Author Archives: Necrogoregrinder

BLACK THE SKY (USA-Il): “Simplistic Mechanics Of Deformable Bodies” MCd 2007 Epitomite

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I am not sure I will be able to explain the reason why I didn’t like this Ep, but my problem is that I really cannot find any interesting elements in here and I cannot explain why. It might just be that each one of these tracks is quite forgettable. Black The Sky is the new band of ex-Lividity drummer Mr. James Whitehurst. And it just plain sounds as if the band was founded somewhere in 1998 or ’99. Last millennium’s end was an year or limbo for Death Metal, slightly before the Internet became popular and the revival of old school Metal begun taking ground. It was the time when bands contemporary to Umbilical Strangulation, Prophecy, Fleshgrind and a score of other similar ones were releasing a huge quantity of really uninteresting demos and albums. A formless breed of a new guttural Death Metal scene which looking hindsight, was appallingly plain (with some exceptions, some bands were actually quite interesting and survived to this day, see Necrotic Disgorgement).  This Black The Sky‘s Ep has a rather good production but other than this – it is terribly flat. This band plays a contaminated form of late nineties American Death Metal and late hour Hard Core with a particular eye towards slow crunches and power metal chugs but also adorned with a form of pervasive new-school HC melody a la Integrity. The vocals are mid-deep and sometimes have higher peaks, but I cannot count really powerful riffs to make my day or even one memorable track. The worse thing is that the vocals just follow the flow of the muted palm riffs and this a scheme that just sound so dreadfully green, not to mention the riffs seem to be cut and paste without a real concept behind. It goes fast now, slow then, repeat twice… not my cup of tea. The voice in the intro that says “Time To Play” is also identical to the one used in Broken Hope‘s “Loathing” album…  I guess it’s from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hm.  I cannot say it’s a bad album becouse in the end there are good ideas and no clear weak spots, but I am afraid the problem is structural. Professional cover art and excellent work of graphics for the booklet and packaging, although I am not particularly enthusiastic about abstract subjects.

INCINERITOR (Ita): “Morbid Iconoclasm” MCd 2007 Skullbuster

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It is really great to hear that the passion for old school Death Metal (sigh, I really wish I could write only Death Metal but people would misunderstand my words if I exclude the words “old school”, wouldn’t they?) is intact nowadays more than ever. One of the few good things of the Internet generations, is getting in touch with other people form all around the world which were listening to the same albums you did 15+ years ago. But even as cool is to hear fresh new faces in the underground scene discarding the bollocks of today’s technical wanking in favor of morbidity and obscurity. For a few years I thought it was just a matter of nostalgia when one sticks to old sonorities, but when you see people that were barely born at the time the classic Death Metal records were released playing the real shit, well you realize there actually IS something different in the “old ways”. And it looks as if this band knows it.

This Incineritor (?) debut Ep reeks of dust and cobwebs – the riffs have a demo-level minimalism but the concept beneath this band’s existence is rather clear. The drummer’s primitive bashing coalesce with Matt’s guttural vocals into a mix of old Hellhammer, Master and Cianide. Some attempts at playing slower, denser parts however do not seem to be particularly effective, as they just sound just a bit unripe and a tidbit too strident for my tastes (the guitar work is a bit rigid). This is an Ep for lovers of unrefined Death Metal with really no polishing at all. I also liked the vocals which have no forms of harmony at all. On the downside the four tracks tend to sound a bit similar, and there is a Unleashed-like gallop in track “Ritual Carnage” which worryingly sounds like tarantella, but other than that this is very good shit.

The lyrics (hey at last!) deal with demonic hordes and Armageddon, in pure Immolation “Here in After” style (but without biblical referrals). They’re nicely (ah!) old fashioned as well.

APOCALYPSE COMMAND (USA-Fl): s/t Cd-r 2007 [demo]

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Cough cough.

Might the gods of the underworld electrocute me with lightning if this is not one of the most fucking brutal violent blasphemic fucking shits I have heard in the last five fucking years. There is some mystery around this band which I cannot completely unwrap, but I like it this way, it’s like getting a new Von – like puzzle.

