death metal

Excellent songwriting from one of the stronger names in the current British underground. Perhaps Spectral Intercession does not live up entirely to the sheer excellence of Septic Funeral but this is still a solid follow-up and a solid debut to boot. The HM2 buzzsaw sound in 2023 is no doubt polarising and is indeed a bold choice, because Coffin Mulch are NOT just another one of those derivative copycat bands. The songwriting is nuanced and original and I do genuinely fear that a lot of folk are gonna go “HM2 clone/worship LOL” and look no further. Fortunately, from what I can tell, that isn’t happening too much. But yeah, looking forward to see where these guys go from here.

(Original:) Mmhhmmm de-fucking-licious brutal death metal with the mandatory slam passages that make you wanna beat your chest like a gorilla and throw some mad fucking shapes, dawg. The original mix of Butcher The Weak is much muddier than the remaster but it makes up for that in spades. Likewise the drums are lower in the mix here but I don’t know how it just somehow works far better. The guitars are walls of sludge. Sick as fuck. (Remix): Today on Unnecessary Remixes, we address Devourment’s fucking excellent Butcher The Weak. Now, it’s worth mentioning that I heard this newer version of BTW first. I have no idea how, guess I’m living under a rock because I’ve heard all the other Devourment albums but I mad fucking snoozed on this one. So there is the possibility I am biased with my appraisal of both mixes. Anyway, I don’t prefer one mix over the other. They both have their own merits. The drums are remixed and feel more triggered here, and definitely louder. I don’t know if “more triggered” is exactly the technical term to explain what they did here, but if you do a side by side comparison you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Other bits worth mentioning is that the balance between the guitars and the vocals seems different, probably to accommodate the fresher drum sound. The guitar sound is also a little clearer than the original. All in all, this set of songs slays whichever mix you listen to. It’s just weird that we have a choice. If you’re familiar with one version and not the other then I wouldn’t really say the other warrants a full listen through unless you are genuinely super curious about the differences.

This is my shit right here. The cover art is just *chef’s kiss*, and the tunes ain’t too bad either, you dig? Back when old school death metal was the new school, Suffo was hitting it out of the park with releases like this. Dry, but organic production holds the framework for rigid but punishing cases of songwriting.

Get your dicks out for some br00tal fukken slam, brutha! Bust out the pots and pans, run your guitar through your chainsaw (somehow) and get the Cookie Monster out of rehab for some vokills. Expect such ditties as “Maggot Swollen Titties” and “Concrete-Filled Rectum”. No frills, no experimentation, no compromise. Straight up brutal shit.

Thus today I spake ov thon deepest boggs ov Goremany, and of which creatures dwell therein! Oh, such hideous things! Oh, such ghastly sounds that are an affront to mine own ears! Ronseal as fuck goregrind / death metal here for sure. If you can stomach another frog project (frogject?) then this is really fun.

Is it just me or does Cannibal’s art just get sillier and sillier as time goes on? Haha Either way, this album bounces back a bit, not that the previous albums were bad or anything, it’s just that the songs on Bloodthirst seem to be more enjoyable. Opening with one of Cannibal’s best tunes, fucking “Pounded Into Dust” (also the shortest song on the album) absolutely smokes 99% of the bands in this style, sick vokills, sick drums, and my fucking lord the riffs! We are not worthy, etc etc… Honestly, I slept on this one a bit thinking it was just another mid-career Cannibal album released in the tour-album-tour-album cycle, but this is one of my favourite’s of the Corpsegrinder era for sure.

Killing Joke argueably hit their commercial peak with Night Time, an album that contains a lot of the dissonant sounds of their earlier works but also a much more accessible style of songwriting. Songs like “Eighties” and “Love Like Blood” put these guys into the mainstream, if only for a short while. It’s odd because, well, other than the softer side to Coleman’s voice (when he’s not using his gravelly growl), none of the music here seems forced. It’s just like the commercial viability of this record came naturally. RIP Geordie Walker.

(Originally written September 2022) One of the sickest things I’ve heard in ages. Taking that Entombed-core guitar sound to new depths of cavernous old school death metal darkness. Out of all the death metal that’s about right now, this has gotta be one of the best bands from the UK (they hail from Scotland).

My guys, if you like compression, you will love Brutally Deceased! Take lightning fast death metal, give it melody and a few black metal riffs, run it through a HM2 and give it a huge, “modern” production and you’re basically right on the money. Brutal music with a lot going on for sure, but it’s kinda lost a bit behind the wall of noise. Don’t get me wrong when your ears adjust, it’s totally fine, and a really cool metal album, but that initial synthetic feel is hard to shake.

