Acranius - The Echo Of Her Cracking Chest (2011; Rising Nemesis Records)

Acranius is a slam two-piece that hail from Germany, which has a history of being hit and miss in the brutal death department (Defeated Sanity good; Despondency bad). Just by looking at their promotional photos, I was pretty skeptical, as one member was holding an aluminum baseball bat, while the other was holding a obviously fake AK47, both dressed as wigger as possible. Now I'm not saying that the wigger image is a bad thing (actually I am), but most wigger slam has been pretty awful for the most part. Would Acranius be at Vomit Remnants level, or at Waking The Cadavers? Sadly, they're closer to the latter.

The album starts off with a 59 second intro track titled Ghetto Brawl, which you would expect to be just a soundbyte intro, or some epic slams like Defeated Sanity's Introitus, but your ears are raped by some godawful gangshouts in German. A slam starts off right after, which sounds pretty middle of the road, and then you're greeted by some mediocre vocals, about 10 seconds of slamming, then a total deathcore breakdown. They have the nerve to add in another awful gangshout and deathcore breakdown right after that too. Maybe the next track will be better? God no.

I'm not going to descibe all of the tracks, as they all use almost the exact same song structure, and songwriting, so I'll only do one. The second track, Supremacy Through Rejection, starts off with an odd tremelo riff, with some mediocre programmed blasting underneath it. It segways directly into another slam, which reminds me Devourment for a little bit, before descending into a funeral slam of sorts. While it is a pretty cool idea, Acranius seems pretty awful at transitions, so it just sounds awkward as hell. They then jump into a "Waking The Cadaver" slam, which is a mixture of a deathcore breakdown and a slam, replay the same riff from the start, then jump into a huge deathcore breakdown. The song repeats this about one more time, before ending on the same riff that started the song. That's it, that's all, I just described the entire album.

The production doesn't really help things either. The guitar sounds decent when they just chug along, but when they decided to do anything more then 20 bpm, it starts to sound extremely thin and weak. The drums are obviously programmed, and not very well at that. They add in random cymbal hits which make absolutely no sense within the context of the song. I am about 99.9% sure there is no bass, and the vocals are just there. These problems usually wouldn't make much of a difference if the music was well written, but it isn't. It isn't even well played, there are glaring mistakes in almost every track that just jumps out at you. Shanty Town Hookers for example, if you listen close to the starting riff, it's not really keeping in time, and he seems to mess up on a few notes.

The Echo Of Her Cracking Chest just isn't a good album. I'm sorry, I wanted to enjoy it. The cover art looked awesome, and the title of the album gave me a half chub, but beyond that there just isn't anything here to really enjoy. The slams are mediocre, the musicianship just isn't there, and beyond that, nothing is memorable. Nada. I can't remember a single riff from this album. If you like Kraanium or Waking The Cadaver, maybe you might get some enjoyment out of this, I know I sure as hell didn't.

Gurglectomy / Desvirginizagore / Inhumation - Grinding Your Brain Split (2011; Venal Prods)

So, you want to hear a lot of underground brutal shit from South America in one place but don't know how to do so. You're confused and seeking help at this wonderful blog we have here, so I guess it is only fair of me to introduce to you a cute little 3-way split of some perverted slammers'n'grinders from Sudamerica (Argentina and Peru specifically).

The split starts off with Gurglectomy who are pretty standard Colombian-sounding stuff (despite originating in Argentina, as Inhumation also do), a bit like old, old Goretrade combined with Carnivore Diprosopus' more depraved offerings. Toss in a pinch of 9-note slam breakdowns tossed in for absolutely great measure and you're about on top of where this is headed. The band jams out four songs here totaling under 10 minutes, so you know they don't really fuck around. The second song reminds heavily of Suppuration's first album with its blurred pinch harmonics and ever-so-slightly melodic riffs. By extension, it's also a little bit like early Ancient Necropsy in how quick, spiked tremolo riffs are bookended by spazzy blasts and psychotic riff breaks. "A Rapist Tale" approaches true interest with its very solid construction, and really weird breakdown that utilized dead-air in a pretty effective way.

