Engorged -  Where Monsters Dwell
Released: 2004
Cost: $15

Tracklist:

Reviews

 Engorged is back with more of their diverse death metal attack, dropping more than 40 minutes of material that flies all over the place from classic death metal and ripping mid-80's thrash to blasting gore grind, and then some. Also in place are plenty of tempo changes and vocal tradeoffs between snarling screams, brutal growls, and more hardcore sounding shouts, which helps to keep things interesting. I've never been too fond of Engorged's recording quality on any of their releases, and I think this one still needs a little work as well, but it's definitely superior to everything else that I've heard from the band. The bass isn't quite prominent enough, the drums are a tad flimsy, and the guitar tone has a strange bite to it, but aside from that it's okay. I

'm not bothered by the rawness as a whole. The vocals are good and the overall sound is definitely tolerable, but a thicker bass presence and more balanced mix could definitely benefit these songs. The songwriting is cool, though. Despite the fact that many of the tracks run around four to five minutes, they tend to pull it off by injecting plenty of lead breaks and style shifts within the compositions, but not in a way that comes off as forced or lacking direction – though sometimes they can wander around a little much. There are definitely a few songs that are somewhat boring compared to the stronger moments ("Chaingang", for instance, has a few dull moments, despite a massive fucking breakdown that totally crushes). "Abominus" is the shortest track at barely over two minutes, and that energy level definitely jumps out (great crossover hardcore sounding breaks, too), so I'd like to hear more material in that vein for sure. These guys are definitely the masters of the mosh worthy breakdown, though. God damn, without fail they'll slow it down for a sick power chord rhythm and just start kicking ass right away. "Skull and Crossbones" closes with a great little melodic lead burst as well, which is one of the more colorful uses of melody herein. There's definitely a good undercurrent of melody spread throughout though, and that tends to be one of my favorite aspects of the writing. "Werewolf Militia" throws down some southern-tinged sludge riffing too, as the band has flirted with in the past, and they're fuckin' great with that style.

It wouldn't hurt to toss it around more often! "ROTLD" (Return of the Living Dead) closes the disc with shitloads of mid- to late-80's thrash, including the obligatory minute-long intro of crunching riffs, making for one of my favorite tracks herein based on principle alone. Every song is introduced by a sample, and that's cool sometimes, but it gets old after awhile because it breaks up the flow of the record and sort of kills the momentum in certain instances. Not a big deal, but still… The artwork is pretty nice on this one, with the booklet folding out into a six-panel spread with a poster's worth of art on the back, and the illustrations are quite strong for this style. I'm not really big on the lyrics as they're just semi humorous horror tales and all that jazz, but at least it's not typically over the top in nonstop gore or anything – though of course that kind of thing does play a role. Plus they label the mosh parts in with the lyrics (taking a page from the Anthrax handbook) and I fucking love that shit. You can't lose with that decision, no fuckin' way! This is a good record. I'm still not blown away, but these guys write killer riffs and have some solid songs to show for it. I'm always hoping that their next offering will be the one that really nails it, so… I'll keep doing so. -Aversion Online