Ugh my brothers this shit fucking slaps. Ultra down-tuned, sewer dwelling “modern old school” death metal is the order of the day, with beyond stunning cover artwork to boot. Like a horde of mutants rising from the radioactive waste deep below your homes and cities, Supporation Morphogenesiaque shuffles and shambles right up to your front door, dripping flesh and slime, before eating off your entire face.

Don’t be fooled by the shitty tape cover. This is legendary tier death metal. It sounds older than time itself but so many bands owe Timeghoul a fucking ton of dues. The riffs are complex and engaging but the overall production is grim as fuck and really brutal (an overused term, but fuck it).

Cut up and fed to the dog! The difference between Desecration and many other death metal bands riding on the cheeky / fun / silly / gross subject matter train is that Desecration are actually really fucking great, and Cemetery Sickness is no exception. Everything here is razor sharp and on-point; riffs, vocals and drums (man, the drums!) Speaking of the vocals, there’s a bit more of a range here than usual, which is always nice. There’s some guesties thrown in too, for good measure. The overall production sound, although similar to the previous album, also breathes a bit more organically. The bass is clearly audible, clanking away beneath the insane percussion and maniacal riffage. Fantastic stuff.

Shaky beginnings for everyone’s shrieking banshee led symphonic black metal band (yes, I categorised them as such, fucking deal with it). Expect instead of fragile, glittering hymns of erotic vampirism a hammer to the face in the bluntest fuzzy analogue way. If you love tape trading and early death metal demos then you’ll love this, otherwise you probably won’t find any value in this unless you are perhaps a crazed CoF superfan frothing at the mouth over the prospect of unearthing muddy early demos. Invoking The Unclean however, is a Cradle that is almost unrecognisable. Mad how things change, innit?

As far as slam goes, then this should tick all of your boxes. Unreadable logo? Check. Late 2000s Visual Darkness album sleeve? Check. Absurd song titles? Check. We’re off to the races, guv’nor! I’ve got this fucker on vinyl and I gotta be honest it packs a hell of a punch. I’ve often had the complaint that the drums on this thing (whilst performed incredibly well) have a cardboard kind of sound to them, rather than the usual slam ping pings. Real talk though, this thing is just shy of 40 minutes of intense breakdowns / beatdowns / whatever punctuated by the occasional flurry of gravity blasts. There is no big brain take for me to give you here. Me like slam. Me play record. Me bang head. Tidy.

Gurgling, disgusting, turbid old school death metal of the new-wave variety. Does that make it NWOOSDM? I don’t know, and I don’t fucking care. The production is awesome, the riffs are evil, the vokills are dank. Say no more shall I, read no more shall ye, presseth thy play button!

Brutal, dry production sets the stage for bludgeoning, unforgivable riffing and pummelling drums. With Scott Burns at the helm, and Suffocation at the strings and skins, would you expect anything else? Pierced From Within takes the template set by the earlier records and expands on them, heaping on more brutality, more dexterity, more variation in different sections. There is much less here in the way of “slams” but when they do hit they have that extra level of punch.

I’m finding it pretty fucking wild that I’ve made it to 2023 without really writing about Coffins (sans their split with XXX Maniak). I’ve never been the biggest fan but coffins have been a mainstay in the sloooooooooooow side of death metal for many a year now, so just out of pure numbers and math I should have reviewed one of their records. Alas, here we are. Craving To Eternal Slumber is a nice little EP (that’s as long as some band’s LPs lol) which isn’t quite as dark and dreary as earlier efforts, and has a clear and warm production sound. Keeping pace at more of an “Autopsy” level rather than something more funeral-paced, Coffins plod through some chugging metal salvos that a well worth your time if groove and doom are ingredients that you like in your death metal.

This little fucker has the honour of being one of the first brutal death / underground releases that I ever downloaded off the internet. It is a shame then really, that this just isn’t very good at all. Corpsefucking Art in general are pretty entertaining, but here there’s Mortician worship meets Mortician covers meets Mortician grade horror samples, and I’m not here for it, tbh. Goretrade is just also quite possibly the most boring death metal band I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Perhaps they have good releases? This isn’t one of them, though.

Oi oi English facking brutal deff metal innit brahvahhhhhhh! Skreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. All in all, this is a pretty fuckin’ disgusting offering of rancid, turbid, aural slop. It certainly ticks all the right boxes and if you looked up “slamming brutal death metal” in the dictionary you may or may not be lucky to find Engorgement listed under there. Speaking of becoming engorged, death metal perverts may find that Excruciating Intestinal Lacerations is enough to send them past half mast, perhaps even past full chub into that rapterous, aching, throbbing arousal, but perhaps there is not enough in the way of unique moments within the cacophony of butchering sounds here to warrant the full-blown readiness of your festering engorgement leaking its cloudy juices in peak excitement. Can’t believe I’ve just actually written all that out but hey, it’s done now.

