Internal Womb Cannibalism

Sanatorium's a really weird band who've been kicking around forever on the strength of... something I can't really identify since "Internal Womb Cannibalism" sucks pretty bad. I've always found it weird that this CD is really laying around everywhere- how many copies of this were actually printed and how many people out there really wanted it? Sanatorium is part of the particularly bizarre Slovakian brutal death scene, who seem to have no idea what brutal death actually sounds like apart from reading a Wikipedia article on it; that does go somewhere towards explaining just why this album is so weird and lame. Well, it sucks, but it definitely sucks in an interesting, unusual way for brutal death, so I'll give them an A for originality at least.

This is perhaps the bounciest brutal death I've ever heard in my life. I'm not joking when I say that; whenever the band isn't blasting, they seem to love to mess around with rhythms that would be more appropriately found in a pop-punk song than a brutal death one. The drums chirp and pop and pounce every which way, with a sense of rhythm so cheerful and lively it can't help but rob the guitars of what malevolence they carry. Which isn't to say there's a lot; the issues with the drums extend to the riffs, which seem to be a mixture of Cannibal Corpse-style tremolo stripped of the personality and senselessly melodic chug riffs which sound, again, like an attempt to convert hard rock or punk riffs into brutal death ones. The entire texture of the music is like this; too bouncy, punky, and oddly happy sounding for its own good, like Ghoul decided to get an aesthetic makeover into a band that actually likes Devourment.

The production doesn't make things any more tolerable. It's very dry, especially in the drums (which I'm almost positive were an electronic kit,) but with a messy, inconsistent guitar tone that can't provide any real heaviness. The vocals are a bleating bullfrog gurgle with no strength or energy behind them, or a boring grunt/screech combination which suffers the same way. Suffice to say, there's little rewarding about this disc.

Not really necessary for anyone unless you want to hear Dying Fetus get covered by The Offspring.