Putrescence -  Mangled, Hollowed Out and Vomit Filled
Released: 2004
Cost: $15

Tracklist:

Reviews

Fuck yeah… this is what I'm talking about: Brutal death/grind from Canada with the perfect blend of blasting speeds and slow, churning power chords. This is thick, ultra detuned mastery with short, well written songs that keep things moving better than the vast majority of what you're gonna run into with this genre. Expect massively dense tracks with just the right amount of tempo changes and pinch harmonics with a little groove, a little relentlessly aggressive speed, and vocals that switch off from guttural growls to raging screams with no warning whatsoever. And, of course, you'll be lucky to decipher one word of the lyrics. I'm really into this, though. Admittedly sometimes the pinch harmonics get to me because I've never been much a fan of that whole thing, but the songwriting kicks ass here, rarely topping three minutes and constantly shifting up the tempos or tossing around subtle dissonance/technicality to keep things fresh (check out the intro to "Ebola Infected Plane Crash Victims Raining on a Church Picnic", for example). It's a pretty consistent listen as a whole, as expected, but there's definitely enough going on in bits and pieces to make this a real keeper. As soon as they briefly slow things down in tracks like "Detrunked Wizard Hacked to Bloodied Ribbons" or "Improper Disposal of Medical Waste" they really start hitting on some destructive rhythms, I must say. The recording slays for this style as well. They've somehow managed to score a sound that's so thick and heavy that it borders on muddiness, but it's totally clear, totally warm, and completely natural! You can actually hear both the guitar and bass tones despite all of the distortion, the drums are sort of distant but have a great sense of crispness, the vocals don't overpower, etc. I'm not sure I've ever heard a better recording on a death/grind record before, because the production here accents the brutality of the music without sacrificing that rugged air that such tunes demand. Awesome work. The layout looks pretty good with a classic gore grind band logo, totally fucked up images of corpses' eyes, severed limbs, and a few high contrast band photos amongst the lyrics. Of course the content of the songs is sheer violence and gore, sometimes more humorous than others, and always with a narrative sort of thread: "An anguished panic stricken scream meets the tearing of skin, The blade hacks through arteries and now severs the fascia then slices through cylindrical masses of tissues inside the penis. Broken and forever reduced to a fucking pile of shit." Get the point? I highly recommend this to fans of the genre. You'll be hard pressed to find better if you ask me. Killer. -Aversion Online