Category Archives: Reviews by letter

Incubus “Incubus” 7″, 1987-1989

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Incubus “Incubus” 7″, THE Death Metal, Gore (1987-1989)

There is basically no excuse not to own this record if one listens to Death Metal, as it captures the true Death Metal essence in its most untainted form. Because, yes, Death Metal is something way more than gore lyrics and blasts, something that I believe many people are missing today, especially coming from other genres. It’s the vibrant energy of blood and transition, of pain and trespassing, of loss and blissful abandonment. Recorded back in 1987 and re-released on a legendary German label that also released a bunch of other huge classic vinyls like Asphyx, Disastrous Murmur and Macabre, this EP contains all of this and more. Think of the schizophrenic vocals and drumming of Nuclear Death transferred into Morbid Angel’s demos and you get an idea of the necromantic leather and spikes savagery of this immense recording. You get all the intricate distant riffing, delirious solos, crazy vocals, all the three-dimensional textures of sweat, spikes, and black leather that this music used to stand for. I still rate it one inch from Morbid Angel or Necrovore, but these guys were playing in the same game and they definitely got to the finals.

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Lobotomy “Against the Gods” tape, 1992

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Lo so che volete i vecchi classici quindi ogni tanto parliamo di qualcosa di vecchio.

Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Lobotomy “Against the Gods” tape, swampy and chunky Death Metal from early Sweden, Raptured Anus 1992

It took two years for this band to record a second tape after the IMMENSE 1990 “When Death Draws Near” debut , one of the best Swedeath demos of the time, a thing so dark and heavy it could well be Finnish (whopss!). This band released albums so shitty during their late career that someone might be deceived in thinking they were never any good and they would be wrong as fuck. Loyal to the “first demo was better” adagio, which despite webzine SunnO hipster editors actually is absolutely true of most scandinavian death metal bands, this is a band which released a cvlt gem in the golden year of the genre. To be honest, this second effort is not nearly as good as the first one but I believe it’s mostly due to thinner production and a thinner sound as structurally it’s not much different. This is classic solid mid tempo Death Metal with guttural vocals and some very vague 80’s slayerish riminiscences, but with way more chugs, could be a bit like Grave’s poorer cousins if one wants to classify different schools of a subgrenre’s subgenre. This plus the following demo were both repressed on CD by almight Thrash Corner label from Puerto Rico 25 years ago, I have currently no idea of the cost of that CD today but it was a pretty cheap second spin basket kind of record (means it’s probably worth 20000 euros after the age of Ekeroth).
Impossibly small font makes my old eyes ache to read anything now, but there is a nicely sized fuck of list in there that includes some words that mr Zuckerberg won’t appreciate ahah.

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Deformity “Obsessed With Death” tape, 2010

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Deformity “Obsessed With Death” tape, ingenuous proto-brutaldeath from Costa Rica, Visceral Vomit/Murder 2010

Despite the lineart cover and OSDM typewriter layout Deformity is a prom night would-be Brutal Death metal band from Costa Rica, my guess is their southern world origin somehow safeguarding them from going all out guido slam, they sound more like a hugely simplified version of Internal Suffering. They are decently fast and tight for being so young (maybe not so much, two of them put their sons in the thanklist).
This band has an amazingly naive 90’s teenager attitude, one song even starts out by ripoffing “Sense of Demise” by Sinister so much that I thought it was a cover. And the song titles like “Freddy Krueger” are so eastern block thrash I cannot help but liking them. It’s somehow weird because this band is still active and even wrote two full-length albums so far, go figure.
My favorite part of this tape is the snail address featured “800 meters sur del salon la cima, plantel de aya”.
Nothing special but I have no method but randomness to pick records to review lately.

