Bound and Gagged
Fornicate the Gutted
2.3
This CD has been described as one to want to make you pour sulfuric acid on your genitals. I thought about that for a while, while listening to Bound and Gagged's Fornicate the Gutted and came to the conclusion that I would be more likely to pour sulfuric acid on my speakers so I wouldn't have to listen to this anymore. I'm sorry to start this dissection off so harsh, but let me tell you why I did. The album is filled with chunky, and bland guitar riffing. According to their record company they never play the same riff twice, and that seems to hold true although many of the riffs just simply feed off of each other; in the end it doesn't matter anyway because although I occasionally found myself bobbing my head to a few good riffs, they never held up in the long run. The bass playing in this disc is respectable and makes a few appearances which are one of the few things I enjoyed about this release. The drumming is pretty solid, but nothing amazing. Now we get to the vokills. These comprise of the occasional toilet-bowl guttural vokills and caveman like pig grunts. If this is your thing that's cool, but I could never fully get into this vokill style. As you can tell with song titles like "Bloody Chunks of Menstrual Flow" and "Choking and Gargling" this is grotesque metal through and through. Never have I been a fan of these types of themes because they seem like an easy escape to writing real lyrics. Not that it really matters on this album because you can't understand a damn word that comes out of the singer's mouth. It's more or less grunt like sounds resonating from the bowls of his gut. The production is poor as is with most gore releases, so the album doesn't get any help in that department either. As you can see, I did not enjoy this release in the slightest, hence starting off the dissections so rough. If you totally dig the sick-ultra-brutal gore metal then you may like this, but for everyone else you're best advised to stay away from this. Aside from the occasional laughable sample and the odd Jewel (the folk singer) like acoustic intro to the song "Rape the Dowager" which got a brief chuckle out of me; this had absolutely nothing to offer.
6.8
In the wake of what seems to have been the very influential phenomenon that is Devourment, the brutal death underground has seemed to spawn quite a few similar bands, some good, some not. It seems that Bound & Gagged obviously have been inspired by the "Texas Pit Metal" sound, which seems to have several mainstay characteristics. The first being the outrageously guttural vocals. And I mean outrageous. If you've ever heard your bathtub drain, and right at the end when the water is almost all down the pipes, and then you hear the low chunky gurgle before complete emptiness, that is what standard vocals have become in Pit Metal today. Bound & Gagged harness this style well, and actually become almost enunciated while maintaining the bottom end gurgle. Now, the second trait of Pit Metal seems to be the production values. It is a different type of sound, especially on the snare drum. It's a heavy, bottom end sound, quite often dominated by vocals. Guitars are more often then not palm muted to infinity w/ random high harmonic squals jumping out at you when you least expect it. Now a lot of bands "post-Devourment" capitalize mainly on the basic elements that make Pit Metal so fun to listen to, being the drainpipe vocals and the heavy, easy to headbang to pit riffs. Not a lot of speed is involved, w/ most music being mid to slow paced timing w/ fast double bass underneath. To tell you the truth, I've heard so much of it after I discovered Devourment that I'm almost bored by it now. Well, let's take a close look at Bound & Gagged. There's something more here. Whether or not that "something more" is something I like yet or not remains to be seen. This basically can be summed up by crossing 2 bands that 1st come to mind: Devourment & Cephalic Carnage. Now, obviously from my past review of Devourment one can conclude that I am a big fan. Cephalic, on the other hand, I have a tough time getting into. Cephalic's style comes across as a bit too sloppy for my tastes, and quite frankly, I think that they try cramming too many random parts into their songs, w/ the end result being a "song" that doesn't really define itself as a song. Such is the case here w/ Bound & Gagged. I am all for experimentation w/ traditional song structure and technicality, but to me, this hybrid style doesn't really maintain the certain portions that I think should reoccur throughout individual songs to make them indeed that...songs. I wouldn't necessarily call it technical, just a way of composing that consists of coming up w/ completely different and unrelated parts to make a song. B & G throw a few twists in here that I do like. I sense a mix between Jazz or Blues experimentation popping up randomly through the disc that personally was a pleasant surprise for me. Nothing fantastic or "groundbreaking" is going on, just a new mix of styles that is something I have not really heard on the same album before. And that by no means is a bad thing. It's a decent attempt to freshen up what could easily become a very stale sound quite quickly. I know that the "420" Cephalic stoners or anyone who likes their style will most likely be into Bound & Gagged. It's a little bit of an awkward hybrid, but like I said, it is something new & different. Will I be coming back to this, you ask? Not too much right now. Maybe it's because my tastes are evolving slightly, or maybe it's because I just can't get Cephalic's goofy style outta my my head when I hear Fornicating the Gutted. Either way, my thoughts on it still stay the same...It's decent & different. The songs don't really pick up as much energy as I would like them to, but maybe that's not what they're after. It can be a challenging listen, but I just don't know if I'll be able to maintain my interest long enough to master it.
