Grotesque Remains

The more stripped down and primitive a style tends to be, the more difficult it is to do it originally, or even well for that matter. It doesn't help when the style in question spent about a decade being massively popular and filled to the brim with 2nd and 3rd tier acts trying to tap into every single nook and cranny for an original niche. But such is the plight of any slam death band in the year 2019, and for all their cliche imagery, Glasgow's own Castigated makes a good show of tying down the originality factor while still maintaining a strong degree of stability and intelligibility. Their 14 minute debut EP Grotesque Remains may appear like a typical cookie cutter slam endeavor on the exterior, but inside is a band that makes the most of an admittedly narrow musical paradigm.

Things begin on a wildly predictable note with a sampled interview of Jeffrey Dahmer describing the aftermath of his murders that segues into an extremely bare bones slam that lingers for just over thirty seconds. The quartet of songs that follow are a bit less conventional, owing to their relatively moderate length, multiplicity of musical ideas beyond the typical jarring shifts between punishingly slow grooves and blasting mayhem, and to vocalist John-Stuart Gonsales throwing just about everything but the kitchen sink at the listener. Each song essentially runs the gamut between slam death, brutal death and deathcore with a fairly good sense of transition, and of particular note is the closing song "Force Fed Nails", which actually showcases some latent old school death metal and even some tech death tendencies, though fleetingly so.

The overall musical picture here is an above average one, but also one that gets a bit disorganized at times, largely due to the band trying to compress about 25 minutes worth of ideas into a 14 minute brutal death album. It's less a matter of the band not executing their fairly unique niche effectively and more so the fact that it seems nearly impossible to actually do so within such a limited time span. A lot of good ideas are not fully explored, let alone expanded upon, and much of it comes off as a bit rushed despite being of a relatively slow to moderate pace by death metal standards. The recent loss of their vocalist after this recording may hamper future efforts a bit, but should they come to pass, this is a band that would function a lot better in an LP format where the band's abilities can be fully exploited.