Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

I generally agree that this is the first metal album, though it’s obviously not a very good example of the genre, since most of the ‘metal’ is restricted to something like two and a half tracks.  Comparing this to ‘Paranoid’ is like saying which is a baby first: a one week old fetus or a two year old toddler.  You could conceivably say that the former is the first, but it’s not quite as easy to observe wandering around.  Anyway, yeah, it’s pretty much the go-to example of early metal even though it’s not a very good one.  It’s a better blues album than a metal one, but of course those reading this are probably metalheads and not blues aficionados, so that’s sort of irrelevant.

The metal stuff though.  The eponymous track is the one everyone knows and it pretty much lives up to its billing as far as being dark and epic and HEAVY METAL and all.  It’s got a pretty sick main riff, the lyrics are notably bleak, and overall the feeling is very metal despite being structure more like a blues song than anything.  It’s cool and probably the first recorded metal song.  Next up: ‘The Wizard’, which is either the hardest of rock music or an example of early heavy metal depending on who you ask, and I’d say it’s the latter based on the unusually abrasive and sharp guitar tone and intense drumming.  The last really obviously metal track is ‘N.I.B.’, buried in one of the two huge blues medleys that Black Sabbath decided to include, much to the chagrin of those who just want to hear the classics.  Aside from those tracks, though, it’s not a metal album, and it’s weird that people pay so little attention to that.

The rest of the album are long, meandering blues jams with a more or less defined structure.  A lot of it seems improvised, and most of it lacks any sort of heaviness.  Most people try to ignore just how much blues there is on this album, but if you’re going to buy it you might as well know what you’re getting.  It’s worth getting for the historical quality and the music IS good if you like bluesy metal, but it sounds nothing like the material that would later come from the band.  The gap between the style on this album and ‘Paranoid’ can’t really be overstated because they sound like almost totally different bands.  It’s no wonder that most fans of popular music tend to overlook this release; it doesn’t have the punch and notability of that album from the next year.

I like listening to this album because I like a lot of blues, but certainly not because I want to listen to a ball-clenchingly metal album.  It begins in the same way that most metal genres begin; awkwardly, sort of mistaken, and certainly not very carefully formed at all.  That’s part of the LP’s charm though; it’s an imprecise and raw beginning of an imprecise and raw style of music, so perhaps the fact that this album lacks so much metal makes sense and works to its historical benefit.  Of course you should get it even if you don’t like it; it’s the first Black Sabbath album!  The first METAL album!  Even more metal because it’s not very metal at all.

Malveillance - Just Fuck Off

I’ve never heard the interim album between ‘Just Fuck Off’ and Malveillance’s debut, so I’m not sure what terrible thing happened to F to make him so horribly pissed off.  Apparently he got raped by a bear or something because there’s a huge difference between the vaguely nostalgic atmosphere of the first release and the pure anger and misanthropy of this one (though I think the man behind this music would cringe at the use of the latter term).  Whereas the first LP from Malveillance was a pretty solid piece of bedroom depressive black metal, this is totally harsh, crust-infused black metal that has more d-beats than anything in the way of emotion.

The delicately overdistorted guitar tone of the first album has been replaced by a crumbling, Coffins-style sound that’s much more distortion than delicate.  All the riffs are the same Discharge-derived three-chord assaults you’ve heard a thousand times before, and while they’re not real original, they are really, really, really pissed off.  It’s helped by the fact that the vocals are a much bigger part of the music than on the first album, with a particularly venomous, spitting tone, like he wants to not only kill all the Jews but eat them as well.  The drum machine plays d-beats and essentially nothing but them.  Yeah.  You get the general idea of this album.

All of the songs are like a minute and a half long and there’s over twenty of them and they all sound pretty much the same.  In a way, it’s actually a lot like the first in that it’s all about the aesthetic and it’s not very deep music.  If you appreciate just how visceral and angry it is, you’ll probably enjoy it.  If you don’t like really straightforward crusty black metal, you’ll probably be disappointed since this is essentially Discharge with rasps and a drum machine.  If that sounds appealing to you though, buy it!