Whilst you couldn’t really claim that Corpsefucking Art is pushing the boundaries of death metal, it is hard to argue that they are not an entertaining outfit. The aptly-titled Zombie Fuck is home such to ditties as “Beverly Hills Corpse” (completely with parody theme song), “High Skull Musical” (lmao) and “No Woman No Grind (Bomb Marley)”, the latter of which squeezes two puns into one song title for double your money. Musically this is downtuned, nasty and horrible. The vocals are the usual Cookie Monster affair, but I suspect if you are here reading an album review for a band that actually legitimately chose to name themselves Corpsefucking Art, then you are OK with this. Tuck in.

I’ve probably heard this a thousand times on the House By The Cemetry represses but was nice to go back and “isolate” this and focus on the original tracks. The evolution from Brutally Mutilated / Demo ’91 is subtle, the band still employ a real drummer here it seems, but the guitar and bass have already entered into the trademark downtuned-and-impossible-to-decipher mush that would become their wheelhouse. BTW if you’re getting filtered by the overuse of samples, you’re listening to the wrong band. BLLLUUUGGHHHHHHH!

If I were to give my personal, technical, in-depth opinion: This shit fucking slaps. It is a short demo but a promising one, that’s for sure. Vocally, it kinda reminds me of XXX Maniak’s Harvesting The Cunt Nectar and musically it lies between the precision of slam / brutal death and the sloppier, sewer-dwelling OSDM revival style of the last few years. So there you have it – something for the whole family to enjoy.

Onwards to Golgotha is probably the most prominent musical equivalent of the words ‘blunt force trauma’. The music is an assault on the senses, and that assault is being carried out repeatedly, over and over, but some fucking maniac holding a blood-drenched brick in one hand. The other hand is around your throat, btw. Using such a ridiculous descriptive situation to describe a death metal record is usually done to convey how brutal the record is, how fans of such aural extremity will rejoice in reading such silly anecdotes before making haste to plug in and play such musical depravity at an assortment of unacceptable volumes. But, one realistic thing to take into account, and applicable here to this uncompromising old school death metal release: being smashed in the face repeadely with a house brick is a painful and – forgive me for understating – a difficult experience to get through. In that regard then, it is rather similar to this album.

UUURRGHHHH I recently got a copy of this on cassette. Whether it’s a legit repressing or a bootleg I’m really not sure nor do I really care, because this shit fucking slaps. To call any era of Mortician’s music “primitive” would be fucking lazy, but the earlier gestations of the band are not quite as streamlined as what would come on the full length records, or even EPs like Brutally Mutilated. That may sound rather obvious, being a review of a demo the band did during their infancy, but it is actually rather striking and quite odd to hear Mortician in this way. They have always been sure of their sound and the vibe that they put forward to the world, even if perhaps how good each passing studio album is does vary, they have indeed been consistent. So, hearing the differences here is very strange. Either way, this short demo fucking rips, and if you’re here right now nosing at old school death metal demos like this then I’m sure I don’t have to do much to convince you that finding a copy or stream of this is a very good idea. Enjoy!

Less of the slamz and more of the high quality production death metal ting. Which y’know, is absolutely fine with me. Variety is the spice of life and all that – and hey, it’s fuckin’ great to listen to some some fuckin’ brutal death metal every now and then when the production is good enough that I can actually understand everything that is going on! Blood Oath is just that. It won’t win any awards for sheer, edge-cutting originality, but it’s a solid death metal record all the same.

Guitar tuning is so low that it almost sounds like it is artificially pitchshifted, like Libido Airbag were about to mix these guitars into some sort of techno-pornogrind bullshit. Alas, once one’s puny mortal ears hath adjuste to thon brutallic onslaught of disgusting noise that is the tuning ov Drop 666, one can appreciate the ants-in-yon-pants old school brutal death that Bowels Out are finest purveyors thereof. Such beautous movements as “Gourmet Vaginal Stew” and the vital “Take The Cock” (take it where, pray tell? Belize?) lull you into the catatonic stupor that only the murky worlde ov grindcore and br00tal death metal can invoke. For f(l)ans ov: Cryptopsy and Nile but you wished their albums were made instead by people who’ve played in Intestinal Disgorge.

