The Slow Decay of Infested Flesh

For some reason beyond my understanding, this one is a little divisive. Depending on who you ask, it's either a major highlight of the second generation of slam, or just another release by one of Mark Rawls' dozens of obscure bargain bin death metal projects. I would argue anyone claiming the latter either doesn't actually like brutal death metal, or hasn't actually heard the album.

One thing I love about this album is that it splits the slam side of the band's sound and their traditional brutal death metal elements pretty much 50/50. When it's shuffling along in some molasses breakdown, you're never far from a slithering minor tremolo melody (think Barnes era Cannibal Corpse, Severe Torture, Inveracity, etc); but when they're blasting and doing tremolo stuff, you're never far away from a slam. The pacing is perfect and every song has its own harmonic and rhythmic character, despite the minimalist musical toolset inherent to the genre. Being a 2007 release--not one of the first slam albums, but sort of from the golden middle age of the genre--this release is thankfully a million miles away from the weed/hip-hop/bass drops/haha-funny-Sharknado tropes that unfortunately came to define slam in the late 2010s and 2020s. The whole things drips a kitschy but genuinely morbid sense of Italian zombie movie doom and despair; really, it's downright grotesque sounding at times. The riffs squirm and throb, the guitars are rusted over, the vocals are like gastric emissions. Even the way they pepper in pinch harmonics adds to the creepout factor, evoking the chirps of giant cockroaches or something.

A couple slams will chafe against the sensibilities of death metal purists by incorporating some borderline beatdown/core-like syncopation. I hesitate to use the word "deathcore," because that word carries certain connotations that have nothing to do with this band--mechanical/sterile production, shouty vox, contrived machismo, puerile relationship drama/breakup lyrics, etc. At the end of the day Guttural Engorgement are a rotten, gurgly, swampy brutal death metal band with untriggered drums and lyrics (err, I mean, song titles... there probably aren't any actual lyrics here) exclusively invoking splatter movie schlock; they just happen to have a couple breakdowns that might make you have to resist the urge to put your baseball cap on backwards and punch a hole in the wall. Either way, by borrowing something cool from modern "core" adjacent stuff (those choppy, syncopated stop-start breakdowns) and excluding the cringe inducing stuff that usually comes along with it, the album just ends up more perversely enjoyable rather than feeling like it's making crossover concessions at the expense of its putrid atmosphere. And anyway, MOST of the slams stay that lurching, groovy, purist-friendly Devourment/Cephalotripsy territory, so you do get a nice wide range of rhythms when things slow down.

While the mastering could use more dynamics, the production is nevertheless friggin' amazing. It's borderline hypnotic how those smoldering fumes of bass from each chord swirl around during the really slow parts. I know it sounds a bit goofy to say, but don't people make similar claims about the treble range of incredibly monotonous and simple atmospheric black metal? Still, a big part of the album's heaviness is how the guitar manages to chop through the inky swamp of sub-bass, rather than getting drowned out by it. A lot of slam bands just can't get this balance right at the mixing level and either produce hollow, bass-shy slam, or they overdo the bass and end up with something that's blubbery and lacks any biting edge/impact. My point is, in its own way, and for the purposes of its genre, this is a very sonically rich, lush album, believe it or not. I mean, that part at the end of "Cinder Block Facial Reconstruction" where you can hear the squeaks of the pick scraping against the strings over the broiling slow motion trudge of the bass... moments like that are slam nirvana, as good as anything on Molesting the Decapitated, if not better.

There are plenty of complains you could make, but they're all missing the point. You could criticize Rawls' "bad vocal technique" during the handful of bits where he uses high screams--yes, he sounds more like a tweaker leaping out of the dumpster behind 7-11 and coming at you with a hammer than a "metal screamer," and that's part of the album's loopy outsider charm. You could criticize it for basically being EP length, at 24 minutes--but there's something to be said for an album that absolutely nails the narrow stylistic space it occupies and doesn't overstay its welcome or waste a single second. So there you go. Without a trace of irony, I say this is one the best albums of the 2000s.