Malveillance - Que La Mort Vous Emporte

Bedroom black metal is at its best when it’s really unapologetic and lacking timidity, which is why ‘Que La Mort Vous Emporte’ is one of the best examples of properly executed bedroom black metal in recent memory.  Okay, two thirds of it is; two of the tracks (’Défiance’ and ‘Quand Le Meurtre Devient Nécessaire’) are retarded with overly raw production, sounding much more like the later material from Malveillance than the rest of the stuff on this CD, so they’re not only woefully out of place but just poorly written.  It would have been better with just the four excellent tracks; fortunately that’s what skip buttons are for and the quality of the good ones actually manages to overwhelm those dual stains.  All the musical description in the following text is about those; just pretend the other two tracks don’t exist.

It’s all about the guitars on this album, which have that really oversaturated post-Burzum tone that everyone’s familiar with from years of suicidal black metal.  It works well with the vaguely depressive, textured riffing style that Malveillance cultivates.  Most bedroom black metal bands sound more like each other than the bands they’re supposed to be worshiping, which makes it refreshing that Malveillance seems to stick somewhat closely to the Darkthrone/Burzum sound with just a touch of modern suicidal flair.  The riffs are a measure more deep than your usual black metal riffing, and they remind me a lot of ‘Transilvanian Hunger’ in structure; melodies aren’t created through totally binary tremolo picking but through changing chord shapes and giving the sound some texture and variation.  It reminds me a bit of Nargaroth in parts because of that, and some of the more epic moments actually bring Bathory to mind as well.  You could comment on the drums, but they’re really just there; not sure if they’re a machine or not.  Same with the vocals: capably executed but generally unremarkable, just there to add a bit more personality.

It’s not deep music but I like it a lot.  Your enjoyment is generally going to be based on how much you’ll like listening to F explore every corner of these painstakingly crafted riffs through a lot of repetition.  It kind of reminds me of Godflesh in that way; there’s only a handful of musical elements on each song, but they’re very carefully made for a reason and you’re supposed to sort of mentally dissect them and appreciate the slight changes of every repetition due to it being a human playing them.  That makes it sound more difficult than it is, though, since it’s not black metal that takes effort to like.  It’s actually weirdly accessible since the emphasis is all on these simple and openly melodic riffs which seem pretty rooted in traditional heavy or folk-driven styles, so it’s not like this is really esoteric stuff.  It just happens to have a real rough production job and a song about loving Hitler.  It’s pretty cool and while I wouldn’t say to track it down at all costs, it’s good for your general black metal fan.

Disrupt - Unrest

Being a metalhead listening to crust gives you a sort of warped view of the genre for a couple reasons.  One, because you’re generally listening to some of the more ‘metallic’ artists like Skitsystem or Disfear, and two, because you probably have a lesser understanding of the genre than you do of metal, it becomes harder to determine what crust is good crust.  That’s sort of a pretentious way to view music when stated that way, but I have no doubt that a lot of people listening to this could say something relating Dimmu Borgir or Cradle Of Filth to black metal in the same way; listening to it until you discover ‘the good stuff’ in ‘real’ black metal.  Or for another, perhaps more accurate comparison, think about all the collar popping brotards you know who listen to Hasidic reggae sensation Matisyahu.  The people who like Matisyahu are almost entirely composed of people who otherwise listen to no reggae, so is Matisyahu actually a good reggae artist?  The general public has no fucking clue, they just know that there’s a funny Jew on this album doing reggae!  Haw haw!

So with that in mind, I don’t REALLY know if Disrupt is a good crust band or not, because while I say that I’m a ‘crust fan’, that actually just means I like the crust I’ve heard idly.  It’s not like I usually seek it out.  Think about how many metalheads say they ‘love classical music’ (when really they just kind of like it when it’s on) and you have a good idea of what I mean.  But all that aside, Disrupt is pretty awesome when I listen to it purely from a listener’s perspective instead of a metalhead’s, because I like the fast and angry noises they make.  The lyrics are pure political propaganda and the music is very repetitive and binary in nature, but it is some of the ANGRIEST sounding music I’ve ever heard, and the spirit makes up for where it lacks in subtlety.

This is pretty straightforward crust/grind, I don’t really hear anything ‘metal’ in it, but it’s still really cool music.  The influence from early Napalm Death is very apparent, but there’s more of an American-style hardcore sound to the riffs instead of the straight-up Discharge worship of most European bands; sort of a melodic edge you don’t hear as often out east.  I always thought European crust was more binary in nature than American styles, and Disrupt is a good example of crust with a lot of variation; there are plenty of tempo changes and midpaced groove parts amidst the wild thrashing that encompasses most of the disc.  It has the classic Napalm Death style high/low vocal attack, backed up by occasionally featuring screeches from what sounds like an uncredited female vocalist.  Maybe it’s simply a very feminine man.  The overwhelming use of patchouli sometimes does that.

