Hacked, Split Then Quartered

Two brutal death/goregrind artists, one on the way out, one on the way in; it would be poetic were it not for song titles such as 'Dismembering The Sagging Sacks Of Shit' and 'Necrolesbo Cock Devastation'. This 2005 split between Tasmania's best brutal death/goregrind band with no lyrics (needless to say, the only one) and Italian surrealist giallo-death/grinders Mincer is curious on a lot of levels, the least of which being why the hell these two were put together. A part of it may be equally confusing to the bands themselves; a mutual friend of mine and a Corpse Carving member once mentioned that that band had no idea who they were doing the split with when they were recording the music for it. I feel that upon hearing that it was Mincer, their enthusiasm didn't immediately triple. Neither will yours upon hearing them, either, but I digress.

This split was Corpse Carving's third and Mincer's last; the latter is much to be expected by the content here, but the strange success of Corpse Carving later that same year is a surprising turn of events. The styles of the bands are hopelessly mismatched: Corpse Carving's meticulous, machinelike brutal death/goregrind in no way relates to Mincer's incredibly sloppy, deranged form of death/grind, and it seems that Coagulated Records would have, you know, NOTICED it, or at least cared enough to have the bands sync up a bit more on the material. Because as 'Meatcleaver Disembowelment' fades out and the intro to Mincer's (first) side starts up, a radical change in mood and form appears rather immediately and ruins any attempt at cohesion for this release. And again, at the next switch of artist. And once again before this CD ends. Yes, the 'Quartered' part of this split's title is an indication of physical presence: each artist has not one but two separate sides, one for the standard part of the split, and another of 'bonus tracks'. These bonus tracks are present on every version of the disc, so I'm not entirely sure of the purpose of such a convoluted arrangement, but it does make the already bizarre listening experience that is 'Hacked, Split Then Quartered' that much more... well, let's just say 'enthralling' and be nice about it.

You remember all those early death/goregrind classics that Corpse Carving spit out early in their career? Yeah, neither do I. There aren't any 'Sickening Splatter's on this split, and the material here can be pretty universally characterized as 'primitive'. Now, for a primitive, barbaric band like Corpse Carving, this could only be a good thing, right? No, because when I say primitive, I mean PRIMITIVE. The music here is pretty much 'Hacked Up For Barbecue'-era Mortician with slams and more complex riffing. Otherwise, it's the same sort of thing: fairly muddy production, low, gurgly vocals (but without any lyrics to grunt along with) and simple tremolo/chunk riffs that lack any real variation. The problem with Corpse Carving at this stage was that, while their later material is still minute twenty songs with three riffs, those three riffs are GOOD ones, and you can actually hear some level of tonal quality in them due to improved production. On this release, every riff just sounds like a jumble of very fast (or mid-paced), but very precisely placed, notes. Very low tunings (G# in the case of Corpse Carving) combined with muddy production do not memorable riffs make, and especially not if the riffs were nothing special to begin with.

You see, what makes a slam powerful really isn't the riff itself. Most of the rhythms and chord patterns of slams have been exhausted since the guitar was invented, and you could really make a slam riff out of a single chord and it would be perfectly fine. It's been done. What makes a slam good is what makes a funeral doom lead good: the fashion in which it's played, not what is being played itself. It's about what's going on AUGMENTING the slam more than the guitar riff. The slam in Devourment's 'Babykiller' is great because its tertiary elements make it kick a thousand times more ass than the riff would normally on its own (though it's a great riff). The slams on Corpse Carving's side of 'Hacked, Split Then Quartered' just sort of sit there. There's no lyrics to stick in your mind, no particular technicality or variation; just an endless stream of triplet rhythms that are okay when they're going on, but entirely unmemorable as soon as they pass. This is a problem when your songs are a minute twenty in length and defined almost exclusively by slams.

Simply put, it's terrible music for everyone that isn't like me, and for me it's merely okay. I love brutal death, I love Mortician, and I love simple, barbaric music, and even then this is only passable. When I put it on, I don't pay attention to it: I play it when I want something brutal and mindless that won't distract me from whatever I'm doing but can get my head to move periodically. Hey, there are a COUPLE riffs that I like after all: the ones in 'Umbilical Strangulated Remnants' are pretty sweet. To people that aren't as into brutal death, though, this is going to sound like nothing but droning, rhythmic noise with sloppy vocals. The fact is that whether you like it or not, it's pretty much completely irrelevant on every artistic level and isn't of any more use than working background noise. Whatever.

Mincer on the other hand is most certainly a different breed. I'm pretty sure I actually pressed my hands against my face when I heard 'Womb of Putrid Chaos (Intro)', ready for an all-out assault of completely noisy, incoherent shit. But my expectations were only partially granted. Mincer is mostly noisy, incoherent shit, but the level of coherency is JUST enough for you to understand what's occurring under all the seemingly random stuff going on. Think an incredibly primitive, goregrind-influenced, semi-retarded version of Wormed; it has the gurgled vocals and surreal, bizarre riffing, but none of the, you know, intelligence and logic of that band. The production is noisy as hell and there's very little song structure to be noted. A lot of it sounds at least partially improvised, judging by how little the riffs have to do with each other and the relative sloppiness of everything going on. The drumming seems to be programmed, but it's more or less inaudible throughout unless you pay attention; not so much because of volume, but because of unimportance. The only things that really exist are guitar and vocals: the former sloppy and barely coherent, the latter... sloppy and barely coherent.

Most of the appeal of Mincer's side emerges simply from novelty. I imagine this would be fucking terrifying to someone not acquainted with noisy, sloppy death metal, but for me it's just background music. There are some cool elements though: I like a lot of the weird, spacey riffing, and there is a certain level of brutality and savagery to this, in a way different from Corpse Carving's side. It's very chaotic and intense music, no doubt, but it's chaotic and intense without purpose, and isn't chaotic and intense enough to exist purely on its own virtues. It feels like sort of a failed experiment; like the band was going for some extremely dark, entropic atmosphere but really just cranked out a bunch of noisy death/grind instead. It's a curiosity, but not actually GOOD in any real way. Ironically, the best points are when the band abandons even the slightest shred of structure and just goes into avant-garde freakout noise territory, where the drums are completely subsumed by the massive distortion and chaos of the rest of the music.

Despite how Mincer is the more artistic of the two, I find myself listening to the Corpse Carving tracks here much more than the other side. Maybe it's just the whole 'coherence' thing that appeals to me; maybe I just like big stupid death metal. Either way, I recognize the relative unimportance and lack of imagination in this split for what it is. It's brutal and sick, yeah, but it doesn't do it in a new and exciting way and whenever it's on, it just drifts away in the background. This is the perfect novelty split: it'll terrify non-metalheads and amuse you. But it won't do anything that music is supposed to do.