Abducted and Compacted

Daemon Foetal Harvest sound like they try to play old school death metal, and they succeed to a degree; there are plenty of underlying old school influences, though the music still comes off as primarily modern death metal. That's not to say that this is a bad thing; the performance on 'Abducted and Compacted' is very tight and the songs are pretty consistent throughout the EP's 16 minute running time.

The music here is highly influenced by Cannibal Corpse, including the imagery and lyrical themes; song titles such as 'Dumped Beneath the Mangroves' and 'Anniversary Rape', as well as the cover art, are strikingly similar to what you'd find when looking the case of a Cannibal Corpse CD. In fact, the whole EP sounds like a Cannibal Corpse album, except that the music present here is a great deal more coherent than Cannibal Corpse. There are elements not found on a CC album, like the cleaner, more hollow sounding guitars playing electric sounding noodly tremolo riffs and the harmony lines and the noticeable tempo breaks, while the vocals, excessive blast beats and double bass runs sound almost like a carbon copy of Cannibal Corpse, especially the main body of the songs with their cohesive combination of unrelenting blast beats, tremolo riffs and growling. Musically, 'Abducted and Compacted' is very linear due to the driving blasting and drum work. Basically, each song is built on a foundation of drumming (especially bass drums) and standard death metal chugging thrummed riffs, with cymbals, toms and other fills added secondarily on top of the main elements.

The music isn't completely Cannibal Corpse influenced; there are some Morbid Angel style old school solos scattered throughout and the pounding drum intro, descending-note riffs and screams on the opening title track that loosely resemble Sarcofago. The flurries of tom and cymbals are also similar to Morbid Angel's 'Altars of Madness', most apparent on the song 'Anniversary Rape'. As I said before, the music isn't a complete CC clone; there are a lot of tempo changes where the drummer employs a lot of creative 4/4 bass and snare rhythms and tom runs that wouldn't be found on a typical CC song. The riffs aren't particularly memorable, though this isn't so much a failure on the bands part; the music is too unrelenting to fit in any really spectacular riffs. Most, if not all of the time, they're just the driving body of the songs, with the occasional solos and higher-tuned guitars noodling away with little tremolo picked lines complementing the rest of the guitar work. The drumming makes up for the lack of interesting riffs, with the previously mentioned flurry of fills and slower, creative rhythms and the lively cymbal, bass and snare trade off on 'Eaten'.

Overall, Daemon Foetal Harvest have produced a solid slab of death metal supported by clear production and pulled off with an impressive amount of talent considering they formed in 2006. 'Abducted and Compacted' isn't anything that hasn't been done before, but it's been done more than well enough to make Daemon Foetal Harvest a band worth at least a listen.