All the songs pretty much sound the same, though there are a couple standouts like the opening track with its little weird lead guitar part and ‘Squandered’ with a particularly vicious chorus.  Really though, you don’t buy an album like ‘Unrest’ looking for anything but a bunch of super pissed off hippies screeching about animal testing over three chord riffs.  As far as that goes, it’s very good and brutal and all that, though somewhat lacking in depth, but I can forgive that because it was fucking 1994 and not a whole lot was going on.  It’s a very good album and I want to say it’s better than it really is because I derive huge enjoyment from listening to it and screeching along with its painfully leftist lyrics, but the fact is it’s a relatively shallow album, the replay value of which is entirely determined by how much you like the aesthetic of the sound.  If you like ‘Scum’ you’ll probably love this, and I guess that’s all there is to it.

Path Of Debris - The Eyes Of The Basilisk

Totally unknown classic here, got it in a blind buy from Basement Music and I couldn’t be happier that this totally random fucking album landed on my doorstep.  The music that Path Of Debris plays is totally unique; it’s like melodic death metal viewed through a prism of ’70s rock/metal like Deep Purple, or death metal infused with power metal, or SOME other descriptor that doesn’t adequately describe just how fucking awesome this music is.  Apparently these Germans released one album before this one back in ‘96 that no one knows about, and it really appears that the only reason this one made it across the ocean is because Pavement Music picked it up on a distribution deal.  Thank GOD!

The music of Path Of Debris is deceptively simple.  Straightforward, melodic three or four chord riffs with even simpler two or three note lead guitar parts over them (with the occasional ’80s style solo), Bolt Thrower derived rolling drum performance, and deep, raspy, growling vocals.  But Jesus CHRIST if the band doesn’t manage to make something amazing out of those elements.  Path Of Debris’ music appears to center around fantasy themes, and I don’t think I’ve heard a band that more perfectly captures the feel of ’80s style fantasy novels better than this.  You know those random paperback fantasy books about elves and distant kingdoms that are awkwardly written yet evocative nonetheless?  THIS is the soundtrack to those books.  Completely devoid of pretense or any objective other than providing the soundtrack to adventuring and dragon-slaying (in a NON-GAY WAY, I can’t stress that enough, this is a melodic death metal record with an emphasis on being both melodic AND death metal) through riff after amazing heavy metal riff.

This album was released in 1999 but its spirit totally lays in the ’70s and ’80s.  There’s a huge influence melodically from traditional heavy and power metal styles, and is totally without a trace of Gothenburg.  To say that this is a pure combination of power metal and melodic death metal would not be far from the truth at all, and it isn’t just thematic in nature.  Did I mention that this is enormously catchy music?  Because it is, perhaps some of the catchiest metal I’ve ever heard.  A lot of the riffing reminds me of the intuitively melodic stuff you might hear from Illdisposed; you know, those ‘how the hell has someone not come up with this riff before, it’s so natural and perfect’ ones that make that band’s music so great on albums like ‘There’s Something Rotten In The State Of Denmark’.  Everything’s just done so naturally, with such a pure sense of songwriting, that it’s heartbreaking that this album hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

The production is heavy and clean and perfect for the style, the instrumental performances are all great, and even the individual instrumental sounds are sharp yet in possession of an indescribable vintage touch.  I would describe this band as Hammerfall in melodic death metal form: they have an intuitive understanding of this oldschool style of songwriting, totally devoid of modern touch.  It’s just a great album all around.  How has this music not been discovered?  It’s accessible, greatly produced, almost painfully catchy, and just simply some of the best melodic death metal ever written.  It’s really something that should be in every metalhead’s collection, as I can’t imagine someone NOT liking this.

Here’s what sucks: you’re reading this review and not even planning to give this a listen, figuring that it’s just one of those fluke albums that I’ve randomly grabbed onto.  It’s not.  You really have to hear this as all my descriptions of this band’s sound are woefully inadequate to display just how great this band is.  You owe it to yourself and to the band to get a copy of ‘The Eyes Of The Basilisk’ and play it until the CD shatters.  There is NO REASON NOT TO; at the time of this writing, you can get copies of this album off Ebay for under four dollars INCLUDING SHIPPING.  Just go and get one and spread this unknown band’s music; it’s the sort of underground gem that makes me love metal so much.

