Otakuslam​♡​Animecide

I knew I had to review this album when it came out. DIW (Dehumanizing Itatrain Worship) is a band I’ve been keeping my eyes on for a couple of weeks now. Ever since the single “Smoke Halation” came out I knew I had to give this album a listen. The band's previous material I’m not a huge fan of, mostly because the pig squeals got on my nerves a lot. But on this album, the vocalist makes them actually bearable and enjoyable at least for me, and when it finally came down to listening to this album all the way through for the first time, I was absolutely blown away by how good this album was.

DIW plays slamming brutal death metal, and was a pure slam band on earlier releases, but on this album, it’s a huge blend of a bunch of different genres, and they make it work so goddamn well, integrating anime/idol solos into certain songs, specifically the track “Nine Infected Entrails” which is my favorite song on the album. It's a brutal beat down all the way through, packed with bone-breaking breakdowns, inhuman gutturals, almost bridging a deathcore style of vocals at times. As the song progresses to the halfway mark, almost out of nowhere the solo hits, and the mood immediately changes. It’s almost happy in a sense. Then the drums and vocals kick back in, blending a chunky breakdown with the solo, and it works so fucking well. It’s easily my favorite moment/song on the album, showing you can be ridiculously heavy but still have an upbeat solo mixed in.

As for other influences this band draws from, it's mainly slam, deathcore (even including Tom Barber from Chelsea Grin and members from Vulvodynia as guests on certain tracks), and even this weird rap/hip-hop intro on “Smoke Halation”. If I’m being honest I would remove the intro from that song, mostly due to the fact that I’m not a huge rap fan, but if we’re ignoring that the song is fantastic, especially with Tom Barber doing guest vocals. As for lyrical and imagery-wise, it’s mainly anime influenced (obviously), they mainly draw inspiration from the franchise Love Live! Idol Project Series. And for album covers, they're all the same, always including a disfigured anime girl on it, a lot of the time it's gore mixed in with nudity. The production on this album is surprisingly good, it’s not over-saturated and not too raw. However, I have no idea if the drums are programmed or not. It’s not really an issue for me personally, but they do sound programmed, especially the cymbal sound.

This album runs for barely 30 minutes and it’s a killer no-filler. It’s plain slamming brutality all the way through, except for the little interlude named after Death's debut full-length, which to be honest I was hoping they would actually cover that song. But I digress. This album blew my expectations out of the water. It is insanely fun and consistent, other than the little hip-hop intro not once did I feel like I was having a bad time. If you're a fan of anime and slam, check this bad boy out!