occasionally it is worth revisiting the classics and the founders of a genre. Not only does this remind you of what makes the music great, it also means you are only listening to premium music. This is what I've been doing recently (as you can see, no reviews for a couple weeks), but I wanted to share my thoughts about probably the most important band for Brutal Death: Suffocation.

Suffocation pretty much single-handedly took death metal from heavier thrash metal and melodic stuff like Morbid Angel and the Swedish scene, and created the path of percussive, rhythmic, brutal death metal that we know and love today. No disrespect to those other bands, but I personally feel that the path Suffocation created is the best, and closest to what I feel is great about death metal. Listen to songs like "Infecting the Crypts" and "Liege of Inveracity" and you can see the seeds of slam death that would sprout a little less than a decade later. If you enjoy all the new bands that we write about here, then you owe Suffocation a debt of gratitude. I'm sure almost every reader of this blog has heard Suffocation, but I encourage you to go back and remember how amazing these guys were and are.

Top 10 of 2009

Here's my list for the best brutal/slam death albums of 2009. Happy new year and stay brutal and sick~!

Nick:

1. Devourment - Unleash the Carnivore
2. Pathology - Age of Onset
3. Gorepoflesh - Gore Fucking Corpses
4. Awaiting the Autopsy - Couldn't Tell the Bodies Apart
5. Human Rejection - Decrepit to Insanity
6. Septycal Gorge - Erase the Insignificant
7. Amputated Gentials - Family Bloodbath
8. Vomit the Soul - Apostles of Inexpression
9. Decrepidemic - The Void of Un-Existence
10. Pus Vomit - Degrade the Worthless

A Year of Slam...Top Ten Lists Abound!

Andy:

1. Devourment - Unleash the Carnivore
2. Pus Vomit - Degrade the Worthless
3. Gorepoflesh - Gore Fucking Corpses
4. Amputated Genitals - Family Bloodbath
5. Pathology - Age of Onset
6. Embryonic Depravity - Constrained by the Miscarriage of Conquest
7. Awaiting the Autopsy - Couldn't Tell the Bodies Apart
8. Septycal Gorge - Erase the Insignificant
9. Suppuration - A River of Corpses
10. Insidious Decrepancy - Extirpating Omniscient Certitude

Expect an update by Nick soon. Until then, stay slamming!

-A

Band Appreciation: New Yorkment

This is an unusual choice for a band appreciation but New Yorkment are an unusual band. The uniqueness comes not from their music (the opposite in fact), it instead comes form their intent - namely to parody the genre and scene of brutal death metal. Why appreciate a band that essentially mocks my favorite music? Because it's damn funny that's why. For me, most parody fails because it goes too far over the top. Getting bludgeoned over the head with the joke tends to make it less funny. However due the natural extremity involved in brutal death New Yorkment's humor thrives on being over the top. This can be seen in the complete lack of lowercase letters on their myspace page including such utterances as "GORESLAM IN THE HOUSE!!!!!". Their songs also have such amusing names as "INGORGING INGORGITY" and "PIT RIFFMENT". They also lampoon the practice of inventing a meaningless brutal sounding genre name by calling themselves "THUGSLAM GOREPUNCH" among other names (see left).

One of my favorite things they've done is create a myspace page for what seems like hundreds of "Slam Chapters" including ones for Africa and "Killafornia". This of course is making fun of all the NYDM/UKDM/RUDM/TRDM etc. pages which have proliferated recently on myspace.

The music too is worth mentioning. It's pretty much just retarded slams and rather gross guttural vocals. It's like playing baseball (or any sport) with your friends. You suck compared to real players, but you're probably having a lot of fun.

A key part that makes this work for me though is that I sense no malice in it. I could be wrong and admittedly I do not know who made all this and what their intentions are (if you know please enlighten me), but I do not get the sense that the person (people?) behind New Yorkment really hate this music. Instead it's good natured ribbing of the odd idiosyncrasies that have developed in the scene. And besides, if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

New Yorkment Myspace

Band Appreciation: Dripping

Activity has been a little down here at Slam-Minded recently due to both Andy and I entering the drudgery of summer jobs. To remedy this though I figured I'd do some old fashioned appreciatin'

On the docket for today's round of appreciating is Dripping, a sadly departed group of potheads (I mean this in a loving way) from New Jersey. In their relatively unheralded career, they managed to put out one fantastic EP and one extremely good full length album, along with a couple of demos.

Dripping play slam (duh) but instead of just the usual breakdowns, blast beats and gurgles, they add samples of a wide variety of music and other sound bytes. This creates a very strange and somewhat fucked up listening experience, which only makes the very well done metal bits better. This bizarre approach to songwriting really hits its peak on the song "Skydiving Out of the Hemisphere", on their EP. The song combines an upbeat trance number with some absolutely mammoth slams. The juxtaposition of these two diametrically opposed musical styles works to make them both sound really good as the happy melodies play off the destructive rhythms of the breakdowns. It's one of those things that sounds crazy, but trust me it works great and is actually my favorite song. I don't want to say that everyone will like it, that is after all the pitfall of originality, but at the very least one should appreciate its uniqueness. Another one of my favorites is the song "The Interlude of Astrophysics" which begins with the quote "Life is just an interlude to death, you ever think about that?" Another voice replies: "Word son" and off to slam heaven we go.

Some of you may be saying "what the fuck?" after reading all this and I can't blame you. That's just the reaction this band will engender and it's all part of the fun. I implore anyone who hasn't done so already to give Dripping a try and just enjoy the great slams and utter weirdness. It's a rewarding to experience music that is so unique, yet still manages to keep all the aspects of this genre we all love.

Also of note, the liner notes for their full length Disintegration of Thought Patterns... are seriously fucked up. I've read a lot of death metal lyrics and am pretty jaded at this point, but these ones are still disturbing.

