Tag Archives: Bowel Fetus

Bowel Fetus haul, splits with Offal and Canker

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Foto 08-04-14 20 23 52 Bowel Fetus splits with Offal and Canker

Bowel Fetus was a band active for a couple of years from 2004 to 2008 which concocted a weird mix of Doom and Goregrind. Glen, the man behind this project, was so kind to send me a couple of promo Cds together with some old stuff I ordered from him at the time. Even if the band is probably dead by now (Glen if you read this, get in touch!) I feel like reviewing these two albums just because fuck you, that’s why, the band was awesome. And besides, it had a really nice logo.

Bowel Fetus / Offal (Aus/Bra) “Putr-essence” split Cd 2008 The Hole

Offal is the only still active band among those featured in this post. I don’t know how much Andrè from Lymphatic Phlegm considers it a side project rather than a fully certified band, but in any case this stuff is quite good. He started Offal as a tribute to Autopsy and Impetigo, but I could dare to say they don’t really sound much like neither, except for the horror movie samples. If I had to attempt some comparison, they really sound like some of those old Carcass-inspired demo bands from Scandinavia (or Fennoscandia) of the late 80’s-early ’90s like demo-era Xysma or Traumatic, clearly less “pathological” than these. Most of the songs are mid tempos and the varied use of vocals is decently done. While I definitely dig the genre, I think Offal lacked here a bit in pure sewage tase in the arrangements.

Bowel Fetus here deploys two tracks of his top-level Gore/Doom in the vein of Catasexual Urge Motivation meets Autopsy meets dISEMBOWELMENT and you know, for a one man band this stuff was definitely good. Just like CUM, slow crushing riffs seem to linger forever just to be replaced by furious Mortician-like blasts all the while floating on our beloved sick Autopsy dissonance . What’s more impressive in my opinion is that while certainly the songs are not overly complex, Glen doesn’t throw in a single wrong note in these tracks.

The case is cardboard which means start looking for a plastic film as soon as possible if you get it because it gets ruined very fast. The sleeve contains also a lyricsheet which is quite unusual these days, at least for Offal, since Bowel Fetus, afaik, has no lyrics. Oh and the disc itself is a beauty, red both sides.

https://www.facebook.com/offalgore

Bowel Fetus / Canker (Aus/) “Fetal Toilet Treats / Drink My Urine You Straightedge Cunts” split Cd-r 2005 Fecal Matter Discorporated

Ah, FMD, one of my favorite underground labels. Pure DIY mentality and lots of musical deranged psychosis. Fecal Matter grabbed Canadian goregrinder due Canker and Bowel Fetus for one hell of a spliit here.

Bowel Fetus opens up their side whose cover this time delves less into gore and more into sick scat-urine imagery. The sound itself is here also extremely deep, rough and bass-heavy. with a weird background noise similar to some electronic component gone awry. I really like thes etracks, possibly the best, heavier and sicker Bowel Fetus recorded. While the slow Disembowelment/CUM bridges are present in the second song “Clown Suck”, Glen decided to go knee deep into the goregrind soundscape here, maybe as an homage to the label. Te vocals are too a deep liquid yet very low gurgle, perfect for the job. All in all this is a flawless recording.

Canker’s story, for those new to the name, is seriously spine-chilling as both members of this band committed suicide in respectively years 2006 and 2007. Their sound changed quite a bit over time and these tracks are a bit on the noisy/garage side with one of the strangest mixes I have heard especially for the percussions. Songs are typically 1 minute average with a bass-guitar sound that is more like a broken string but at least apart from the trademark goregrind vocals everything here is played with real instruments, so much so you hear “recording” sounds in the background at the start of every song. I have listened to so many bedroom goregrind projects over the years that hearing honest garage sewer shit makes me feel almost nostalgic.

The packaging is the typical FMD CD-r with home-made color xeroxed covers in a plastic sleeve. Both bands recorded urine and scat-themed songs for this split, and the cover artwork corresponds.

