Illuminations of Vile Engorgement

Something funny happens about this band: some people think it's the maximum brutality and other think it'sa brutal nonsense. Enmity are an American brutal death duo with the apparent intention of pushing extreme music beyond no one else. And in some way, they got it. But at the price of being a bit boring by the third track.

I'd say the main weak point is the drummer, he abuses too much of the same blast beat all the time. There are no fills. Very rarely he changes to a double bass rhythm with some snare, and in ONE moment he uses the cymbals… I think. Guitar is tuned to G, more or less, but mysteriously the palm-mutings sound quite weak, with no bass. The fast parts are barely distinguishable, they sound more or less like scratching some wires with a sponge. Bass guitar, assuming it's recorded, throws in some frequencies only audible by elephants. Vocals are maybe the best side of the album: the singer has swallowed the mike along with a bottle of bleach and punches himself in the stomach until getting a wet and hot gurgle. All in all, they have achieved a quite characteristic sound, which does not lack merit in extreme metal.

All the songs sound quite the same, exception made on an ambient "intro" at the 5th position, which breaks the alphabetic order of the tracks a bit… that's right, the songs are almost in alphabetic order, I think it's worth to list them:
1.Bloated Slabs
2.Charred, Mutilated, Dislimbed
3.Disembowel the Meek
4.Facial Carvings
5.Intro
6.HackSaw Spinal Butchery
7.Illuminations of Vile Engorgement
8.Rotted Divinity
9.Surgical Reanimation
10.Skinned Alive
11.Severe Lacerations
Coincidence? Neglect? Heavy joke? Well, even if they were in different order, I don't think the final result would vary too much, every track sounds pretty much the same, except that mysterious intro in the middle of the album and the last track, which is a classic guitar piece.

All this written, a very low rating should be expected, shouldn't it? Well, the truth is that Enmity achieve their objective quite nicely. The record is fucking brutal. And if you are searching for that, you've got it.


(Originally written for and published on www.pitchline-zine.com)