Tattooed by a Blowtorch

Australia's Corpseflesh play a kind of brutal death metal that I haven't heard in a while - while it's not really the most famous type, it's probably the kind that would be most accepted if it were more famous. Skinless, if I'm remembering them correctly, are probably the most famous example of it - it sort of straddles the line between BDM and regular death metal because it doesn't communicate primarily with particularly pummeling slams, Suffocation grooves or technicality. It's just refreshingly straightforward death metal with all the riffs designed to smash people's faces in.

Corpseflesh use an almost entirely riff-centered approach to get their points across. There are a just a pinch of riffs that carry more groove than malevolence, but they're few and far between compared to how goddamn evil most of the riffs are. Heavy-as-balls, Finland-on-PCP tremolo riffs jitter and twitch in the lower registers of the music, paired with fast but precisely executed blast beats that only let up once the music is ready to unleash a groove again. Sometimes they'll even bleed off extra momentum by switching to alternating blasts with snares only on the upbeats, letting the ridiculously high tempo of the music rattle itself around for a moment before choosing a more stable set of rhythm. It's not the heaviest, or most original brutal death metal album of this style to ever show up, but it's catchy and has a good sense of groove both when it's blasting and when the tempo slows down to fit more traditional, vanilla drum beats. I can respect that. Corpseflesh *do* use chugs, by the way, but they're sparse and brief whenever they're used. I think there's are maybe two rhythm sections on Tattooed with a Blowtorch that I might legitimately call "slams" - the rest of the chugs are brief, quick, and used near the ends of measures to give the lift-off of the tremolo riffs a bit more push.

The songs are constantly backed by a pair of constantly double-tracked vocalists who are surprisingly intelligible as far as brutal death metal goes. Granted, they go about that by using vocals that essentially amount to "speaking slightly gruffly and aggressively", but if their goal was to make the lyrics able to be heard by the average listener, they've succeeded. It's interesting, but frankly not a very good style of vocals in and of itself. When I hear this, I keep thinking it needs some lower, thicker death growls to contrast the relatively light vocals. And really, a tag-team between the two styles would be the best of both worlds - the lighter, less savage vocals could make the lyrics able to be heard, and the death growls could suit the music itself a bit better and make it feel more intense.

Aside from my minor gripe about the vocals, this is a worthwhile modern brutal death metal release. It's full of sweet, sweet riffs that are only outdone in their speed by their pure intensity (fuck, just listen to 1:44 in "Chainsaw Masturbation" and try to tell me this album wasn't totally engineered to disembowel you), and on the song-writing sense it's coherent enough to make for easy listening that doesn't demand 600 listens to properly digest. Oh, have I mentioned yet that this doesn't have the shitty nu-Pathology guitar tone that's been plaguing BDM bands for the past few years and making them sound synthetically grown in a laboratory? That's always a plus.