Funeral Rain Press Corps

Genre: Death Metal, Grindcore

Label: Comatose Music

Ah! Out of the mainstream and back into the… well, whatever level of non-convoluted, true to the cause, fucking awesome Comatose Music is!

What we have here children, is an old-school, down and dirty, balls to the wall, punch yourself in the face death metal compilation! There are five bands from across the globe, each with two songs at the ready to catch your attention and threaten you with meathook sodomy if you don’t track down their LPs! I don’t care if I consistently bitched about having to review these inventions that rival torture devises used by the Inquisition to render critics of the time to quivering masses of flesh! I’m stoked as fuck to have this one sitting in front of me! So let’s cut the bullshit and dive head first into Split Torso Trauma!

Antropofagus – Consumed By A Lacerating Desire / Eternity To Devour -  Italian death metal in the vein of pretty much any American death metal band from the late 80′s or early 90′s. Most noticeably, Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation. These songs are fast, beastly and pretty much the way you wish Cannibal Corpse sounded today. The perfect way to start of a death metal compilation!

Putridity – Zombie Oral Sex / Necropedophile – If you took all of the Schwarzeneggerness out of Goretorture, what you’d have left would be Putridity and a decent Cannibal Corpse cover. Walk away from this review taking that however you want.

Prion – Losing Itself In The Infinite / End Is Near – I’d bet a night with my fiancee’s asshole that each of the three members of this band sleep with a copy of Altars Of Madness under their pillows. Prion offers the purest death metal this split has to offer! Both of their songs have the aforementioned Morbid Angel influences with dashes of originality that blare out like a klaxon! If I were to choose one band from this comp to hunt down and buy their back albums, it would easily be Prion!

Infected Flesh – Daeformaldehyded / Ancestors Of The Scalpel – I can sum up Infected Flesh’s contribution to this compilation in one word: BUUUUUUURRRRRRP! But, I think you’d want a little more than that, huh? These two tracks are pretty much the vocalist letting out one long seven minute belch that shakes the snare a bunch. Not exactly entertaining or… well, anything really.

Mass Infection – Beholding The Throne / Beyond Perpetuation – The word “classic” comes immediately to mind as soon as Mass Infection interrupted Infected Flesh’s belch (so did the word “thankful”). Think Greek Obituary and replace the weak vocals with brutal growls that I’d imagine hurt like hell after all is said and done and you’ll be on track with Mass Infection’s brand of killer death metal! Ah, ending on a high note! Always nice.

8.5/10 (the highest score I’ve ever given a compilation, EVER!)

Antropofagus On MySpace

Putridity On Facebook

Prion Official

Infected Flesh On MySpace

Mass Infection Official

Genre: Brutal Death Metal
Label: Comatose Music

Oh no… did Lance Ozanix start another band?

Or, if you’re not familiar with Skitzo…

“I do so love those incredibly generic/over used to the point of “regurgitation” death metal monikers.” he said with a layer of sarcasm so think that you could slice through it with a cutlass. Ugh. Really guys? Not, “Violent Eructation?” Not, “Pharyngeal Ejection”? Not even something as simple as “Puke”, “Vomit” or even, “RETCH”? You had to choose one of the single most uninspired medical nomenclatures in the death/grind genre?

::Plays Clitoraldectomy once, twice and then a third time, invoking a “friendly chat” with a less that understanding Christian neighbor:: I officially revoke my bitchfest about the name of this band. Regurgitation plays some of the most well composed (albeit, still sloppy at times) brutal death metal/grind that I’ve have heard… EVER!

Apparently, Clitoraldectomy was supposed to be released something around nine years ago as a full length album. I wonder what the story is there, since I’m having a hell of a time finding any information about it online. Nevertheless, I’m about as happy as Arnold Schwarzenegger with an underpaid maid that somebody rescued this five song EP! And I’m even more house help raping ecstatic that one of those five songs is a cover of Suffocation’s Infecting The Crypts!

Oddly enough, this vocalist doesn’t sound like he’s retching all over the studio during these recording as one such as myself (re: an idiot) might of thought based on the band name. Nope. Just some deep as fuck, guttural growls from the bowels with an occational shriek thrown in for goreific effect. Also used with great effect, are the fucking guitars! As speedy as Gonzales and far less annoying. Blazing riffs and lowest registered chords are all over this EP and manage to illustrate just how wrong some people are when they say that it doesn’t take any talent or brains to play guitar in a brutal death metal band. (You know who you are… Jason…)

Overall: This band may seem generic at first glance, right down to the, “raped, strangled and murdered” cover art. But once you’re balls deep inside Clitoraldectomy, you’ll see all the gore hound glory it has to offer!

