Empires of Great Enslavement

Though Sweden tends to be better known for its heavy contribution to early 90s traditional and later 90s melodic death metal via the Stockholm and Gothenburg scenes respectively, there is something of an interest in the newer, brutality obsessed side of the coin, resembling the slamming character of several noteworthy American bands. Among these, Vomitous proves to be a bit interesting as they've gone through a lyrical transformation over their long yet not terribly prolific existence, particularly within the last couple of years. Like any typical purveyor of all things gorey, the inner anatomy of cadavers and their various afflications tended to dominate this band's song titles and lyrics, bringing to mind the graphic descriptions that have spawned up since the post-Cryptopsy period, until now.

"Empires Of Great Enslavement" is a typical slam album from a musical perspective, containing all of the usual tricks. A vocalist that spends most of his time gurgling the lowest possible vocalizations of the male register in a fashion highly reminiscent of Lord Worm, guitars that are not terribly busy and tend to groove on 2-3 note chug riffs and only occasionall break into an obligatory tremolo riff or scream harmonic fill, while the drums end up having a moderate degree of activity shifting between blasting and slamming as the double bass drums remain constantly in machine gun territory. The only thing that really comes off as surprising is the elaborate cover art, which brings to mind a number of elaborate visuals of the sort of sci-fi/fantasy based nightmares that tended to be more regularly associated with this style's early 90s forebearers.

Differentiating between songs isn't really practical, apart from maybe noting a few slightly shifts in priority between actual early death metal influenced sections versus what is mostly a down-tuned, simplistic affair in stomping the ground like a slow moving metallic automaton. There is a brief return to the older lyrical pursuits of descriptive gore in "Infectious Urethral Re-Leakage" (a pretty lame title actually), but most of this album seems more interesting in trying to grab onto something a bit more intellectually elaborate, though not quite becoming as convincing and interesting as what Wormed usually delivers. It's basically a 15 minute straight shot of brutality that's maybe slightly closer to traditional yet heavily simplified Cryptopsy worship than a band like Epicardiectomy, but not nearly as intricate or engaging as the original when they were really on their game ("Blasphemy Made Flesh"). Modern slam fanatics with money to burn will go for this, but casual shoppers who only dabble in this will want to shop around.