Goremageddon: The Saw and the Carnage Done

This album has quite possibly the most appropriate title ever. Well, one of them, at any rate. It's 35 minutes of hacking, slashing nastiness that, despite the band's obvious intention to do nothing but kick people's faces in, never descends to the level of "ugga mugga blurgh" stupidity that infests this particular subgenre. Gore metal done correctly can be quite amazing, and Aborted has achieved this with Goremageddon.

Beginning with an appropriate sample from Hellraiser 2 - Hellbound, the death machine bursts into action with the rapid-fire blasting of "Meticulous Invagination", a loving tribute to everyone's favourite misogynistic psychopath Ted Bundy. Far from being a mindless string of detuned rumbling with tick-tock blasting, the song shifts through numerous forms of brutal violence - there's plenty of juiced up thrash riffs to be found here, as well as a spectacular harmonized solo.

"Parasitic Flesh Resection" is a two minute kick in the pants, and then the album's quasi-title-track "The Saw And The Carnage Done" arrives to inflict major internal damage. This song contains numerous riffs that would have fit on any of Dark Angel's 80's masterpieces, blended with well-placed bursts of blasting. And groove. Yes, groove, in the sense that it makes you want to headbang, not in the sense of moronic hardcore kids attempting death metal. Sven's vocal belches range from a gut-rumbling gurgle to a pained scream, but he never descends into overly low pitched spewing or tormented chipmunk screeches.

Did I mention solo's? There's plenty of them here. It's obvious that these guys are very much enraptured by Carcass's use of harmonic lead breaks, and they're quite adept at showing it off. "Ornaments Of Derision" in particular features a jaw-dropping series of warbling shred-work in the midst of a frantic death metal attack. The other standout would have to be "Sanguine Verses (...Of Extirpation), which is where they drop all semblance of restraint and simply go for the jugular.

The slipcase version also includes a cover of Carcass's "Carnal Forge", which fits in quite nicely with the rest of the album. It's not a carbon copy either, as they chose to make up their own solo's, which aren't quite as killer as the leads on the original, but are still quite excellent nonetheless. The lyrics, as expected, cover all sorts of disgusting pathological topics, from cannibalism to fecal infestations to serial killers. Even if you generally regard brutal death metal as a ridiculously oversaturated genre devoid of interesting ideas (dog knows I certainly do), it's awfully refreshing to hear a band like Aborted pick up where the pioneers of this style left off and inject it with some fresh ideas. Highly recommended.