Illuminations of Vile Engorgement

I don't care about this thing being "the purest essence of death metal" or "one of the most brutal things ever released" since the first of these doesn't necessarily make it good music and the second is patently false since there are many brutal death metal albums out there that hit harder than this, go nastier than this, more punishing than this, and manage to do everything right that Illuminations of Vile Engorgement does wrong. If anything, this album should serve as an example of how not to make brutal death metal. If I could summarize this album in just one word, it would be "tedious" since tedium seems to be the entire objective of this thing rather than any form of aggression or brutality. It's a mess through and through and practically nothing works to produce anything resembling an immersive experience, musically or otherwise.

The most glaring problem with this album is probably because everything sounds like mushy, dull nonsense. The guitars sound like diarrhea, there's no getting around that. They are also overwhelmed by the drums which are firing on all cylinders throughout most of the album and they just end up making this thing feel like a big, flat mess with absolutely nothing on terms of momentum in the slightest. It also does not help at all that there seems to be no structure at all to this mess of guitar diarrhea and endless monotonous blast beats that do nothing but bore you to death. Then there's the production which turns the whole thing into a disgusting slurry of brown, tasteless gak that seems less like a bone-chewing beast that's going to rip you to pieces and more like a beleaguered creature dying from its several impacted colons rupturing all at once. Add in the pig-squeal vocals that have no variance as well as no strength or coordination to them, and the individual performance aspects of this abortion are finally complete. It all sounds like garbage.

Then we get on to the fact that ninety percent of this album sounds the same and none of that sounds good. You were expecting maybe a riff, or some good grooves for violence? Too bad! Every song except the very last one sounds the same, with an endless barrage of indistinguishable blast beats and guitar notes that don't resemble anything even close to a riff being blasted at you like shit in a wind tunnel. It never lets up and it never sounds particularly powerful, crushing, or even horrifying, it just sounds dull. The only time it does let up is for these brief slam sections that have no punch or gravity to them, so it just trades one boring thing for another. There is no structure to this thing at all, it's just the same dull pig-squealing, blasting, and limp sloppy guitars being played in a way that seems brutal, but has no merit calling itself such. The final track does change things up with it being a Spanish-style acoustic piece that actually has some finesse to its guitar-play. This shows these guys had talent, which makes me wonder why in Hell's sewers did these guys use none of that talent for the rest of the album. That's just enraging when you realize someone can do something good, but they instead choose to deliver a bunch of thoughtless, lazy crap that consists of almost nothing but endless repetition.

On top of being one of the weakest and sloppiest brutal death metal albums out there, Illuminations of Vile Engorgement is also deliberately lazy and does nothing at all to engage the listener. Boredom and tedium are the names of the game here. This is pure, unemotional, unfeeling, un-aggressive, un-interesting slop that hardly changes at almost all points throughout. It's not impressive once you see through all the walls of drums and the limp production. There's no motion or energy to this, it's just plodding lethargy, monotony, and boredom disguised as face-ripping, gore-soaked brutality. Enmity does nothing for brutal death metal aside from putting all its bad qualities on display and cranking them up 'til the dial breaks off, all while creating an amorphous blob of dragging metallic dullness out of them. I bet even if this monotonous garbage had a decent production with some punch to it, this would still sound like an incoherent mess since almost nothing changes rhythmically, tempo-wise, pitch-wise, or overall. This album is a drain on the listener simply from how boring, listless, and mind-numbing it is throughout. Do yourself a favor, listen to something else.