MP5K - Swedish True Crime Slam

The deal with these guys is that they feature the talents of Soils Of Fate's drummer, and hooked up with him and the rest of SOF soon after forming. That's something to fucking boast about...so how do they sound? Slam-Minded gives you all the details.

Through acquisition of their demo, Deranged Stockholm Syndrome, I learned that these guys REALLY ARE the second coming of Soils Of Fate (who our blog's first post was about, no less!); totally tight rhythms influenced by early NYDM, some hip-hop influenced sections (just like SOF), the trademark catchy songwriting...they've got it all. Vocals are less guttural, but still powerful vociferations of power which carry the music quite well. Some off-time chugging in the last track (during the "breakdown") really works well with the band's style. I don't hear any solos, but I'm sure they'll add those in eventually. This is also REALLY insanely well produced for a debut EP/demo, so kudos to them for that. SO fucking good...

900 ROUNDS PER MINUTE!!

Myspace Link

Digested Flesh Appreciation

Emerging from the Guido ridden land of New Jersey in 1999 Digested Flesh were one of the first slam bands I found and still one of the my favorites. In this post I'll discuss in detail this band and why I think they rock harder than most.

First off the essentials. They formed in 1999 as I said, they released one demo in 2003, a full length in 2004 called The Answer to Infection (Macabre Mementos) and a split with Inhuman Dissiliency called Accumulation of Eviscerated Remnants (Macabre Mementos). I have both the split and full length and both are worth getting.

The sound of Digested Flesh is that of slam with special emphasis on the bludgeoning side of things. There are the usual catchy grooves, the really slow parts, the blasts, but occasionally they'll just belt out a pounding riff with no melody, no progressions just WUMPWUMPWUMP on your puny, pathetic personage. This is incredibly satisfying to me and adds to the brutality. This aspect is a little more prevalent on The Answer... but it's still in their newer stuff. Just pure violence

The vocals are also incredibly sick. The gurgles are incredibly sick sounding. Not exactly low or deep like Soils of Fate or Vomit Remnants, just... sick. Closest thing I can think of is Wayne Knupp on the early Devourment stuff. They managed to nauseate a black metal friend of mine but of course I love the vocals.

Digested Flesh also do the little things right. The drumming is tight and the drummer uses many catchy little hi-hat rolls that spice things up. The bass does it's thing well but doesn't get in the way. The songs are also distinguishable from one another which is nice in this genre.

What surprises me is how little this band gets talked about. I feel like worse bands get talked about more and get on bigger labels. Oh well, check out this band if you haven't and if you have then horns up to you!

Fetal Mutilation - Filipino Slam Masters

Nick has been telling me that slam death from the Phillipines is on the rise...and after a few more counts of battery on my ears from bands from that region, I think I'm convinced. But this is one of the more impressive acts...and what impresses me (and, yeah, also disturbs me and causes me to rethink why we even let labels exist if they won't put out awesome albums by bands like this) is that these guys are super, SUPER, BEYOND epic (riffs, breakdowns, technical parts, even the fucking vocals are better than 99% of slam bands...I mean, fuck!) yet, like I just mentioned, they don't have a CD out and apparently aren't releasing one anytime soon...

Barrett/Sevared should really listen to us here and sign this fucking band...he's got the ultra-brutal Down From The Wound putting out a CD soon (we'll have a review and interview from them soon right here!), the split between Human Mastication/Flesh Disgorged (both from overlooked Asian scenes; super kudos to the label for the attention to this part of the world...but seriously, sign Fetal Mutilation...now!!)...but...man, the rest of the world is missing out.

If you like your slams HUGE, your riffs BIGGER, your breakdowns EXTRA HEAVY, and your vocals sicker than your grandmother with tuberculosis...fuck, listen to this band. A demo review may be forthcoming...

Fetal Mutilation @ Myspace

Soils of Fate - Swedish Slammers

Playing with the groove of twenty Devourments, the vocals of a rapping Matti Way-circa Cranial Impalement, and the almost exact style of music as Japan's Vomit Remnants, SOF are Sweden's answer to everyone else's slamming goodness. But just what makes them so good? Listen in...

1. The groove. This band would be nothing without a solid rhythm section, but listen to the varied and catchy drumming of both Nicklas Karlson and Jocke, who drummed on older releases (the band has since integrated drummer-for-every-band-ever, most notably Dying Fetus, Kevin Talley on the skins; how's that for star power?). The older drummers switch fluently from blasts to slower rolls and great kick patterns, as well as quirkier fills given the song.

2. The vocalizations. This guy is sicker than anything Disgorge has done since She Lay Gutted, so to compare him to anyone lesser than Matti himself would be a total insult. This guy spews out some of the most sickening gutturals in the genre. It even sounds almost funny when he "raps" (I usually categorize the music as what old-school hip-hop would sound like if it were metal instead), but he delivers all lyrics(?) with conviction.

3. The aesthetic. OK, so this isn't a part of their actual sound, but this lets these Swedes stand out. True crime slam death? I've died and gone to fuckin' heaven! Song titles like "Murder, Inc." and ".44" definitely give off that air of organized mob-crime very well, and the music sounds tailor made for people in the mob, inflecting the vocals and guitars with the brutality you need to be a cold, calculating killer and villain.

This band gets a solid A from me. They never fucked up their legacy (fingers crossed!), every song they made ruled, and they could probably do more stuff like this in the future, only possibly better...they ARE really consistent (both albums have the same general style, but you can definitely tell songs apart; there's a good deal of personality inherent, lacking in a lot of slam bands and in most of the BDM scene as a whole). Cheers to SOF.

Check Soils Of Fate out at their Myspace.