Review of Avulsed - Reanimations

This is utterly disappointing. I look in the review queue and see a new Avulsed album. I immediately prepare myself for some dense, guttural, and succulently mushy death metal. Just the kind of stuff Avulsed have been getting better at delivering for the last ten years. That's not what I got. Instead, Reanimations offers only two new songs, a rerecording of an older demo track, three covers, and (I shit you not) nine recordings of OTHER FUCKING BANDS playing Avulsed songs. It's really the most baffling and shameless kind of filler album I've ever come across; and I'm a Megadeth fan.

Alright, the real songs are good. "River Runs Red" and "Foetal Consolation" are like the sonic equivalent of being slapped across your bare chest with shanks of wet beef that were stored in a dank basement with a cranked humidifier. Avulsed plays superbly as a unit. The songs are full of cohesive transitions, brisk pinch harmonics, steer conjuring melodic solos, and kit rumbling double bass. And, the most excellent part is how truly Avulsed sound like a band, not just a studio creation. These tunes are performed by a living, breathing organism, and that adds an enlivening kind of excitement that takes this kind of music to a higher, more satisfying level. So, yes, the new songs are very good. Even the remix of "Stabwound Orgasm" sheds light on the band's early Autopsy influence, with its acceleration from doomish lurching to absolutely feral blasting.

You can probably imagine what the cover tracks sound like. Exodus' "Piranha" is alarmingly fast, and replaces razor sharp ferocity with Avulsed's lumbering recklessness. W.A.S.P's "I Wanna Be Somebody" gets a death metal makeover that bulks up the rhythm section, but makes the lyrics sounds less potent and rebellious. Gorefest's "Metal Misery" makes the most sense of the cover tunes, and sounds the best. While less novel than the other two, it better illuminates Avulsed as a machine geared towards playing, churning and oppressive death metal.

Now, even though I really love bands like Avulsed for their ability to make engrossing, thickly textured albums, they rarely write singular songs that makes a distinct impression. So, hearing their stuff taken out of context and played by bands I've never heard before...is boring and lame. Terroristars take a neo-industrial approach to "Powdered Flesh" and top it with melo-dramatic clean vocals. Pretty zany. Flesh Embraced's cover of "Gorespattered Suicide" is tight and proficient, but a little too sterile to capture the vibe Avulsed shoots for. A band called Carnavage does a basement quality cover of "Stabwound Orgasm," which is pretty useless to anybody who's heard a proper version of the song. Kaothic takes a traditional metal approach to "Sweet Labotomy" that I'm sure that band and their friends will get high and laugh to. But really, it's all just a bunch of bands that aren't as good as Avulsed playing Avulsed songs. You don't want to pay for that.

Aside from the two new tracks, this album doesn't do really anything to earn your money. This is a stupid idea for a stop-gap between major releases. Seriously, just save your money until the band releases something new and substantial.

Release Details

Avulsed

Reanimations

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