Serial Urbicide

Extermination Dismemberment is the so-called home for new-comer slam fans, this band proves why slam death metal sucks on ice. The first two real tracks (excluding the intro) are nothing but palm-muted crotches. Excuse me, the first two tracks? No, I was wrong, it's the whole album. The definition of slam back in the era of Suffocation was just a riff in a specific part of this song, and then Devourment used a lot in their song, but not filling the entire song of slams, Devourment added 200 BPM sections, tremolos, et cetera. While Extermination Dismemberment just copy-and-paste all possible to exist "slammy" riffs along with generic, robotic, ear-puking drum beats. And when they try to be a little bit different, they suck. The short tremolo picking at the track Serial Urbanicide on the pre-earrape section has a dissonant harmony. I cited earrape, right? Well, this band just saw some bands doing this, and they applied TWO of those bass-drum earrape, sometimes, it achieves in the most unexpected hour.

The only pro of this album is the guitar tone - that's it - literally nothing is at least mediocre, but it's beyond horrible, beyond disgusting (in the not-so-good way). What makes this albums suck besides some over-loud bass drums, is firstly: the aesthetic - it's standard for slam. Gore? Fuck yeah. Demons? Fuck yeah. Cadavers? Fuck yeah too. To nerdy "yeah I know this cult underground brutal band that sold a tape to his friend that died at Friday 13th of 2005 and published the demo in torrent on PirateBay" slam fans, you can hear the music just by looking at the album cover, and yep, the cover represents the music: rotting chaos, on the bad way.

For some reason, the track Survival has a stupidly different mixing than the other tracks, but goddamn, someone help me? There's still those boosted bass pre-verse sections, along with a verse that seems like a chorus, three crotch notes and a harmonic - so creative, definitely, I've never seen this on slam death metal. And on this track too, there's a different gutturals, while the rest of the album is "BREE!!11", here, on this track, is sounds the vocals of George Fisher (CC).

It sucks.

Where can I even begin with this abomination? Serial Urbicide is the ultimate album for fans of "buttslam," crap pioneered by Abominable Putridity and other modern groups; it's packed with sterile production, robo-drums, a flat pingy snare, and those god-forsaken bass drops that everyone adores for some reason. This is worthless garbage, and I wish people wouldn't listen to it.

My explanations above aren't sufficient enough to make a valid case for why this album blows balls and reflects the genre's flaws today. Unfortunately, I had to sit through this headache-inducing wall of sound (not in a good way) to fairly judge the songwriting and riffs, of which there are a few nice ones here and there, so this review will begin there.

The issues in Serial Urbicide are not necessarily in the composition, but rather in how the songs sound. The songwriting is very conventional, with typical blast portions interlaced with groove-ladened tremolo riffage, followed by slower slams and "chug-chug" riffs. Bog standard stuff, which is fine, until your ears are assaulted by triggered-to-hell drums and a staticy, "huge" guitar tone that attempts to be "brutal" but comes off as extremely tryhard. Each slam is ruined by bass drops ala dubstep that completely takes you out of the immersion, which you'd struggle to find in the first place. Why bass drops? It doesn't make it heavier, it does the opposite.

The "vocals" are my next gripe. To clarify, I adore Wayne Knupp's (RIP) "pig vomit" vocals from early Devourment and Matt Duncan's (RIP) work from Afterbirth - that style in general. These vocals, on the other hand, are your typical "sink drain" vocals with no substance or changeups. The vocalist sounds the same on every fucking song, It's not even an exaggeration. I'm well aware that it takes skill to pull off vocals like these, but the execution just lacks and becomes highly repetitious - and as I previously indicated, I love vocals like this for the most part.

I'd like to embrace new slam/BDM, but travesties like this will keep me away from modern bands that don't pay homage to the pioneers. To summarize, the production is sterile, the guitars are enormous and boring, the drums are EXTREMELY robotic and triggered to hell and back, there's no bass in the mix (no need for bass with guitars like this), the vocals are shit, and the bass drops give you second-hand embarrassment. This album is literally everything wrong with the genre for the past decade+.

Now that I'm finally finished talking about this sorry excuse for an album, I implore you to listen to real slam/BDM like Afterbirth, or any modern band that brings back the classic sound - or, at the very least, has natural production that utterly crushes the garbage heard on Serial Urbicide. Guys like Infertile Surrogacy, Grave Syndrome, and Regurgitated Entrails will always do it significantly better than flaming horse dung like this.

