Lord Gore
Resickened
7.9
Lord Gore have created quite an impressive dose of horror-grind madness with their latest full length, Resickened. Not content to rest on their blood and puss soaked laurels, the band is back with a worthy followup to 2002's The Autophagous Orgy. Clear, razor sharp production makes for an immensely enjoyable listening experience, and though many mainstream bands bemoan the advent of Pro Tools, Resickened shows how beneficial home recording software has been to a genre often plagued by poor production values. Of course, the listener is able to enjoy a variety of humorous samples culled from horror movies, science fiction, and documentaries on flesh-eating maggots. There is even one that seems to pertain to mechanical battle bots. These samples are more tasteful (in use, not in content) than the ones employed by bands such as Mortician, and help to set the tone of each song.
The album begins with the mandatory movie sample intro, which segues into track after track of brutal blasting. Most of the cuts are based around the same formula, beginning with a fast, thrashy riff, throwing in a thick, chunky breakdown around the middle of the song, following this with a bluesy, melodic solo, and then closing with the intro riff again. Certainly, this pattern does not apply to all of the songs, such as “N.C.T.B.”, which eschews the breakdown, or the title track, “Resickened”, which contains not one, but two solos, and is probably the strongest of the album. “Megacephallus” is certainly a change of pace, sounding similar to Bloodbath in terms of the tempo, guitar tone, and main riff. The harmonic squeals often present in that style of death metal also surface. Lord Gore is certainly a horror-grind band at (gore-soaked) heart, but they could probably succeed at old school death metal just as easily.
Cunning songsmiths, Lord Gore are also impressive when it comes to musical skill. Their percussionist, Colon Bowel, is able to blast with precision, but varies his patterns quite a lot. This is refreshing considering that many grindcore drummers simply play as fast as possible, and do so in quite a monotonous manner. SCSI and Maniac Killer, the two guitarists, build each track around a brutally catchy main riff, and make it impossible to avoid bobbing one’s head. They are also very technically skilled, which is proven by the complex (yet decidedly melodic) solos which grace most of the songs. Despite this, the vocal work is what truly makes Resickened stand out in an overpopulated genre. Hearing the gurgling vocal performance, it is hard not to imagine ‘singer’ Gurge spewing out a steady stream of blood-infused vomit. It is a disgustingly organic sound and truly enhances the album. On track three, “Brainfucker”, Gurge varies his sounds with some frenzied shrieking, and on “Resickened” there are a few moments of the Torsofuck-esque grunting pig vocals that we all know and love. On the death metal sounding “Megacephallus”, the mouth noises that issue forth are more along the lines of traditional death metal growling, in keeping with the nature of that track.
Despite all of its strengths, Resickened is often in danger of becoming formulaic. Many of the songs are built around the same structure, and because of this, some listeners might feel that on the whole, Resickened is too repetitive. However, Lord Gore's catchy style is far more palatable and varied than the work being produced by some of the popular European grind bands, and to fans of the genre it will be tastier than a maggot-infested cyst.