The production distracts here, though; it's really tunneled and scooped, with an absurd low-end that does little to highlight any interesting things happening. It also sounds a lot like the drummer can't keep up with the speed of the other things going on during the very fast, blurry riff segments, but I think that's kind of charming and cool regardless; your mileage will probably vary. It depends almost entirely on how into stupid, underground as hell slam you are to decide whether you'd glean any actual interest out of this.

Desvirginizagore (from here on out referred to lovingly as DVG because fuck writing that name) have previously been covered on this blog when they released the video highlighted in this post and they remain a force to be reckoned with. Boasting very solid production and amazing songwriting skills that merge brutal old school death metal with traditional American DM (and great solos, very similar actually to Morbus), DVG goes the distance on this split with three very well-made songs that get progressively longer. Their 3 tracks measure out to over 14 minutes, and I think their style totally necessitates this length, as opposed to Gurglectomy who are around to blast and rule and just be slammy. DVG are not, however; theirs is a much more finely-tuned beast capable of very many cool things.

The first song on here is the song from that video, and it reigns supreme with a fantastic solo section and overall tight riffcraft and strong chugging slow sections. In the previously-mentioned post I called this band a mix of Goretrade and Sourpuz, which I think still generally holds true. The third song begins with a really heavy slam but quickly abandons that for no-holds-barred brutality and charges forth very directly. About halfway through there is an insane Morbid Angel solo that threatens to totally stop the song until they introduce a crazy atmospheric thing. You should probably just get this because this band is sick as hell and rules. But that's not all, because there's one more band on here, and they're also good (and old).

Inhumation are a deathgrind band that's been around since 1995 (wtf?), though they broke up for a while there. Probably not many people noticed this, but they aren't likely to give a fuck, because their music also sounds uncaring and callous. Bordering Napalm Death as much as it borders Gut, there's an air of "fuck you" here that rules. It even reminds me a bit of old Squash Bowels in the way songs just come and go with very little care. "Dioxin Engendration in P.C.B. Pyrolisis" has an insane funeral breakdown that picks back up to a grooving, rocking section rivaling the best stuff that this genre has to offer, honestly. The last track is some scary fucking shit; basically weird ambient stuff, some noise and some distorted screaming vocals that concatenate in an utterly bizarre industrial collage and then fade out immediately.

This shit rules, and you should buy this split now because, well, everything on it is kickass in a different way. It's diverse, interesting and keeps your ears busy. What more do you want?

3rd World vs. 1st World: A compariSlam (PATHOLOGY vs. FLESHTORTURE)

Greetings fellow slam death fans and welcome to another one-off weird article that I decided to do because fuck the rules. Today I am writing to compare the (in)famous Pathology's new album with FleshTorture's new album, hopefully discerning some things about the current state of slam in the meantime.

Everyone knows who Pathology are; they've gone from a two-piece splinter project of a Cattle Decapitation dude and a Locust member to what they are now, a 5-piece with hardcore band I Declare War's ex-vocalist Jon Huber gripping the mic and vomiting pure pestilence throughout the entirety of the album. Practically no-one, however, knows who FleshTorture are. Well then, allow me to refresh your memory. Unless you've been following this blog in an extremely zealous fashion since its inception, you probably missed out on a fringe article we wrote 4 years ago titled Nicaragua: Upcoming Slam Scene Report. This article (also written by yours truly) professed FleshTorture as a band sometimes doing "raw and almost Mexican sounding blast-slam-death", though at the time they suffered from the guitars being mixed too quietly and the vocalist being too loud. Well, they've just released their second full-length album (on a respected underground label, to boot; Brute! Productions from Thailand) since that time and seem to have improved on some things, while still leaving themselves open to constructive criticism.

One thing's for sure, though; it's sick as fuck! I ordered it as soon as I saw that Sevared had it in stock (and hopefully he acquires more soon, because everyone reading this blog should buy him out of it, it's great...but we'll get to that soon), and then, last night, I bought Pathology's new album and then had a great idea that leads me to this: how are the 1st and 3rd world slam scenes, sounds and sights different, and how do they compare? For a point of reference for FleshTorture, let's look back to countrymen Gorepoflesh's insanely fucking good debut and think about what made that good. It's well-written, terrifying, barbaric and has production befitting its themes and moods; that is, whatever mood is present in a fucked-up snuffhouse full of smoldering corpses drowned in acid and resold to necrophiliacs on the black market.

