We All Reek

Serbian death metallers Disdained have made a pretty big leap in just one year, their live debut was good but unspectacular death metal, but they've improved a lot with this album, ditching the raw live sound which was a bit inappropriate for Disdained's style of brutal death metal.

This is just such a fine example of a great death metal record. It's totally 'normal' death metal, doesn't step outside of the genre restrictions at all and that's partly to do with what's so good about it. It's purely and simply death metal, there are no keyboards, no Iron Maiden riffs, no pointlessly dissonant parts, just straight up monstrous death metal. It should please old-school death metal fans just as much as dedicates of modern death metal, the riffs and song structures don't stray too far away from early 90s death metal yet still fit perfectly into modern brutal death metal.

A lot of the riffs hark back to early 90s death metal, some of them are even quite thrashy without sound like some kind of retro half-thrash 80s imitation. The overall tone (production and atmosphere wise) gets pretty fucking brutal, and the technical delivery and intricate drumwork (very technical and precise, almost sound programmed) further that brutal sound. The production is great and it's clear that this is what the band was lacking on their debut, the guitars have an excellent heavy tone and the bass adds to this thick sound aswell, laying some solid ground for the vocalist to growl like a god damn lion on the top of.

The band almost seems proud to using riffs and structures so openly death metal, and they really don't attempt to be anything different. This goes to show that to be the best you don't have to be an exception to the rule and spin off into some weird experiment (that usually sacrifices everything great about the artform and ends up sounding much more conventional anyway). This is very normal death metal, and therefore cannot cheat its way to the top by attempting some new fusion and sleeking it's way to popularity, just because its new. When a band doesn't attempt to transcend a genre and are happy to be the best at what they do, then that's when things get very difficult, because the only way to reach the top is to be damn good songwriters, and fortunately that is where Disdained succeed. Recommended to real death metal fans, if you need inane experimentation or retarded gimmicks in your music to appreciate it then you may aswell just fuck off now. Disdained is not for you.