Meshuggah - ObZen

I can honestly say that ‘ObZen’ has the distinction of being the Meshuggah album that I was really hoping for immediately after ‘Catch 33′, an album that I wasn’t quite able to enjoy as much as I’d like.  ‘ObZen’, though, is a great combination of ‘Destroy Erase Improve’ and ‘Nothing’-era(s) material with just a hint of the proggy elements of the last album, and the combination is absolutely great.  It’s blisteringly heavy and fairly metallic like the early stuff, has the grinding industrial feel of albums like ‘Chaosphere’, and manages to change things up with just enough prog to keep it interesting.  Even if it was lacking that, though, it would still be an incredible album simply because this is one of the heaviest and most brutally aggressive albums that Meshuggah has made so far.

The first three tracks are the real killers on this one, and ‘Bleed’ is of course the centerpiece, reminding one of songs like ‘New Millennium Cyanide Christ’ which are so devoid of dynamics as to be almost totally binary songs.  Just ramp up the speed and tightness of that earlier track and you have a good idea of what to expect with ‘Bleed’; pure grinding brutality from start to finish (minus the clean guitar in the middle).  The album opens up on a note quite different from the previous ones… a thrash beat!  For the first time in probably a decade, Meshuggah strays from the bass drum versus guitar attack that’s such a fixture of their music, like an announcement that they dug out the old albums and still like them.  After ‘Bleed’, the sound of ‘ObZen’ strays a bit more towards ‘Catch 33′ territory, but it’s sufficiently oldschool to not fall into the same traps that that album did.

The proggy tracks on ‘ObZen’ could be compared to ‘Catch 33′, but more accurately they sound like an extension of songs like ‘Sublevels’ off the earlier albums.  They’re less ruthlessly atonal and more delicate experiments in texturing and mysterious layers of atmosphere.  The more I think about it, the more I think you could say that ‘ObZen’ is really a combination of all of Meshuggah’s previous material into a singular sound.  This would be a miserable failure for most bands, but in Meshuggah’s case, they pull it off with style.  The elements of savagery and progression mesh very well throughout the album without ever becoming stale.  It’s an ‘exciting blend of old and new’ as a bad info sheet would say.  It’s also really heavy, and that’s always good: super clear production and 235235-string guitars and all.

Overall, ‘ObZen’ is what I expected and I’m really satisfied by what the band has managed to turn out.  Meshuggah’s been at it for over two decades now and they show no sign of slowing down; they just take their custom sound further with every new album and explore the niche they’ve so painstakingly carved in the modern metal scene.  ‘ObZen’ is another great album from the Swedes and is unlikely to disappoint.  ‘Bleed’ is awesome and you should get it just for how insane that track alone is because I think they’ve invented entirely new time signatures on it.

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

As far as Type O Negative goes, ‘World Coming Down’ will always be their pinnacle and pretty much nothing is going to top it.  I guess it makes sense that after that monolith to all the terrible things in Peter Steele’s life that they would make a relatively happy album in the form of ‘Life Is Killing Me’, which I assume is designed to retrieve all the brainless goth girls who got scared away by songs with messages and long words and things.  So Type O Negative did the natural thing: create a whole album of ‘Black No. 1’s to please the crowd.  It sucks that they made that choice, but fortunately they’re a band who’re talented enough on the songwriting front to make solid, catchy music that isn’t entirely irrelevant even in its most shallow moments.

The massive doom dirges of the previous work are gone in favor of fifteen smaller tracks (in both stature and size), and the tempo is no longer as universally plodding as that found on ‘World Coming Down’, actually moving up to a fairly brisk pace on punkier tracks like ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Me’, ‘I Like Goils’, or ‘Angry Inch’.  There is no equivalent to ‘White Slavery’ on here; this is practically a pop album by Type O Negative’s standards.  Actually, who am I kidding, this is a total pop album.  There’s nothing very abrasive or inaccessible about this music as long as someone can stomach a little guitar distortion and unsavory lyrical themes like transvestitism and revenge.  That doesn’t automatically make it a bad album.  It does, however, automatically make it less relevant than previous works.  It could be argued that ‘Life Is Killing Me’ is probably Type O Negative’s least consequential album from a musical and lyrical perspective, and I can’t say that I disagree.