FleshTorture doesn't quite stack up any which way to that, but their sophomore album shows no signs of tiring or slowing down, and for that they must be lauded. It delivers equal parts blast and chug with a focus on odd, modular riffs that don't stay in place long, and a penchant for fast blasting that reminds of Colombian bands like Mindly Rotten, Ancient Necropsy et al. The guitar production is truly out-of-this-world (not always in a good way); it sounds like a black metal band trying to play slam; the chugs are all off-centered, burned-out and fuzzy, with a ton of interesting grooves to be had. However, it's usually really good stuff that just pummels you and makes you think a bit. There are sections reminding of equal parts Saprogenic and Devourment, their slow breakdowns developing into power chord frenzies with feral precision. The vocals are powerful; demonic grunts and wet slurs that, while still too loud (some things never change, eh?), never detract from the songwriting or overall style of what's going on. Some songs have terrible/amazing samples that, while at first amusing, will annoy the shit out of you if you want to closely inspect how the band strings the album together. There's a deftness to this that is difficult to find in a lot of modern slam, and I think it's a strength of theirs; they manage to sound simultaneously like they have no fucking clue what they're doing, yet they clearly are writing songs to pander to fans of this music; it's a bit like the first album of the aforementioned Mindly Rotten in that way. You'll want this in your collection if you like raw, sullied slam that delves into the deepest psychological depths of brutality without itself becoming depraved (Gorepoflesh, however, seemed to have given no fucks about that whole thing...that album scares the shit out of me, honestly). It's kickass, grinding slam that never sits still and offers up brutal fun for everyone, despite its production mishaps and weirdly toned guitars.

So how does it compare to the most well-produced, high-quality, gloss-and-sheen slam out of America these days? It stacks up well, and there are several amusing parallels to draw. Pathology's album is all loud, compressed slam with minor breaks for solos, djent/muted chugs (what the fuck is that mid-album instrumental guys) and very, very minor deathcore touches (which apparently lead everyone to label this 'deathcore'....fuck off if you don't think this is brutal death metal). It opens with a cavernous slam that takes no prisoners, and continues with a cool solo section that eviscerates most modern American competition. Some of the songs, however, are poorly written and deviate randomly from main ideas (with a few outliers, such as "Opposing Globalization" which, while terribly titled and annoyingly egoistic/pretentious lyrically, is seriously awesome as fuck), ending songs in places that literally don't make sense at all. This is jarring and a bit ridiculous when compared to the songs that are awesome, because it's like they had a lot of material and threw it around randomly. It makes the pacing awkward, but it's sometimes compelling just because of the jarring nature of how the album "flows". Jon Huber makes his debut on the mic here and, while he isn't a bad vocalist, he's fucking all over the place in terms of style, and a lot of the time, the style changes don't make sense in context. For instance, he'll sometimes go from inhale to gurgle-exhale in one breakdown without space between the lines, and it sounds lame and forced. The album is finely crafted and well-tuned, but it's a major sufferer of compression, with everything competing for limited headspace and doing so in spectacularly awkward fashion. Even the acoustic outro is loud as fuck for no discernible reason, and there's practically no subtlety to the whole affair. I realize slam isn't supposed to be anything less than in-your-face brutal, but it's just a personal gripe.