Just a 1 page blood red booklet with a goat, a raw logo and title tracks like “Evil Necromancy”, “Blasphemy in Darkness” and “Mayhemic Overkill”. Can you ask for MORE than this?

As for music, there is really nothing better I can thing of either. Take Blasphemy, Archgoat, Centurian, Demonized, old Sarcofago, early Sodom, Vulcano “Bloody Vengeance” and some early Morbid Angel demo era riffs and mix the whole thing up. The vocals are a raspy, serpentine, echo-filled thing which spew insults to god with a hate only the morninstar could parallel. I so fucking love their huge reverb, it’s so damn vintage. And the best thing is definitely the riffs – twisted and powerful, but stripped to the basics. There are just 2 or 3 of them for each song plus some Slayer-ish solos, but they’re just the right ones, they have a flow which I only heard in Angel Corpse. Everything in this demo fits the picture perfectly, I cannot test any weak spots. Even the rough, acrid sound has its role in creating the sulphuric mood.

So far, best release of the year.

INTERNAL BLEEDING (USA-Ny): “Onward To Mecca” Cd 2004 Olympic

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First of all, the title of the album and the cover art are fabolous. I totally share their view. My balls are quite full of this racist scum terrorizing the world. And even more I am full of hearing that the Western Word is the only responsible for their behaviour. Hundreds of years of civilization and all they produced is superstition and kilometers of barren desert wastelands. These shits have to be eradicated from the world, and if the H-bomb that is meant to do that has the colors of blue red and white, so be it. But let’s not digress, Nuclear Abominations is not a political webzine. It is about gore, deformities and sickness. Fuck.

The layout and graphics are not stellar for a label like Olympic but the job is well done and amateur errors are missing altogether this time. I don’t like the choice of colors and the yellow glow/embossing on the logo but that’s how it is today.

Hearing Internal Bleeding without Chris Pervelis is indeed very strange, but I admit the riffs are still solid, chugging, 100% NY slam. I wonder how much of Chris did flow through the recording this album – except for the acknowledged part at the end of “This Day I Fight”.  What’s undeniable is that the musicwriting here is one score better than anything I heard on Entorturement or 420 – both band were maybe too unripe at the time they were releasing their demos. Who knows, point is, this album takes everything these guys recorded before by the balls and shake. One should not forget that Internal Bleeding is over 15 years old, and it was one of the very first bands to start the NY style slam shit. So don’t annoy me with shit like “unoriginality”. A bit of guilt maybe they have, since this is a genre which is extremely dangerous to play, the line between a solid mosh indicung massive riff and a tarantella is blurry. Lots of young bands are now playing very, very boring monkey-core-metal trying to follow these steps. But Internal Bleeding always did it quite well, and despite some recording difficulties, I did like early Internal Bleeding as well. Expecially with Frank Rini on vocals (someone told me he’s a policeman today. Ah.). And still today they are able to crush bones.

“Onward to Mecca”, as said before, is still focused blindfoldly on the single rock solid stop and go riff, with huge guitar sound and shit. And I cannot really tell any weak points. This record is steeled in an armor of brutal chugs and boulder heavy chords. The music flows well and sometimes Pyrexia (more) or Dying Fetus (less) really spring to mind, and I think the vocals are the only slightly weaker spot. I think hard-core screams can be an extremely powerful weapon, if the tone is right, but these vocals seem more agony moans than pissed off spews. The recording, for the first time ever, sounds real powerful and beefy, it was really time we could hear this band with its rightful sound.

For fans of NY slam chugs blam blam metal I think this album stands well on top of your shopping list. Good shite. “It’s time to pay, it’s time to die. This is The American Fury”.

SPERMSWAMP (Can): “If Abortion is a Murder, Masturbation is a Genocide” Cd 2007 Lymphatic Sexual Orgy/Sindrome

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For those who missed this demo in 2002 (me included) here it is, the repressing by two killer labels such as Sindrome and Lymphatic Sexual Orgy. This is the first release by our pals from Canada, and the sound was quite far from that of their latest CBT worshipping bonecrushing goregrind.

On the graphic side, this Cd is quite appealing, despite the extremely glossy paper (it’s so slick it seems oily… but that might be to simulate the texture of sperm eh eh). At last a goregrind release done with some taste (if we can call it that), the concept of cumshots flooding recently dead feti is nicely gross and well, that’s the right thing for goregrind.