The good, apart from the simple fun of the straightforward pop/rock songs: ‘Nettie’ and ‘Anesthesia’ are excellent downtempo tracks (the latter of which benefits from some incredible synth arrangement), and ‘(We Were) Electrocute’ has a pretty amazing nostalgic feel to it (despite how a friend described it as ‘insurance commercial music’).  ‘Drunk In Paris’ is fantastic and should have been extended into a full track, and closer ‘The Dream Is Dead’ is a great end to the album, with all of Type O Negative’s trademark elements intact.  The rest of the release… pretty eh.  Songs like ‘…A Dish Best Served Coldly’ and ‘How Could She?’ are fun while they’re on, but I feel no motivation to listen to them.  Maybe the lack of real substance to this album harms it more than I thought, because I really do only find myself drawn to the tracks with more lyrical depth than the others.

I understand that Peter Steele is a tortured soul and everything, but would it really have hurt to go a step further with this album?  The good songs are excellent, as they typically are when Type O Negative really tries, but overall the album is sort of tepid and doesn’t have the sense of unity of releases like ‘October Rust’.  I don’t regret picking this up, and it’s a fun listen from time to time, but it in no way manages to stand up to Type O Negative’s more relevant and exceptional works (which are many).  Chalk it up to a cocaine-fueled burst of cheerfulness from Steele, a man who’s at his best when laying in a gutter somewhere.

Rigor Sardonicus - Principia Sardonica

Rigor Sardonicus is a ‘funeral doom’ band that doesn’t sound very much like funeral doom at all, at least if your mark of funeral doom is connected to Skepticism or Thergothon or even fucking Remembrance or Wormphlegm, because this really just sounds like Autopsy at one fifth speed more than anything else (but actually when you put one of their songs into Audacity and speed it up by like 300% it sounds like a Black Sabbath b-side for some reason, who knew).  The other weird part is that while Autopsy at one fifth speed sounds exactly like the sort of thing I would love, I find this sort of unappealing at the same time.

If you want a real understanding of Rigor Sardonicus’ sound, imagine some guys from a brutal death metal band are told what funeral doom sounds like without ever actually hearing the genre, and based off this description they decide to make a funeral doom band for laughs.  I don’t know if anyone actually takes them seriously or if people are just playing along, because the band themselves sure as hell aren’t.  If you were twelve years old and thought of what EEEEEEVIL music would sound like, Rigor Sardonicus is a result.  The music that Rigor Sardonicus makes it something that everyone’s thought about at one point or another but was never intended to, you know, actually be made.

I haven’t read many adequate descriptions of the general sound of Rigor Sardonicus, so here’s one; imagine old silent movie-era horror films’ soundtracks converted to insanely downtuned and distorted, sludgy guitar/bass lines (the instruments are indistinguishable), add extremely slow and sparse programmed drums (they are quite clearly programmed, not sure how you can miss it), and throw ridiculously pitch-shifted and growly vocals on top (they are quite clearly pitch-shifted, not sure how you can miss it), and that’s about it.  All the tracks are the same: sparse, repetitive, slow’n'low doomdeath massacres that take the concept of ‘bass’ to a whole new level.

This sounds more like slowed down death metal than anything else.  Really, really, really slowed down death metal.  A lot of the novelty of this music is really just about how stupidly extreme it is; it’s never low, slow, or brutal enough for the guys in Rigor Sardonicus, so they just take every concept to its natural endpoint.  It’s not very deep music at all.  It’s just a couple guys sitting around and saying ‘how ridiculous can we possibly make this music’, and it is sort of admirable in how stupidly single-minded and abrasive it is.  It’s useful for scaring people who don’t listen to metal.

I think it’s silly that people can mock grindcore for being supposedly nothing but mindless extremity for extremity’s sake and then turn around and uphold this as being something greater.  I think a lot of people believe that slowness equals subtlety on some level when it’s really just the other side of the same sinister coin.  On some level I’m not sure what to say about this album.  It’s fun on a primal level and makes you cackle with delight and clap your hands like a schoolgirl over how oppressive and evil it is, but it’s evil in a Halloween way, not an Autopsy way.  You can’t really take it seriously, and if you do, you really miss the point of this music.  It’s almost an elaborate parody of funeral doom, which is interesting because I didn’t know enough people cared about funeral doom to make a functional parody of it.

