Inhuman Atrocities

Exterminio was another one of the precursors of Argentinean death metal back in the late eighties. However, unlike some of their peers who could actually release one or two albums before disbanding, Exterminio only got to release three demos throughout the nineties before splitting up. The new millennium brought about a new beginning for them, and up to now, the band has released two full lengths with a completely renewed sound and new line-up, save for founding vocalist Fernando Grippo.

Inhuman Atrocities is a bit different compared to what the band used to play in its early days, which was a more of a thrash-oriented brand of death metal. Exterminio’s sound evolved into a brand of death metal in the vein of post-Tomb of the Mutilated Cannibal Corpse, that is, extremely fast and intricate tremolo riffing with occasionally technical fills, accompanied by blasting drums, a pounding bass and Grippo’s undecipherable vocals. Additionally, the band added some new influences to its sound throughout all these years: Grippo’s vocals sound a lot like John Gallagher on his first albums in certain moments, and no wonder why, as the band covered ‘Kill Your Mother/Rape Your Dog’ when they opened for Carcass back in 2013. The chugga-chugs of Suffocation can be found here and there too, not in the same fashion as Suffocation does, but the structure of the groovy breaks clearly indicates influence from the New York band.

The album might appear quite chaotic and unorganized due to the nature of the music itself, but upon further listens one starts to discover everything that it has to offer. What I really liked about Inhuman Atrocities is that almost all the songs have at least one memorable and very good riff that will get stuck in your head for hours. There are the thrashy riffs on ‘Acid in Your Eyes’ or ‘Cremation in Life’, the sporadic tremolo incursions on “The Legions of Death” or “Feel the Blade” or the killer grooves on ‘Irreversible Brain Damage’ and the aforementioned ‘Feel the Blade’ (especially those on the former, I fucking love that riff). And I love that, they make sure to keep you paying attention (or banging your head, or whatever you do when you listen to death metal) to what’s going on all the time. Guitar solos are not a common sight on the album, there are few and far between, and whenever they come in they’re really short and of a chaotic nature. However, they do help to break with the lineal nature of the songs whenever they pop up, the most impressive of them being the one on ‘Cremation in Life’, an interesting melodic lead that lasts a few seconds which completely breaks the schemes of the album. It’s almost out of place between all the chaos and mayhem of Inhuman Atrocities, but it sounds really good and I would’ve liked them to develop it a bit more.

All in all, Inhuman Atrocities is a pretty good album for a band that has been playing death metal for about twenty five years now, and if you consider that this is their second overall full length, released twenty three years after Exterminio’s inception, it’s even better. If you dig brutal death metal this is the right choice for you, 35 minutes or unrelenting brutality. Go ahead.