Illuminations of Vile Engorgement

First things first, no, this isn't the most brutal thing ever; plenty of late 80s/early 90s death metal bands have been making far more intense music before this was created. Hell, even modern tech bands are far more intense than this album could ever hope to be. Loudest? Sure, but then again, I'd listen to a jackhammer at a construction site if I wanted something noisy.

One of the first things you'll notice is that all the songs sound alike, and this isn't just me not being able to discern which song is which. I quite literally mean ALL THE SONGS aside from two tracks, one being a misplace intro and an awkward outro, sound alike. Subtract those two tracks and it may as well just be one very long song that goes nowhere because of said problem when all of the tracks sound alike.

Is the songwriting any good? NO. The general song structure goes like this: Have the guitarist hit the same notes over and over again while having a drummer blast as fast as possible with the comical sound of a pig getting castrated being looped over. I kid you not, that's all that's going on in almost all of their songs besides the two tracks that I mentioned earlier. The former is a generic ambient track while the latter is a hilarious sound of someone plucking a few random strings on a cheap acoustic guitar.

Riffs are nonexistent beyond the one note that is being repeated over and over again. This is bad because if you aren't going for a technical sound, you should at least make a variety of riffs, which this band fails at. When did strumming the same string become brutal? The hilariously muddy guitar tone doesn't help either. So either way, it sounds mechanically flat. There isn't any bass either. If there is, it's just following the awfulness of the guitars, so no surprise there.

Blasting isn't brutal either when it's just playing fast for the sake of it without any sense of rhythm. Heck, the drumming might sound too mechanical to be real. Sadder because it doesn't follow the pattern of the riffs and just does its own thing.

And as for the vocals...pigs aren't scary. I don't know where people get this silly idea that a funny animal would be more brutal as opposed to a deep booming grunt. Waking The Cadaver wasn't brutal when they did it, neither the fuck is this band. Vocals need more than a disjointed sound. They need POWER BEHIND them. Kronos's vocalists are far more impressive despite not aiming to be as "br00tal" as possible. Don't bother trying to grab a lyric sheet because there aren't any, not that you'd expect anything other than the generic gore stuff that's been overdone to death.

I'll just go ahead and say it: This is laughable at best and cringe-worthy at worst. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go listen to smart music for smart people like Origin or Atheist, bands that are actually talented and where they actually play their instruments .