That being said, this is a strong album and probably contender for their best album, because of its flaws and the humanness of it. It is direct, suffocating in its brutality and most of the songs are pieced together from the zombified flesh of so many influences that you can practically hear Majewski, Mullen and Corpsegrinder in the most intense sections. However, even the last album was plagued with these negatives in songwriting, production and form. Can I really fault them for just doing what they want, though? No, not really. It's that they're doing what they want that bothers me, to some extent, but I can't say that's good or bad. In this way, the gap between first and third world slam isn't so large as I'd imagined...we're all just people, some of whom are trying to write insanely brutal music. FleshTorture probably don't have the means to record this album, but their music evolves because of it; the adversity of having poor studio equipment and a probable "practice space" studio is a challenge to them, and because of this adversity, they are writing insanely brutal music within constraints placed upon them. They probably could not be happier with this album in some ways. Regardless of the issues I have with both albums here, they are both great works, representing the music that hits us where it counts, and hits us repeatedly...hard, fast, loud. Buy both of these albums; they are exemplary of what we all stand for in this game.

Turbidity - Suffering of Human Decapitated (2011; Extreme Souls Productions)

Indonesian brutal death metal has pretty much always been about low-quality production, seething sounds and undeniable brutality, sometimes elevated and other times marred by bizarre songwriting choices. This relatively new band are here to prove that it can write straightforward, grooving slam with attitude that doesn't depend on strangeness or out-of-nowhere transitions to define itself.

The intro is straight-up brilliant, first of all, a low-brown thugging slam that lasts exactly as long as it needs to and dissipates when the band realizes it needs to be changed up. This kind of transition and songwriting is what is necessary for Indonesia. Bands liked Jasad and Plasmoptysis have always been middling-to-good groups that wantonly decide odd things in their songs; this band doesn't really play by those rules. Their straight-for-the-throat breakdowns threaten the listener at every turn, and the scooped, silly production actually doesn't do much to detract from their MO. The vocals are a dry maybe-inhale that doesn't distinguish itself, but which follows the slams at a leisurely and effortless pace with a solid but unambitious flow. Inter-slam drum fills are strong, though mainly reliant on double-bass runs; not really an issue, often it sounds quite cool because of the good drum production (aside from the weak, dry, crispy snare).

There are times, like in "Infernal from Malediction" that the vocals are obviously inhaled, but there are other times where it's ambiguous and a little off-kilter. There are also times where the vocals are just fucking weird, like the slam in the aforementioned song where the vocalist seems to just go batshit crazy. Pretty awesome. This song pretty much barrels through a multitude of slow-paced slams that don't even constitute breakdowns, every now and then punctuating them with undifferentiated blast sections. I am a definite fan of this; it's dumb, primal and powerful, with catchy songs and vocal lines that drive the entirety of the album forwards.

There is literally nothing in here that is new to the genre, however. It's pretty much a 3rd-world version of Pathology for a majority of track 4, for instance, where the band alternates between charging riffs with slam-paced drums and slams with fast, odd drumming. Every song basically apes Devourment-trademarked slams and co-opts them into their own little microverse of brutality. Not that it's a bad thing, it just gets tiring to hear songs begin with the same 4 note chug sometimes. When a strong foundation is formed around those 4 notes, I'm happy as a clam, as should all of our readers be, however, and this happens several times on the album with breaks for marginally interesting drumming and riffwork that distances itself from its obvious influences. And for that, I am down with this. A solid slab of brutality from our friends in Indonesia. Also, there's a Jasad cover that kicks major ass and is a fitting tribute to the classic original (though I'd, of course, still prefer a cover of "Ripping the Pregnant", but who am I?).

Abnormity - Irreversible Disintegration (2011; Inherited Suffering Records)

Ha, what a likely story. Hot off the heels of samples from the new Abominable Putridity album (which sounded pretty much like a slightly slammier Pathology; more than their previous album would imply, anyway), this band, also from Russia, and with a similar name to boot, releases an album that basically sounds like the follow up to In the End of Human Existence through a slightly different lens. The vocals are less guttural and belching, but the riffs carry more driving power. Of course it begins with an intense slam but the shift to driving blasts bears the momentum in a forward, capitulating direction instead of some songs off ITEOHE (which, to be fair, is pretty much this album's brother/rival/companion) which felt happy enough to linger in the mire of a bludgeoning breakdown.