Musically this is not extremely advanced. Seems like more influenced by KOTS and SMES, with a lot of ’80s coin-op style looops and super-distorted vocals. I like the fact it’s so raw and bluntly unprofessional, and also a little bit the humorous keyboard twists, but in general their latest stuff is much more appealing. This is extremely computer oriented music, with almost no feel of guitars and a very synthetic-sounding drum base, not to mention really fucked up vocals and a score of samples like buzzsaws and screams. But in general this shit works, and it’s much better than most cyber goregrind I have heard recently. Good shit, overally speaking.

INCANTATION (USA-Ny): “Onward to Golgotha” Cd 2007 Relapse

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It might sounds as if it doesn’t make sense to buy a record you already have on both vinyl and Cd. But this special edition Relapse re-release of “Onward to Golgotha” was really impossible to miss. Things have been done in great style as with all these recent incredible exhumations of jewels such as the Disembowelment box and the Repulsion double Cd. Something just clicked in my damaged brain when I saw this on Relapse’s store website and well, I had to have it. Except for the HUGE typo in the booklet (“Profination” in big silver fonts??), the release is extremely accurate: the booklet is similar to the original one except for some Pantone silver colors, with added hi-res pictures and the jewel case holds this additional DVD disc. But hey, everything is absorbed by the spectacular cover by Miran Kim, a real fucking masterpiece of art. This painting really drags you in a vortex of madness. As said this 15 year anniversary edition of “Onward to Golgotha” (holy shit, already 15 years!) comes with a bonus DVD picturing three great shows with the McEntee/Deo/Roe/Pillard line up.

Being honest, so far I think the most perfect releases were made with Daniel Corchado on vokills, but Pillard’s muscle is uparalleled. The guy was/is just a fucking ogre from hell. And the music on this debut is so unrefined, but at the same so dismal and funereal, it embraces the term Death Metal with dark wings of blackness in its entirety. Incantation‘s debut features a couple of songs that already appeared on various previously released demos and Eps, revisited, darker and fitting one huge painting of hellish black and red tones. The riffs are just anything short of perfect, so dark, gnawed to the bone but brutal and massive, just like say Hellhammer, a monolith to the inverted god below. Pillard’s passion for slower, darkest atmospheres were perfect complement for McEntee’s undeniable genius for classic Death Metal riffs. I still believe he’s the biggest guitarist in Death Metal after Danny Coralles. I challenge anyone to say “Entrantment of Evil” is not one of the best songs of all time. Every single chord in this album cuts through the flesh of the liar of golgotha with unmerciful brutality. This is a black jewel, pure gold, real Death Metal.

HOL-A-WIT (Mex): “El Hueco De Tu Ano” Cd 2003 Half Life

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Here it is, the real Mexican gore massacre! I personally like Hol-A-Wit (which should roughly translate to “asshole” from what I understood) consistently much more than Semen. (2 members out of three, except for Luisa Bocanegra, come from  there so I guess Semen is a continuation of Hol-A-Wit or are similarly related). The band plays sublime third world gore grind with a ultra raw and garageish production, with clear porn gore influences.

The layout of the Cd is simple but the Alarma newspaper format is always nice to look at, one can recall Impetigo’s Faceless tape that used a similar scheme. No lyrics inside sadly, but I can guess they’re all about pathological gore and porn, that is what goregrind is supposed to be about.

I might probably consider the sound card of my laptop responsible for part of the noise that is caused from the band unrelenting distortion but I know there is a lot of pure filth already in this shit of an album (positively speaking). The riffs are simple, the drum blasts convincing, and the vocals low but in a humid, raspy way. I like the way the singer spits and gargles and bends his vocals to the whole range of unwholesome sonorities. One very good point is that there are no melodies in here, and that’s why I consider this one of the very few pure goregrind albums I have reviewed recently. This is really good stuff, if not as savagely powerful as Suppuration, it’s still noisy vomiting grind from a violent country, and it shows. These guys always have an extra punch compared to northern Europe or USA. Good honest porngore with a real drummer, extra distortion and gargling vocals. What else can one ask for?