Wisdom of Brutality

I'm pretty sure this is my first encounter with the Bolivian death metal scene, and I probably would've remained none the wiser if it weren't for the newly started Putrido Distro sending me a promo. It's apparently a Swedish distro specializing in Latin American gore, which sounds damn cool to me. By the looks of the logo and album cover I was absolutely 100% certain this would be the goriest of the grind; goregrind. After a couple of minutes of movie samples that I can't understand (after all, my knowledge of either of the Bolivian languages is limited, to say the least) the first surprise hits me. Why this isn't goregrind at all, it's death metal...

Pandegoreium have a certain groove to their sound, and it's rugged around the edges, much like I'd expect from a band hailing from that particular part of the world. Rough, crunchy and groovy, but yet sounding quite far from anything I've heard before. Taking into account the somewhat thrashy guitar leads and solos popping up on occasion my mind goes to the earlier days of Sepultura, but only briefly as the thrash is quickly overrun by gory death metal. One can't blame them for being the most tight outfit in the world, but that's just all part of their charm. The unorthodox song structures, the weird tempo changes and unusual drum patterns all add up to a quite interesting listening experience. It's repulsive yet intriguing. It's mostly relatively slow, whereas the groove is an important part of their sound (just like I said before), but with quick assaults of blasting. Riff-wise it's got a certain goregrinding flair to it, somewhat typical to the Latin goregrind sound, but with a punky thrash attitude at times.

The band is female fronted, which adds to the general unorthodox approach of Pandegoreium. Her hoarse screams are atypical for death metal, and they're beautifully backed up by gored-out grunts and growls, adding another flair to the atypical sound of the band. I'd say Wisdom of brutality is a somewhat atmospheric album, as well as brutal and gory, solely 'cause of the massive amounts of movie samples. I'm very ambivalent about this release. It's rugged and rough, untight and ugly; but oh-so-sweet. The soundtrack to a night of mayhem, murder and cannibalism.

Originally written for http://www.mylastchapter.net