This album is fun stuff, and very professionally done. "Shattered to the Bone", for instance, has a breakdown that pretty much nears funeral slam and which switches up through several mutations before closing off tersely. "Disease of Humanity"'s instant grooves and pounding rhythms are infectious and rabid, a good segue to blasting angular tremolo riffs that don't sound wanky at all but are kept on a leash and allowed to enhance the song rather than being its showpiece. An amusing, somewhat humorous slam replete with absurd pinch harmonics appears almost out of nowhere, cutting through the dust as only a breakdown of this intensity (and genre) could.

And then we're on to what could ostensibly be considered the masterpiece of this album, the oddly placed but amazing "Emanation of Putrid Entrails". Straight out of the gates with an amazing riff, blasting, and a brutal bass-bomb, this one is the no-holds-barred throat punch of the album, featuring 5 and a half minutes (!!!) of intense powerful slam that goes through a ton of movements, each more amazing and breathtaking than the last. Drowning in the tar-thick mire of the first quicksand slam, you're brought back and sucker-punched by that first awesome riff again and again until your bludgeoned, broken body is held even higher and forced to take it at twice the speed! Insane shit! The epic atmosphere of the next section is highlighted by unparalleled riff clarity and the strong, compressed production that shines a glossy light on every instrument, and soon enough the song has established itself firmly in your memory as a standout brutal death metal track containing everything awesome about the genre. Handy, isn't it?

The title track is a short jaunt through what is at this point familiar territory, its mosh heavy anthemic opening rhythm (which is unfortunately annoying because you can hear all the fret-noise...sorry if I just ruined it for you, faithful readers!) distilling into a potent and easily loveable slam section that basically draws the whole song out. The mid section breakdown is great, reminds a bit of Awaiting the Autopsy and is a little more "deathcore" than some might be comfortable with, but it's wholly slam and any 1-to-1 deathcore connections are only to be drawn by those unfamiliar with the nuances of how slam is paced and written. "Atrocity Domination" is all-guns-blazing; it actually sounds a bit like a traditional death metal song for a while, with razor sharp tremolo riffs going for the throat at every turn. Catchy like herpes, this is, and about 500 times deadlier. The "lunge into charging slam" tactic is at its best on this song, for sure. The blasting is mediocre and overloud here, a bit overbearing and doesn't go on long enough to build a suffocating atmosphere, it just feels thrown in, but there are several other times this happens on the album, and it's never really enough to make it a complete misstep, just somewhat of a nitpick on my part. The vocal-line-following slam is kind of clever, with triplet double kick runs aplenty.

Alright, I have one complaint about this album, and I may as well just air it right here and now. The dense, clippy and sterile production prevents any really interesting drumming from being heard (there probably really isn't any). Whereas random Filipino bands, for instance, may have incredibly flavorful and impressive drumming, their production may suck and they get subsequently called out on that, so it's only fair that I say the drumming here is almost totally utilitarian and one-dimensional. It's not bad, per se, but it is boring and typical, and it makes me lose a bit of the love I would have for it if it had drumming as cool as (for example) Ezophagothomia's debut did.

...but when you write powerful funeral slams like nobody's fucking business and end two songs in a row with them, you really have a lot more strengths than weaknesses, so let's not split hairs here. "Guttural Bleeding" (great song title) is typical blast and slam but it carries a lead-riff through the bluster, amplifying the interest and keeping the album fresh until the very last. The two long songs in a row, though both strong, is a risky move because very few slam bands go over 3 minutes, nevermind touch 5, so there has to be something special to keep interest, and Abnormity are pretty damn good at that so far. They do things that would be off-kilter to most other slam bands but which seem perfectly natural in context here (weird off-time drum thing in this very song is a good example, not sure what was going through their minds, but it's cool anyway). "Vomit Carnage" closes out the album in good standing, though it feels a bit tacked-on, with a generic yet circle-pitting slam dragging its knuckles through the main phases. The breakdown at 1:51 has the best introduction of recent memory, though, so it's not all for naught in the end here.

When all is said and done, this is a worthy successor to the pedigree of Russian slam that began (and maybe ended) with Abominable Putridity; this seemingly-unrelated band with an eerily similar (and humorous) name came out of nowhere and kicked the scene's ass...sounds like another band I just mentioned. I guess we'll see what happens next in the Motherland. Until then, comrades.