https://myspace.com/cankergoregrind

BOWEL FETUS (Aus): “Demos and rare shit” Cd 2006 s/p

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Demos and rare shit

Demos and rare shit

This Cd-r contains a lot of rare and alternate tracks from my beloved Bowel Fetus, a band able to mix gore-grind with the best of sludgly doom/death. The compilation opens with a ridicolously rare “The First Session” release (5 copies made?). Bowel Fetus here was more like classic mid tempo goregrind with a very fake sounding drum machine, the ability to program it better might be the greatest leap in quaily this band had since these tracks. Some hints of doom are present here, but as normal, the development is not as total as in “Bloodsoaked Doomageddon”. The “Rehearsal August/October 2004” includes tracks 5-8 and include another Impetigo cover, a personal version of “Wizards of Gore” mit cyber sounds, I am afraid the tribal feel of the song is almost on-existant here, but fuck, how can you possibly do as good as the original? The sound is very clear anyway, for a reharsal, but either I can’t hear them, or there are no vocals in these tracks. The riffs are okay, but are mostly mid-fast and that is probably not the real shit for this band. Listening to the last few tracks of this rehearsal, you could hear Impetigo were a big influence for Glen at the time, as they have that feel of punkish groove that was so perfectly deleoped by our gods of Illnoize. The ninth track is pure sludge/drone doom, originally recorded as a bonus for the split tape with Viscera. This is really when this band starts shitting violets as we say here, this stuff is phenomenal, a bit in the vein of “Transcendence into the Peripheral”, with a resounding vibe that always remind me of a empty hangar. Fast Autopsy-worshipping riffs and chain tire vocals are all present in this track, fully developed. The two songs from the split with Gruesome Toilet start with pure noize bursts, nothing more to add to 1 second long songs. But there are also some unreleased ones which have solid structure and rather diverse structures from the classic Bowel Fetus including a weird B-52 cover. The song from the split with Anal Throne is also quite atypical, mostly composed around a single chug, but it ends in a funeral doom leak. The album ends with an Autopsy cover… terrific!

VV.AA. (n/a): “Septic Shock – 4 Way Split” Cd-r 2006 Septic System

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Septic Shock - 4 Way Split

Septic Shock – 4 Way Split

Hey so finally I got something from Septic System records to show you for your delight! First off this is not a pro-done Cd but a Cd-r that comes in a plastic bag, but for sure these graphics are accurate. I have seen pro silver discs in way uglier packagings. The first thing I thought when I got this 4 way was that it looked a bit like a release from Fecal Matter and actually, the layout has been done by The Rev, eh! It’s dripping so much shit and goo you don’t know how to handle it ah ah. Total scat gore aadoration! The bands contained herein are quite distinct in sound, and are arranged as follows:
RAPIST WITH NO PENIS plays a very noisy breed of gore/grind with drum machine. The vocals are gurgling deep, but not completely fucked up, you can still understand this guy articulates something with his mouth, even if the roar is quite low. Musically this is mostly very simple mid tempos goregrind with some loops and skillfully placed samples (the last song has that popping noise that sounds like the 80’s hit “Pop Corn”, ah ah). The sound is very, very rough, but we’re still in the realm of the understandable, mostly we get very distorted sound with a lot of dirt, but the riffs are still clear. I’d reccomend this band to lovers of mid paced sludgy goregrind and a knack for fetid sounds. 7.50 to me.
BOWEL FETUS strikes here with his trademark, foul apocalyptic concoction of sick Death Metal a la Autopsy and vocals that remind the sound of the chain stays of a bycicle falling off the sockets. This single song in the 4 way is still totally Autopsy in feel, but degenerates slowly into a wasteland of quicksand, Doom, muck and corpses a la Disembowelement or Halo. I cannot tell exactly how much I love this shit, everything is just arranged in the right fucking way: great guitar distortion and fabulous chords of doom, a realistc drum sound, and nasty boiling vocals… No shit here, I think this could be really a ultimate band, one of the 10 best in the world today if they got a vocalist like Gurge of Lord Gore. Mind ye, I think these vocals are okay, and they’re probably the only element that stitches Bowel Fetus to the Gore Grind genre, but I have the feeling with some different vocals, we could really have some astounding, spectacular results… nonetheless a full 9.00 fucking here!
BASKET OF DEATH is completely space noize stuff instead. This is the chaotic, wicked kind of noise grind that only far easteners seems to be able to produce. The drum machine is beating a totally gabber disco tempo, with 100% artificial sound, but above that, everything seems to be allowed. Frequencies and distortions, guitar loops, multiple layers of distorted vocals, even sampled parts of what seem rehearsals of traditional instrumental bands. The cool thing is that there’s always different things moving at the same time, so you can concentrate on this drone bass sound in the background or the muffled vocals or whatever is up and always get something different. Ahone must be crazy to hear this stuff, you get the impression of hearing a cassette which has been overdubbed ten times with Boredoms and a score of other noise bands. An 8.00 is deserved
OUTHOUSE keeps following the Noisecore line, but a bit less refined than Basket of Death, mostly you get impossibly rough shit a la Anal Birth but instead of a constant wave of noise, you get a more mid tempos, short blasts of fury and oversaturated vocals above a thick carpet of fuzzy noise shit. There are some samples here as well, but you don’t get the same impression of listening to several albums simultanously, this stuff is a bit rawer and siimpler. There are some spoken vocals as well in the mix, and a good half of this track is just a long dialogue. I’d give this band a 7.00.