8.5/10

Regurgitation On MySpace

Genre: Scottish Pirate Metal

Label: Napalm Records

Oooooooh yeah! I’ve been waiting for this album to be released since I was finished listening to Black Sails At Midnight the first time I listed to it! Will these Scottish Pirate Metal maestros live up to my expectations, or will I find myself disappointed and sinking beneath the waves, down twenty fathoms into the briney deep?

Well, it’s probably not a good sign that I feel like I’ve been here before. Not just because of the timely pirate theme,but because I hear snippets of their older material. I don’t know if it’s just me, lazy song writing, a limit set by the restricting Scottish Pirate Metal genre or a mixture of all three.

However, I will give them credit for their song, Scrapping The Barrel in which they call out their critics, pretty much say that they don’t give a fuck if we like their lyrics or not (a similar critical response was said about Battlelore and I fucking LOVE that group!). They even go as far as to remind you that Running Wild did it first! The balls on these guys must be fucking huge! And something else should be said about the You Suffer or maybe more accurately, Anti-Procrastination Song-ish Rumpelkombo. Oh, such fun!

Also, the fuck-fucking maniacal black metal session in Death Throes Of The Terrorsquid was a curve ball I would love to have thrown at me more often! Shit, that was intense!

Overall: Aside from an almost complete lack of progression and a bit of shameless rehashing from older albums, Back Through Time is a wholly enjoyable album that’s full of “yar’s”, “matey’s” and “rums” that flips a gigantic bird to the Nords in the first track! Take from that what you will…

8.5/10

Alestorm Official

Alestorm On Facebook

Genre: Heavy Metal

Label: Heavy Artillery Records

I’ve been sitting on this one for a little too long I think. Don’t ask me why because I can’t answer that one for you. There’s nothing wrong with Powerkiller at all. In fact, it’s great! It’s got everything I love about the golden age of NWOBHM tightly packed inside it’s seven scorching tracks: Twin guitars, soaring and shedding like some kind of mutant eagle/Turbo Ginsu hybrid! The drums are as frantic as to be expected for the genre, but Derrick Kroll brings something extra to the kit with his intense energy (it’s there on the album, it was there live!) and innovative flourishes.

But let’s talk about Karl Warkentin vocals for a second… at times, say in Creature Of Sin, they’re about as metal as you can get! But for the rest of the album, they sway back and forth between good-ish and ear gougingly annoying. But hey, Karl’s still better than 90% of the new breed of vocalist’s of this genre. Unfortunately, the bass is another thing I’m gonna gripe about. Where the hell is it? I happen to know that Sam Martz can play, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Grrrrr to basslessness.

Overall: One or two little gripes aren’t gonna waste this album at all. Evil Survives is one of the most entertaining and metalgasmic bands on Heavy Artillery Records (except Spellcaster, of course)! And if you needed any proof of this fact, Powerkiller is around forty-seven minutes worth of Exhibit A!

8.5/10

Evil Survives On MySpace

Evil Survives On Facebook

Genre: Death Metal

Label: Dynamic Arts Records

Something that kind of bugged me about Torture Killer (aside of the constant Six Feet Under worship) and something that usually got under my skin about any band with constant line-up changes: three different albums, three different vocalists. Really? Seems kind of shady in my opinion. I mean, the vocalist is generally the focal point of the band for most people (not me though. You can have a piss poor front person and still wind up with a 9.5/10) and not usually something people like having it tampered with. Can Sewers live up to the moderate standards that For Maggots To Devour and Swarm! set? The answer is an emphatic, yes!

Yes, but not in the exact same way. You see, both For Maggots To Devour and Swarm! had a definite brutality about them that had aficionados drooling for and an old school death metal mentality that most of the hardcore fanatics cannot do without. Sewers ditches both of these components in favor of matured structures full of neck snapping grooves and more of a medium pace.

Vocally, Juri Sallinen outdoes Chris Barnes (not that that’s too hard nowadays) with vicious extreme growls and the occasional shriek that he’s honed in his half dozen or so Finnish death metal acts. As far as drumming goes, I’ve heard better. But they’re entertaining, (not to mention flourish filled) none the less in the realm of mid-paced death metal and it’s mostly lackluster beat machines.

Complaints: Why make an album so short? It feels like it’s only thirty or so minutes long even though it’s… oh. Twenty nine minutes long… weird. Another, more valid complaint is while the riffing is more than entertaining to start, it begins to blend into itself, rendering them indistinguishable from what you hear at the beginning.

Overall: These guys have come a long way since being a SFU cover band! Heavy groove laden riffs and mid paced violence await you once Sewers starts up! If that’s your bag, then scour the sewers looking for this miasmic metal act!

8.5/10

Torture Killer On MySpace

Torture Killer Official