The Slow Decay of Infested Flesh

If you're familiar with my reviews (or know me in person), you'd understand by now that I'm very much a slam fan. This genre is catchy as it is brutal. It just gets me. I love the feel and sound of a good brutal slam coupled with some guttural vocals and heavy-as-fuck low end production. But as I see these bands popping up almost in cookie-cutter formation, I feel a bit distraught. I mean yeah, the music is good but let's be real here: this band is named Guttural Engoregement...

Are you even aware there are the following bands that play almost this exact kind of music? Guttural Decay, Guttural Intoxication, Guttural Jesus, Guttural Secrete. Also the second word of this band (being "Engorgement") need I remind you, there's bands named Necroptic Engorgement and Cerebral Engorgement (which in retrospection to the last band, I might add that there are two bands that are named Cerebral Bore and Cerebral Incubation). These bands really need to be creative or buy a new medical dictionary because they literally just recycle word after word to pioneer a new band name. It's quite annoying and I actually nearly forgot Guttural Engorgement's band name, getting it confused with at least three of the bands I mentioned above before reviewing this album.

Now as much as I like this kind of music, that is one thing I don't like. The basic feeling I get is that these bands are just cookie-cooker brutality under a new cut-and-paste branch of words that seem "brutal". I don't even understand why deathcore is so talked down upon for being "generic" when the band names in contemporary slam reaches almost humor-tier monotony.

But about the music that comes from these sort of bands... oh yeah. It ain't half bad.

Guttural Engorgement surely are not experts at coming up with an original band name, but on this release they don't hesitate to fix you up with some hefty doses of slams and the vocals of Mark Rawls absolutely slay as he commences one guttural after another along with the occasional pig squeal. The album packs in 13 racks of crushing tunes - 2 of which are just eerie interludes/intros and one being a kind of half interlude but with a brutal ending. Over the course of these songs, I didn't seem to get bored as much as I was waiting for the next slam. But that's just it, the band plays slams and breakdowns too.

The breakdowns here are very metalcore and deathcore-esque on this album which gives the music an extra flavoring. For example, peep the breakdown for "Chopsaw Sodomy". If you were around for the Myspace deathcore era of 2007 - 2009, you might be familiar with the band See You Next Tuesday. Their song "A Portable Death Ray and a Sterile Claw Hammer" and "Chopsaw Sodomy" from this album practically have the same extremely slow breakdown and it fits tremendously brutal over Rawls' amazing guttural vocals. There's nothing I really appreciated more than a slam band who can go out freestyle with their music and by injecting some breakdowns into it on the fly, they prove that despite their generic name, the music is actually pretty solid when it comes to ideas. Other territories they also cross is some Conforming to Abnormality-era Cephallic Carnage (in the song "Molested Dissection") or some straight Cephalotripsy-esque riffing ("Steak Knife Face Fuck").

While the music on this release is brutal as hell, it only about stays in that territory alone. It explores several styles even outside of slam (as I mentioned above) but what I didn't favor was the band's lack of better ventures from the comfort zone. Is it so wrong for me to expect a slam band to do some crazier stuff like incorporating maybe even a short solo or something when they already proved they're chill enough to play some deathcore breakdowns? Maybe my expectations were just heightened a little too much by their writing style.

My only real complaint however is while Mark Rawls' vocals are awesome as I mentioned several times, I wanted to get one thing out. He absolutely sucks at highs. His raspy scream is so terrible, I've even heard remarks that people thought his rasp on the opening song (the title track) was a joke. I even question why they kept that vocal in. I will admit his screams on the song "Omnipresent Ecchymosis" were actually kind of solid to fit with the song's chaotic ending, but let alone including such a horrendous rasp at the beginning of the album for crying out loud was just pretty ridiculous to me. He only uses this vocal two times on the whole record though. I know I'm making a big fuss over one scream, but Jesus, it just sounds so bad I just can't believe nobody in the band or the producer himself didn't even suggest on removing it before release.

Anyway, to put it simple, this is a slam album. Nothing more, nothing less. It slightly explores other elements in-between songs, but strictly recommended only if you really dig bands such as Kraanium or Awaiting the Autopsy. While this album has a lot of good stuff in its instrumentation, I will admit I enjoyed the vocals the most. Not a bad record at all, and the the signature guttuRAWLS serve as icing on this brutal cake.