I would like Rigor Sardonicus more if I’d heard them before Wormphlegm, Bunkur, Planet AIDS, etc. (you know, the whole Comaworx crew (fuck Comaworx (I’m what they call ‘in the know’ and I feel it entitles me to free Stjin albums))).  If you liken exploring the extreme reaches of doom metal to an archaeological dig, Rigor Sardonicus is the backhoe that you use to initially ‘clear the path’ before using finer instruments for unveiling your big doomy dinosaur bones.  It’s the sort of band that’s good at showing just how far things can go, but aside from that they’re sort of a blunt instrument.  I bet they’re really sick live and I think there’s a lot of ways that this music is awesome, but I guess I’m sort of jaded on material like this.  It’s sort of a precursor to what bands like Bunkur would do in a more advanced form.  I think I would like this music better at a show with twenty people in the audience after which we’d get wasted with the band and listen to Obituary but that’s a hard experience to replicate at home.

Saprogenic - The Wet Sound Of Flesh On Concrete

I remember when this album came out there was a lot of fanfare over it, and for a while after its release it looked like Saprogenic was going to be the new king of modern brutal death metal.  Then their second album came out and apparently the band’s crown got prematurely pushed off.  I haven’t heard it, but I guess it sucks because that’s what all my friends are telling me and I listen to my friends more than my own opinions.

Alongside Wormed, Saprogenic (on this album at least) is one of the main contenders for what I call the ‘Wayne Brady Award’ (where an individual of a typically reviled group is singled out and held up as ‘one of the good ones’) in brutal death metal.  Wormed is in its position because the band uses ’smart’ lyrical and conceptual themes and apparently their wackiness is just wacky enough to push them beyond ‘mere’ brutal death metal and into something acceptable for ‘real’ metalheads, and Saprogenic is widely enjoyed because they concentrate on audible and relatively catchy tremolo riffs, so it sounds like Morbid Angel or Cryptopsy viewed through a modern brutal death filter, minus the odd slam section or two.  A lot of people see Saprogenic as a slam death band, but I don’t really get the feeling of low brow thuggery that I enjoy in my slam so I’ve unilaterally decided that they’re not part of the genre.  The closest comparison that I can make musically is ironically another band that uses Toshihiro Egawa art: the somewhat less than mighty Leukorrhea, who play a similarly riff-centric style of BDM.  Other than that, think of earlyish Cryptopsy minus their bombast and narrative song structures and musical genius and you have a decent idea of what this sounds like.

The production on this is pretty cool and reminds me of doom/death stuff: thick and claustrophobic, gives some room for the riffs to bounce off of and resonate more.  The guitars are way in the front of the mix, which makes sense considering that this is way, way more riff-based than more brutal death metal.  When you get down to it, brutal death as a whole is a pretty rhythmic style of metal where the riffs are often quite secondary to the holistic sound of the piece.  With Saprogenic, though, it’s all about those riffs, which are right out of the old Cryptopsy or Morbid Angel style with a bit of modern touch from bands like Origin.  They’re almost all tremolo and darkly atmospheric, sort of like Incantation or Immolation or any one of those other New York -ation bands (except for Suffocation).  It seems that Saprogenic goes for more of an occult feel than hack’n’slash vibe, which is a nice change of pace.  Has a bit of Morpheus Descends vibe from time to time, though I bet it’s unintentional.

The vocals are pretty typical guttural growls and the drums are primarily notable for being terribly off time throughout most of the album.  Seriously, the guy can’t hold a double bass run to save his life.  It’s like ‘Battles In The North’ goes BDM.  Anyway, both those elements are just supposed to add to the rhythmic base which the riffs ride upon.  There’s the occasional slam, but they’re weirdly de-emphasized (the exact opposite of most slam) in favor of the uptempo parts.  Hell, it almost sounds like the guys were just fans of Devourment and decided to toss in a periodic tribute.  They don’t mesh very well with the songs and are just sort of random breaks in the midst of all the speedy death metal.