“Oh, look,” I hear you say, rolling your eyes so hard you can see your own frontal lobe. “Another slam band with a gory name with gory cover art and gory song titles. How interesting.”

Hold the sarcasm, Mr. Negative! What we have here is something amazing. Brutal death metal with lots of slams and lots of ferocious energy! And when I say energy, I mean fuckin’ energy. This album doesn’t just slam at half-pace, but also produces some intense brutal death with some fantastic drumming to boot. I’m certain that the energy here is helped along by the immense production job. Everything is loud and there’s no room to really move or take a breath. This is a strong contributor to why the album remains strong throughout. The drumming is loud but not overpowering, and the guitars sound thick and meaty, whether they’re slamming their way through a song, or become more riff-based.

Another element in this album are the bass drops. It’s full of them. If you’re not a fan of them, you might want to pass this album, but personally they provide the listener with some added brutality. Some of them last a fair while, too, such as one in “Serial Urbicide” that interferes with the music for longer than five seconds. It’s sure to infuriate some potential fans of this, however if you’re like me and don’t mind the elongated bass drops, then you’re sure to get a massive kick out of it. And a massive kick is what they deliver. The abundant supply of bass drops, some at crucial times, too (think the closing section of “Gutted Face” which is guaranteed to induce headbanging) maintain a level of intensity that’s hard to find in slam death. My favourite bass drop on the album might be the one in “Survival” where the low end disappears for a second before it happens, and then explodes in again to round out the song with a massive riff. Not just fantastic, but also shows a level of song writing that Extermination Dismemberment have.

Picking out individual songs for special mention is not easy, nor is it really necessary. After the intro, you’ve got nine songs that sound similar to each other, but have the individuality to separate them into their own entity. Serial Urbicide is best played as a whole, rather than picking out separate songs and listening to them on their own. It’s better digested as a whole story, and probably more interesting that way because you can see how the songs flow from one to another, which is actually really expertly done.

There’s certainly not a lot wrong here, but if I had to pick one thing, the vocals are a basic standard growl. More interestingly, however, songs like “Survival” and “Bloodbath Religion” show a more legible vocal style that’s sadly not used in most other songs, particularly in the first half. I’m not sure why, because they are a better choice to use for most of the album, but are only selectively utilised. Mind you, his regular vocal style fits really well within the context of the music, but in future I would like to hear the less guttural version more often.

In all honesty, though, I’m nitpicking there. If you’re after slam bands that invoke some savage vivacity, Serial Urbicide is one album that shouldn’t be overlooked. With the crazy energy portrayed throughout the album – from the thick production to the busy drumming to the intense slams to the effective bass drops – this album deserves way more recognition, and stands very tall among other slam bands that wish they were half this good.

Just want to say, that I am blown away by this effort. Everything on this is truly badass and groundbreaking. I am shocked this group doesn't have more recognition and I will simply place this reasoning on the fact that this release is still relatively new. Everything about this record is sickening and holds no dull moment for a slam band.
Hailing from the country of Belarus, this brutal death metal outfit came onto the scene with their 2010 debut full-length Butcher Basement which was kind of, shall we say... understandably overlooked. The production, variety and delivery were missing. The young slammers knew their music must have missed something to be truly badass and innovative. Years later, it was found while writing for their sophomore follow-up release, Serial Urbicide.

Why is this album so great? Well, I'll just come out and say it; it motherfucking rocks my socks. Plain and simple. This band does pretty much everything right that I would expect from what makes slam so awesome. As a fan of slam death metal, the bands in it can be pretty repetitive and boring after so many doing the same thing. Even I can say this. But Extermination Dismemberment offer something very high in quality. The production, the bass drops and the slams are the three major elements that catch my ears the most here. Let's start with production: the production here is superb because it catches you off guard and places you in this world of desolation bombarded with badassery. THIS album right here is what Disfiguring the Goddess would sound like if Disfiguring the Goddess was an actual slam project. DtG is a criminal in the world of slam death metal simply because it isn't slam but markets itself as slam. Big Chocolate should get more shit for the fact that he actually markets Emmure/Asking Alexandria-esque chugging breakdowns as "slam" instead of playing slams. What we hear on Serial Urbicide is production done basically in the same fashion of Disfiguring the Goddess, all those crunchy, high-produced and quality bassy breeze licks you hear in Big C's lonesome one man project is here, placed in a legit slam band. It's beautiful to me albeit that I actually love the production done in Disfiguring the Goddess, but not the music itself (sorry I hate fretless chug-chug bands).

