Necrosurgical Savagery

Listening to Ensanguined's first EP, I couldn't help but wonder what brought Headsplit Records (which I consider to be a fairly respectable underground death metal label) to release such a useless, mediocre piece of junk that might as well come from Maggot Stomp's bargain bin. However, after a quick look at the band lineup, everything became clear: the guy behind this one-man project is also a member of other well-enstablished, much better acts such as Morbific and Sadistic Drive - the latter being already signed to Headsplit Records. Ohh, well. That does already explain a lot, but it still leaves me puzzled about this guy's interest in exploring such a specific, piss-poor branch of death metal while he's already part of various other bands whose grasp of the genre's language seems far superior. Did he really feel the need to make a solo project, just for... this?

Ensanguined sounds basically just like any other young Pit Viper core act of today: run-of-the-mill, boring-ass slam death drenched in the most deliberately grimy production possible, in order to give it the aesthetics of old school death metal so that it can also be marketed to inexperienced kids who can't really tell the difference between the original old school approach and the generally flawed modern approach to the genre. The guitar tone is thick, heavy and gritty, bearing a nice, reasonable amount of buzz and saturation, while the bass is pleasantly enhanced in the mix with a curiously clean slapping tone that sticks out during many of the riffs; unfortunately, the riffs themselves are entirely forgettable as it's often the case with releases like this. "Chainsaw Surgeon" is the only track that attempts some kind of proper songwriting, trying to develop the riffing throughout the song in some way or another, but even this attempt falls flat due to how painfully tame and unmemorable all these ideas sound. All the other tracks do nothing but randomly chug their way to reach a bare two/three-minute mark, at best only throwing in some half-assed attempt at "morbid atmosphere" ("Cataclysmic Conjuration") that still sounds incredibly hollow and coming out of left field.

None of these slams do indeed possess the slightest bit of personality or memorability, nor do they develop over the course of the songs in any crucial manner that might catch your interest or stick in your brain the way Cephalotripsy or Dying Fetus tracks are at least able to; Ensanguined instead just does the bare minimum required, like most other slam/groovy death metal bands out there, switching arbitrarily between one ultra-basic slam and the other without giving me any reason to care in the first place, tying all these ideas together with some syncopated/blasting programmed drums and calling it a fully finished song. The drum programming is indeed the only brilliant part of this EP: you can tell a great deal of care went into it, experimenting with all kind of brilliant fills and variations in tempo and beat. Unfortunately, this kinda backfires in enhancing the kinda "thrown together" nature of these tracks, not sticking to any stable idea and milking it to its full potential, instead jumping between one idea and the other without ever managing to stumble upon something remotely interesting, making these 11 minutes of music feel way longer and more tedious than they should. On top of it all, some self-parodying croaking/squealing gutturals (on "Bound with Bowels" and "Cataclysmic Conjuration" especially) will cement the band's slam death background in case anyone was still wondering.

As the line between retro-death and modern death starts to blur, releases like this one are starting to pop in even within smaller underground labels, showing the detrimental effects of opening the gate to hardcore scenesters and normalizing the very tendencies the old school revival was trying to escape from in the first place. "Necrosurgical Savagery" is basically just another bad precedent set within the underground market, signaling to kids approaching the old school death scene that it's okay to sound like any generic cookie-cutter 2010's slam band as long as you do it with "rotten", lo-fi production. However, it's even more painful to think this was done by a musician who should in theory know better about death metal, at least judging by his track record in the scene.