Nourishing the Spoil

When comes to brutal death metal there are two roads to take. A) Hideously offensive gore, sh**, torture and death lyrics that make any witnessing bystander assume your a deranged serial killer, or B) complete and utter religious blasphemy that lights priests and holy men on fire when they're within earshot. Guttural Secrete handily fall into the former category. When it comes to being downright putrid, gross and id stimulating, few albums can top Guttural Secrete's debut full length, Reek Of Pubescent Despoilment. As far as brutal death goes, that one had it all. Obviously insanely guttural burping, chainsaw grooves and a pummeling rhythm section made for ultimately catchy but musically forgettable bout of neck-kinks. What made it the album memorable was the lyrical content and artwork. There's a lot of offensive sh** in brutal death metal but when Blue Jensen burps, "Packing up what's left of the fat fvckers guts / Filling large containers to add to my stock / Freezers at my home are restocked every year / With gluttonous portions of intestinal waste" you can't help but think why anyone would feel the need to express such vulgarities through music. The album sure as hell didn't break any molds, or even try to, but I'll be damned if its not one of the best pure "br00t" albums in recent memory.

With the Las Vegas trio's followup 2013 effort, Nourishing The Spoil, not much has changed except the shock value. Musically, its pretty much the exact same tempo-shifting, chaotic, gurgle-chug-fest we saw on their debut aside from some paltry attempts of melody towards the end of the album. Really, the reason this albums gets a big ole 2 where its sibling release garned a 2.5 is the fact that this just isn't nearly as offensive. Lets do some comparisons for the sake of argument. Now, what offends you more? Torturous Impregnation by Fecalized Insemination or Serrated Impurities? Sculpting Fragments of Mangled Cunt or Voyeuristic Engagement. In the land of brutal death metal, there's no maturation of a said band. Rather it seems that Guttural Secrete have caught Cannibal Corpse syndrome, toning down the artwork, lyrical content and song titles so 16 years old won't be genuinely afraid to listen to it in case their mom's look at their download histroy. "GS Reek of.. .rar? Whats this now?" Such a thing would land the poor little swaggermeister in therapy.

Like most all brutal death metal, Nourishing The Spoil is pretty much overflowing with cliche's of modern metal. Aimless songwriting, predicable dynamics and carbon-copy riff work all neatly packaged in a gory slipcase and lathered in crunchy, modern production values. Furthermore, this album is about nine minutes too long. I can handle a half hour or so of pure brutality at a time before my interest level nosedives faster than a horny mole, and this one clocks in at 39 minutes, making my groans of tedium almost as loud Blue's gutturals by the end of the effort.

So the band went from genuinely brutal to trite and pandering. Despite this, the album does have one redeeming quality. If you enjoy lifting weights or anything of that ilk like I do, this'll get you pumping iron. For everyone, it'll only have you pumping the "next" button. Make no mistake, Guttural Secrete are about as extreme as metal gets, and that hasn't changed here, but when you make an album an album that is almost identical to its already average predecessor, and then go ahead and tone down the rest of the content, you're gonna brutally faceplant into irrelevance.