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.

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.