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Entropic Degrade Behind Phylogeny “The Absence Screamed Ten Times” CD-r 2004

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Entropic Degrade Behind Phylogeny “The Absence Screamed Ten Times” CD-r, full blast bulldozing goregrind from La Spezia, s/p 2004

You might be surprised how massive the sound of this thin CD-r is. This is a band that managed to replicate the breathless pummeling of the eastern block goregrind masters like early Squash Bowels and Dead Infection with that additional dose of loose relentless uptempo hammering that only bands Inhume managed to hit. It is no surprise I believe that just like the dutchs some of the members have different backgrounds, Gionata will forgive me if I state that this is possibly the only band he played in I enjoy ah ah! There is no space for breathing on this record, and I think it’s a real pity we didn’t get more of this great shit. Stylistically speaking the band had serious potential, I really liked their grotesque artworks and insane Abscess-like handwriting!

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Morbid Gods “Rotting Prophecies” 7″, Temple Of Abomination 2011

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Morbid Gods “Rotting Prophecies” 7″, insubstantial Death Doom from US, Temple Of Abomination 2011

Punk crusties turned to OSDM sometimes score great bands like Black Blood Invocation and sometimes they just shoot in the flock to catch some easy prey with debatable results. I still have no idea why Blood Harvest created this sub label for just a handful of releases as I can’t exactly catch what’s the conceptual difference between the two entities but nevertheless this 7″ has been released on this small imprint called Temple Of Abomination. I picked up this 7″ totally convinced it was some repress of old Altar (swe) stuff (check the logo!) until I was already handing money for it at the record stand. I told myself hey, the logo is cool the art is cool, the worst that could happen would have been just another regular doomy Death Metal item to add to the EP crates in the Crypt of Rot. And so it turned out to be – generic songs with 3 tempo changes of routine death doom that could actually have been recorded in 1991. It sounds like a mix of demo era Profanatica and Incantation BUT played by someone who listened to the songs just once. I am not complaining too much as there is nothing wrong besides being totally soulless and without any quality of note, I personally like the idea of a recording being minimalistic and unpretentious yet there is really very little meat to chew here.

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Killing Addiction “When Death Becomes An Art” 7″, Inverse Dogma 2015

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Killing Addiction “When Death Becomes An Art” 7″, generic technical Death Metal from US, Inverse Dogma 2015

I have no idea why I keep giving this band a chance, obviously, the best stuff they released was the Necroshine 7″ on Seraphic Decay and well I have a fetish for that label, but I think the shitty raspy production gave a kick to a band that composition-wise just doesn’t have “it”. The CD they had on JL America was already highly generic uptempo meh techie Death/Thrash with boring, dangerous kind of boring I mean, you can’t really listen to that while driving, influences. And yet I still have my copy of that too, you know, amazing Nick Curry cover you can’t miss that. Arguably the return of the band meant better production that probably suits even better their sound. This 7″ was released on a little label from Italy and I think they did a decent job, indeed the recording is crisp and probably these riffs are way better than the ones on the album, but I cannot stand all that mid-tempo chugs and vocals that just follow every single twist. They added some melody in the twist as well, shifting inexorably the band towards a sunny corner of this genre I am not interested in.

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Beyond “Enter Transcende, Iron Bonehead 2012

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Beyond “Enter Transcendence” 7″, awesome true Death Metal from *gasp* Germany! Yeah, Germany! Iron Bonehead 2012.

You know, Germany is not only home to “highly average Death Metal” bands on Cudgel and late Morbid Records. It actually can produce amazing recordings, and hearing that coming from Iron Bonehead whose catalog of bands is 88% booooring testifies that you can expect great things any time anywhere if you just keep your eyes open and just don’t catalog anything as shit just because of previous experiences. Even MBR released shitty recordings!
I am not entirely sold on the packaging, a bit too slick, layout is a bit too modern, but the cover art is killer and lyrics too have a total 1990 vibe, with mutants and all the sick Death Metal shit.
Music? This band plays true Death Metal. Great vocals, relentless savage drumming, neat powerful riffs, oscillating between the old swedish and the old south american with a great raw production, morbid guitar solos, well I cannot really find anything weak here even when they momentarily slip to mid tempo. THIS IS AMAZING. If you missed it, get it now 8 years later.

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