Culinary Buffet of Hacked Innards

Every once in a while I come across an album I am fully prepared to dislike, but end up enjoying way more than I’d like to admit. This time it was Rest In Gore’s Culinary Buffet of Hacked Innards, which I originally dismissed as another slam album without any substance. After multiple listens, I can safely say that there’s still not much in the way of substance, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the more entertaining albums I’ve listened to recently.

There’s one thing worth getting out of the bat right now; this release is dumb as shit. There is nothing overly technical about it and like other slam albums it’s completely focused on slow and mid-tempo caveman riffing. The closest thing you’ll get to a fast section here is Ryu Tsuchida blasting away underneath a mid-tempo riff, giving things a slight sense of urgency. Masaki Hidaka’s guttural vocal performance provides yet another layer of filth to the proceedings, never straying from his disgusting sewer monster growls. The closest thing one will get to anything resembling technique on this album is some of J’s basslines, which provide some extra flavour on tracks like “Putrid Autopsy” and “Pathogenic Germs”. That being said, this album’s unadulterated display of stupidity is its main draw. It is the furthest one could get from being innovative, and does not push the envelope in any way, but its simplicity is what makes it so enjoyable.

The production is also worth mentioning, since it’s part of what makes this album as fun as it is. The drums themselves are pummeling and cut through the mix, especially the ping-y snare, but what really takes the cake is the guitars. Good lord they are heavy, to the point of making the bass nearly obsolete. Despite that, I find it hard to complain about the mix here, since the album is all about being heavy, and it undoubtedly succeeds on that front. It’s such an unapologetically filthy album and I can’t help but respect the commitment the band has shown to making the nastiest music they could.

It’s by no means a perfect album. As you might’ve realised at this point in the review, it’s a slam album, with all the good and bad that entails. So if you don’t like the style I can assure you, you won’t enjoy this. There’s also the fact that despite it’s sub-30 minute runtime it can still feel a bit long due to how one-note it is, and it would’ve benefitted massively from some more spice, like the aforementioned bass sections. It’s an album that shows you all it has to offer right off the bat, and your enjoyment of it will depend on whether you like what you’re hearing on the first track. There’s also the fact that the songs run together after a while, and if someone put a gun to my head and asked me to highlight a single riff on here I wouldn’t be writing this review right now.

Culinary Buffet of Hacked Innards, is an honest album and doesn’t shy away from being itself. It’s dumb, filthy, gross and I like it all the more for that. It won’t rock your world by any means but it’s still a half hour long bludgeoning that I don’t regret subjecting myself to. After all, sometimes all you need to do is reject modernity and return to monky.

Highlights: Septic Apoptosis, Putrid Autopsy, Gutrectomy, Pathogenic Germs

I think I just might have finally found it: the dumbest slam death metal album to ever exist. Yeah, there's Artery Eruption to take into account, but at the very least this album serves as a suitable rival to stuff like Gouging Out Eyes of Mutilated Infants. That Culinary Buffet of Hacked Innards just so happens to be Japanese (and is accordingly really, really good) is just icing on top of the cake.

There's honestly nothing particularly unique about Rest in Gore's actual music, it's just executed really, really solidly all-around. While I'm not exactly sure I'd say there's a hard-set regional scene for brutal death metal in Japan, the slam bands I've heard from there have all been distinctly upbeat and danceable - Jenovavirus are arguably one of the most famous examples, and probably execute the concept the best, but this album isn't any exception. The slams are ridiculously stupid and simple, typically devoid of pinch harmonics or any other sort of flair, but they're pretty high-tempo and are loaded with a heaping helping of groove that's far above the average for BDM. Rest in Gore aren't exactly what I'd call a slam-focused band, though, as they also use a lot of catchy mid-paced blast beats and gravity blasts which are just as potent at bringin' the $ickness or whatever. The music flows exceptionally well, and while not all of the actual slams are particularly memorable (I mostly only remember the slams as rhythms instead of melodies), they're fun as fuck while they're playing.

So yeah, the compositions are mostly just great-as-usual Japanese brutal death metal, but where Culinary Buffet of Hacked Innards really individualizes itself is in the trashiness of its overall performance. The guitar tone's pretty out there merely because of how fat and bottom-heavy it is - it's almost like a big block of bass with some crud and imperfections on the top. Most of Rest in Gore's melody comes from what little "crunchiness" is present in their guitar tone, so the music doesn't really carry that sort of crushing momentum that a band like, say, Gorevent possess. This is music that's much better for dancing and groove than raw brutality. The individual instrumental tracks all feel really disjointed, but somehow this works to the band's advantage - the constantly unstable feeling to the band's music is actually really charming.

Between the mix and the actual notes being played by the guitars, this album understandably sounds really fucking dumb. While a band like Neoandertals probably capture a "prehistoric" sound more accurately, Rest in Gore are probably the closest to the sort of romping, single-minded, flesh-tearing, grunting stuff that I associate with the lifestyle of a caveman. The vocals really don't help there in that they literally sound like your stereotypical Cro-Magnon attempting to communicate with researchers after having been thawed from ice. Maybe with a bit more of a "I'm being punched in the gut" sound than that would imply. It's just invariably retarded-sounding, okay, and I'm in love with it.

I guess there really isn't much to say about Culinary Buffet of Hacked Innards, but there's only so many ways that I can tell you that it's good, it's catchy, and it's fucking pea-brained before I start repeating myself. All you really need to know is that if this music were composed to be any stupider, the band members would probably become vegetables while trying to play it. If you like the sound of that and you also like death metal, you need to hear this.