Voracious Contempt

Anyone who's even a bit familiar with the brutal death metal scene knows that Voracious Contempt is Internal Bleeding's attempt at blatantly copying Suffocation's Pierced From Within, and in the band's defense, they actually pull it off quite well, sans the complexity, which is largely absent here. The lack of that particular trait allows for a lot more foul thuggery to be injected into the music, which is practically inevitable considering both Suffocation and Internal Bleeding are from New York. Whether it's due to mindless copying or intentional, this album is riddled with thuggish slams and insipid breakdowns, I assume the band knew what they were doing as Suffocation don't really slam as much as they break down, but I wouldn't be surprised either if these guys just happened to stumble upon the technique that would later become known as 'slamming'. In any case, the breakdowns and slams are what makes this so goddamn enjoyable throughout, this album is just a complete joy to hear, it's just so wrong in so many ways, but I absolutely adore it purely for that reason.

This album's sound can obviously be traced back to Suffocation's 3rd outing, the overly distorted fuzz of the guitars, the insanely loud bass and the deep, somewhat gurgled vocals. After hearing this album in its entirety though, I can't help but wonder if Suffocation are even capable of producing an album properly, because where Pierced From Within is basically the least worst-sounding album of their discography, Voracious Contempt manages to sound better than the album it tries to copy. It doesn't suffer from an overly obnoxious bass drum and it doesn't sound overly deep or anything alike. I wouldn't say this production job is perfect as it's shoddy and perhaps overly fuzzy, but for an album with a focus on heaviness and NYDM-influenced breakdowns, I'd say it works damn near perfect. The guitar tone itself is a bit thinner than the one found on its direct influence, and thus the riffs tend to be drowned in the distortion quite a bit, but in general there's not a whole lot wrong with the sound of this album.

Complexity was one of Pierced From Within's main traits, and for some reason, in the process of copying that album's musical formula, Internal Bleeding somehow completely forgot about that aspect of the sound, and it results in something that sounds a lot more down to earth. Whether these guys are actually capable of mimicking it is something that we'll never know, but I actually don't feel the album suffers from it at all. It makes this a lot more fun than any Suffocation album ever, and while the musicianship might not be as impressive as theirs, there's obviously nothing wrong with it either. These guys were well up for they task they faced, and while the tightness and technique of these riffs might have been the result of copying, there's obviously some skill needed to pull it off, needless to say, these guys did it pretty well. The individual performances are hardly impressive, but they all do their job like they're supposed to and that's really all you can say. Rini does a decent job at imitating Frank Mullen but he seems to be a bit more genuinely rooted in brutal death metal, thus not being very comprehensible and somewhat gurgle-y instead of Mullen's more growl-y style. It actually surprises me that the lyrics are pretty good and not mindless copying from Pierced From Within, they definitely hint towards that album, but I feel the lyrics have enough of a story of themselves to not come off as copy/paste material.

The songwriting is arguably where this album suffers the most, I have the idea the band ran out of ideas somewhere halfway through because a lot of songs sound pretty similar and certain breakdowns are entirely interchangeable. The songs also seem to be somewhat juxtaposed, there's not a lot of clever songwriting and breakdowns or uptempo passages basically just happen without much of an indication. In short, the songs are absolutely and positively dumb. The addition of more breakdowns and slams arguably reinforces that, but the music in general sounds far from intelligent, even during the faster and somewhat complex parts. Perhaps one could classify this as an early version of deathcore, and I can see the logic in that, but I myself feel this is pretty basic NYDM that just happens to have slams crammed in, there's not a lot of deathcore found here apart from the blast/groove template the album operates from.

So, while definitely flawed and totally void of creativity, Voracious Contempt serves as one of the most enjoyable death metal records ever. It's mindless fun and great to headbang to, it definitely possesses a high level of fist-pounding energy and it's just great fun to listen to. As a fanboy of Suffocation's 3rd album, I have to say that this isn't as good as the album it tried to replicate, but it's ultimately a lot more genuine fun. I just wish the songs were more varied.