‘The Wet Sound Of Flesh On Concrete’ is a very single-minded album.  It could be said that it’s very much a death metal album for a death metal fan.  Unlike Wormed, it lacks any sort of instantly memorable elements or weirdness for weirdness’ sake, so it demands a bit more study than other brutal death albums that are more widely accepted.  As an album entirely about riffs, it does have a lot of great ones, being subtly melodic and atmospheric, probably due to a great Sunlight type guitar tone, softly buzzing yet sharp enough to cut through the misty production.  At the same time though, it’s hard for me to think of an album being entirely carried by its riffs.  It almost seems like Saprogenic could have made this album nothing but guitars and the end result would have been roughly the same.  The other pieces are fairly static and you could make an accusation that this is nothing more than a riff slideshow.

That being said, these are some of the best riffs in recent memory as far as brutal death goes, and the whole thing’s under a half hour, so it’s hard to really get tired of such straightforward music.  I can’t think of any death metal bands really NOT liking it, and while I have sort of taken a red pen to this album, that’s coming from a fairly critical perspective.  I do like this a lot and I listen to it frequently.  It’s not as in frequent rotation as Devourment or something, but it’s good for a quick listen every so often.  The riffs are good so the album’s good.

Annotations Of An Autopsy - Before The Throne Of Infection

Annotations Of An Autopsy sort of pulled a Job For A Cowboy in their EP to LP move, dropping the majority of their metalcore sound in favor of a more straightforward approach to modern brutal death metal.  Unlike Job For A Cowboy, however, Annotations Of An Autopsy were pretty good at the deathcore thing, so the loss of the metalcore elements doesn’t come entirely to the relief of the listening populace.  The new stuff is still good, though; that is, if you like modern brutal death metal with a touch of -core infiltrating the sound.  While there aren’t really ‘breakdowns’ anymore, you can still clearly hear how this is brutal death metal for a -core crowd.  Your enjoyment of this will largely depend on how much you can stomach that idea.  I don’t really mind it, so I think it’s a fun album.

Annotations Of An Autopsy plays that sort of -core-brushed brutal death metal with an epic aesthetic, again much like newer Job For A Cowboy.  But instead of the Behemoth worship that our ignominiously treated American friends like to exercise, Annotations Of An Autopsy is moderately more unique in style, particularly in the guitar department, which sees fit to burst out with vast yet dissonant, almost Meshuggah-inspired guitar solos along with a variety of riffing styles.  Vocals are a shout-expressed growl without much to recommend for it; in music with such a dramatic presence I would expect a little bit more, but maybe it’s an attempt to make the subject matter more palatable to a metalcore crowd.  I find that it gets dwarfed by the ridiculously overblown production on this album, with its nine hundred-tracked guitars and stupidly thundering double bass and almost non-stop bass drops.  Speaking of double bass, though, the drum performance on this release is commendable: fast, grooving, and nicely fitting the style of the music.  Throw the Toshi art on it and you have an album that’s silly but still enjoyable in its silliness.

While I still have my angry face on because the band chose not to re-record the mighty ‘Gore Gore Gadget’ for this album, the selection of tracks on display is pretty solid; fan classic ‘Sludge City’ with its chanted vocals (that appear on a couple other tracks as well) benefits from the slightly altered riffs and fuller production.  ‘Keeper Of The Plaguelands’ is a very good opener (after the meaningless opening instrumental, of course) with dramatic riffing and and sort of gradually unfolding late Behemoth-style grandiosity.  ‘Fisted To The Point Of Regurgitation’ has a title that doesn’t give the song a chance to possibly live up to, but it still manages to be pretty good despite being dwarfed by its moniker.  ‘Years Of Disgust’ is also a very solid one, with bass drops galore and Waking The Cadaver-inspired tremolo riffing.  The rest of the album is sort of middling but still listenable even at its worst.  I guess you could accuse it of being unremarkable with more or less an accurate sentiment.  This isn’t really music that’s about being remarkable anyway though.

Really I’m sort of split on my feelings towards this album, because while it’s enjoyable on a primitive level, it lacks everything in the way of depth.  When the band DOES try to go for depth it’s comical, like on the admirable but awkward and sad acoustic interlude ‘The Childsnatcher’.  I get the idea they’re going for, but it’s not enough that I can see what you’re trying to do; you have to do some of the legwork yourself.  My imagination only goes so far.  It’s good music, but only from a sort of shallow perspective; if I want something with more depth, there’s a LOT of bands out there who are just as good and manage to infuse a little bit more meaning into their music.  It could be dumb of me to expect that from a brutal death metal band, but either this is lacking something or my inherent pretense can only rationalize so much.  It’s well composed and performed, but I wish they’d gone a bit further.