Деликатесы

If I were to relocate for a long vacation on an island packed with sadistic cannibals waiting to rip and tear my flesh, and I had only so much space for music in my backpack, then this album by Кувалда would be the first record I'd take with me without any doubt.

This album is pretty intense musically but lyrics are what makes it absolutely genius. They are packed with sadism, cannibalism and high quality dark humor, even without relying on swear words. They deal with diverse set of topics where sadism and cannibalism can happen, such as violation of safety instructions, sadistic dentist, racing on a steamroller, riot in a mental illness hospital, etc., each song being a complete horror story. I can't really describe how great they are, you have to take my word for it, learn Russian if needed, and take a look.

The music and singing implement these horror stories in the best possible way. Fast, dirty and melodic sound of guitars, stylistically a mix of heavy, thrash and brutal death metal. Sounds remotely similar to early Slayer, Venom, and a little bit of Cannibal Corpse. Compositions and song structures are mostly rather simple but they totally kick ass.

Singer mostly uses a shouting technique, I am not sure how is it called and I had not heard anything that's really similar to this in other music (perhaps something between growling and what Slayer vocalist does), he sounds like he's chased by a battalion of hungry cannibals and has no idea who will win and who will lose. It really fits the music and the lyrics.

I took away 1 percent from rating because there are some minor recording/mastering errors, and the intro and outro tracks (the latter being a short accordion solo) are made louder than the bulk of the album, sounds really strange if you listen to the full album in one go, but this can be easily fixed by manually editing ReplayGain tags, for example.

So if you know Russian language and like metal, then you 100% must hear this album before you die. And even if you don't, it could be a good listen.