Ominous
Intercorpse
6.1
When I cranked this thing up I was caught off guard by the intro sound clip and opening riff. "Great", thinks I, "Another typical splattercore Death Metal record." And it is, actually. But it threw me for a loop by going from predictably groovy splatterdeath - guitars and bass so saturated they have next to no tone or midrange, played with alternately funky and blasting drums - to what amounts to martial pounding and marching beats. Instead of beating you again and again with blasting this band wants to crush you with slower paced, more interestingly developed rhythms. It's still splatterdeath: screamed/burped vocals, occasional blast beats, toneless recording, but at least they seem to want to hit you from an angle you may not have expected.
It's not really a new take, nor is it particularly well executed, but the fact that they tried at all makes me want to give these guys a nod. What holds them back is the hit or miss musicianship, the sound bites thrown all over the fucking place and the over/under done production. When I say the guitars are oversaturated and mindless, I mean completely. There is next to no tone here, and the squelching is to the point of irritation even from the standpoint of someone who worships old Carcass. The musicians seem barely able to hold on to the songs they are playing, sometimes climbing all over each other and seeming to miss breaks and accents. The real beauty of splatterdeath is that it SEEMS sloppy, actually being very deftly executed, not the other way around.
The bottom line is that this record deserves credit for stepping outside a traditional format for death metal, but also has to take heat for its severe shortcomings. Better production and more rehearsal may be the difference between this record and a powerful, compelling splatterdeath album to take on stalwarts like Aborted and Impaled. My hope is that this is not an artificial attempt to "stay underground", but simply a step on the path to great things.