Holy fuck, this is fuckin’ brutal; easily one of the best brutal death records I’ve heard in a hot minute. Dat bass, fam – dat bass. Fuckin’ drums on this are out of control though, mans can blast. Roger, perhaps best known for Mortician, is on point here with these drums. He can also be credited for producing this absolute monster of a death metal album. I feel however, writing endlessly about this would be trite. This shit is just fuckin’ brutal as fuck. Everything about it slaps ridiculously hard.

Oh my fucking goodness gracious me (as my nan would say). I think I may have just found my favourite Nile record. I came onboard the goodship Nile (sailing towards the duat, or perhaps to Orion, if Robert Buaval is to be believed (probably not)) with the release of Annihilation Of The Wicked. That album blew my mind when I was a teenager – I really hadn’t heard anything like it, in regards to that combination of ultra-brutal guitars, drums and vocals. Y’know what I mean, right? That absurd blasting technicality that sounds like a complete car crash but then as you adjust to it you realise it is ridiculously brutal, mind-bogglingly precise. Every note is intentional. Anyway, that’s what I loved about Nile, I just didn’t find the records post-Annihilation to be as intriguing. Roll around 15 years or so, and I’ve started going into the earlier Nile catalog, again, something that is interesting and admittedly very heavy and brutal, but my God, In Their Darkened Shrines is the perfect balance between the classic Nile sound and the sound that would “blow them up” with the release of Annihilation Of The Wicked. Like, this thing, is just, idk, fucking relentless. The sheer technicality of it, balanced out of wankery and into absurd brutality by unholy guitar tones and crisp, clear drum production – it is just to die for. This is metal turned up to 12 (fuck 11), firing on all cylinders and with all guns blazing (etc etc etc). This is so good that I don’t want it to end, so I play it over and over. When it’s finished, I’m left there like Pharaoh Khufu’s granite sarcophagus: empty and cold. I’ll show myself out.

Love that fuckin’ album cover! Nice to see something from Locke that isn’t total fucking gore and evisceration (lol). So – onto the album itself. Sitting somewhere between the bludgeoning sounds of old and the more treble-heavy Rutan-produced sessions, A Skeleton Domain hits really fucking hard. There’s something about the riffs here that makes them extra dense and thick and sinister as all fuck. “Kill or Become” will melt your face off and turn you into the (faceless) walking dead. “Icepick Lobotomy” will do, well, pretty much mostly the same to be honest, but dem riffs tho fam, dem riffs! All in all, a solid effort from the legends that are Cannibal Corpse.

Skreeeeeeeeeeee I hope you like brutal fuckin death metal because yknow, that’s what you’re gonna get here. You can say a lot about Pathology but the main thing to take away I think is that they are damn consistent. Production variations aside, as well as natural evolution of sounds, I think it is fair to say their output has been consistently solid over the years. This more recent studio album (currently placed in the second half of the full album run, at the time of writing) is a solid brutal death attack, with smooth and high-end production. Lots of high speed blasts and riffs, and a garnishing of more slamming, grooving passages for those of you who want to throw down. I was listening to this at 11pm whilst revising for a technical exam and I just wanted to get up and spinkick some poor cunt in the face.

The problem with Autopsy, is that you’re always going to be comparing anything that they do to their absolutely legendary first few records. There is not much out there that comes close to that sludgy, disgusting and unique blend of death metal that the band made their own. However, Autopsy are also a band that have safely avoided tarnishing their reputation with unneccessary and pointless and well, downright awful studio albums. Most bands cannot say this, I’m sure. Autopsy however, remain the at the top, like a giant, thick, dark and possibly bloody stool, but one that floats triumphantly nonetheless. TH&G is cleaner in production than I would personally like, but otherwise it is an extremely enjoyable journey of death, destruction, and metal mayhem. The songs are actually fresh and very enjoyable, and there is a variety of vibes and styles that come through in the album’s run time. Vocally, things are still very good and I have no complaints with this set of songs. All in all, a solid chunk of death metal.

More or less the same stuff as before, just a little different. Illegal Aliens does have however, quite possibly the worst cover art that I have ever seen.

AOAA are another one of those bands who started in the deathcore / slam – influenced end of the spectrum, and decided to change lanes into a more regular death metal approach as time went on. With their second full length, the band are fully in brutal death metal mode, but with enough chugging riffs to not lose all of their identity. The vocals are the highlight here, the loose, gargling growls that are spat hideously across the top of these concoctions are a nice change from the dry heave of most low vokills. The drums are also fantastic, but the production – whilst strong – is a little typical and perhaps synthetic in parts.