Secondly, let's look into the bass drops. Bass drops are an exciting key element here. In basic music theory, what I've taken into notice lately is that one really enjoys his music when there's something to look forward to in it. A "specific part", so to speak. It's like the same way we have thrash metal fans waiting for that guitar solo or those metalcore kids waiting for that big breakdown. In this album, there's two of those "awaiting" factors. Slams are one thing (even though there's lots of them) but the other thing is MAJOR bass drops. The bass drops on this album rattle your speakers like an atomic bomb and I literally worry for my vehicle's stereo speakers everytime this album lands one on me out of fear it will do any damage to my sound system, which it probably can. Wanna hear an example? Skip ahead to the 3:02 time mark of the title track from this album and hear for yourself. It doesn't just stop there, the band really insists on its bass drops so much that it capsulizes them in other tracks while punishing riffs invite the listener to this world of nonstop audial destruction as heard in "Survival" and "Devastation Squad".

Finally, the slams here are just as amazing as the guitarist's enchanting licks while they perpetuate between semi-technical laden grooves, fast tremolo strumming and then right back to the slam. Arseniy Kovalchuk is an amazing strings player not for how fast he can play or how much technique he uses, but really because he does something that hasn't been done in the same genre so many previous times beforehand. Out of the play throughs that I've given this disc already, I can formally proclaim his playing tickles my fancy as a contemporary death metal guitarist should. The production work layered to his guitar playing also kind of impresses me as well as everything else on this album. I mean as high-in-tone as the bass is on this album, I'm surprised his guitar comes in as clear as it does. Trust me, this record has A LOT of bass. There's a few parts where the bass stops playing and you can completely hear and notice that a bass has stopped considering how much depths is lacking from everything else behind the lead instruments when these small bass break parts come up.

Before I move onto speaking about vocals, I'll talk about drums. The drums aren't exactly groundbreaking, but get the job done. Solid-toned triggered double bass elegantly moves the music on and on to the next groove or slam, where it is only then all about the floor tom coupled with the snare. Unfortunately enough, however; the snare is pretty low in the mix compared to every other drum. The bass drum is very high in the mix (along with every other bass element on this album as I explained before), leaving the snare to just a fiddle in the back of things. What's worse is that the hi-hat and ride/China cymbals are even lower in audibility, leaving them almost non-existent unless you keep a very keen ear out for them. But yes, onto vocals, they're what you expect straight from the slam league: deep, monstrous, guttural growls... but more! Believe it or not, Valeriy Kozhemyako actually adds variety (maybe his name should be changed to Variety Kozhemyako, haha... I had to). His growls actually aren't the same guttural by guttural as one would expect by a band from this genre. On this album, he periodically trades in his guttural for a juicier one, or a less brooding growl. He even changes the tone of his voice altogether on this album for some songs. "Bloodbath Religion" is a good example of this where he's heard singing in a death growl maintaining to that of more understandability and putting gutturals on the momentary backburner where they're only placed in the backing vocal spots on this song.

I love this album. Practically said, it's the fucking shit. Everything from bumping, bass-heavy production standards, to innovative openings featuring soundclips of tortured women screaming, to the sounds of automatic firearms are here. Even the album's final track "Human Holocaust" has colorful synthesizers playing behind the guitar halfway through its run which are reminiscent to southern California spazzy deathcore outfit Arsonists Get All the Girls' early works. Extermination Dismemberment obviously aren't afraid to experiment, but what their experimenting did was bring me probably the greatest slam album I've heard that was released within this past decade and it's all thanks to a band that built up the courage to actually not do the same thing every band does that wants to sound like Devourment. This album is badass. it slams, it rocks, it's just amazing. Won't call it perfect, but it's way too good for me to just play it off my stereo system just once a week.

Top tracks: "Survival", "Human Holocaust" and definitely the title track.