Gruesome Stuff Relish
Horror Rises From The Tomb / Teenage Giallo Grind (Reissues)
6.9
So No Escape Records has recently re-released the two full length albums from Spain’s masters of Carcass/horror worshipping gore fiends Gruesome Stuff Relish; 2002's Teenage Giallo Grind and this year’s Horror Rises From the Tomb. As a bonus, No Escape has added GSR’s 5 tracks from 2003's Split Your Guts vol. 1 (with Gorerotted and Gronibard) onto Teenage Giallo Grind and 2 unreleased bonus tracks on Horrors Rises From the Tomb. So with these two separate releases (I’m too lazy to review these individually) you get 56 tracks of pure Carcass worship mixed with a dash of old school Swedish death metal.
With the above mix of styles, before even listening to the material, I though to myself “I bet this sounds like General Surgery’s Necrology EP - which is Carcass worship played by Stockholm death metal guys; and I was right. Short bursts of down tuned, mid ranged buzzing guitars, that vary between surprisingly catchy grooves and Symphonies of Sickness style blast beats and sick triple vocals (growl, scream, gurgle) - and while it's not as polished or perfect Carcass worship as Impaled or The County Medical Examiners, it does have a much rougher quality and much more Stockholm tones injected into the horror movie inspired prose.
Teenage Gallo Grind to my surprise, has a killer Stockholm buzz, cementing the General Surgery comparison and or course comes with all the requisite gurgled, burp vocals, samples and scrawling blastbeats of Carcass. The 30 (+5 bonus) tracks are short and to the point, being much more visceral, rancid and sick than the subsequent Horrors release. If Horrors is Symphonies of Sickness, Teenage Giallo Grind is Reek of Putrefaction. Tracks like “Enchanted Bodies,” “Skull Collectors of Borneo,” “The Gruesome Horror Begins,” "In the Cold," "Prisoner of the Cannibal God" and "Eaten Alive" show a grasp of Carcass worship added with their own character, cannibal worship and classic old school death metal, though at 30 songs, it all tends to literally ooze together.
As expected, the 21 similar tracks that make up the re-released Horror Rises from the Tomb, have a more polished, tighter production and composition to these ears, though still an almost primal Nihilist guitar tone mixed with the triple gore grind vocals and Italian horror movie samples. Tracks like “Love Goddess of the Cannibals,” “The Dead Will Walk the Earth,” “Blow Their Heads,” “Feast of the Cannibal” and “Nudo e Selvaggio” rumble and ooze with a surprisingly memorable and enjoyable trot and burp, being far more raw, early Carcass worship than Impaled or TCME and far more than the unlistenable modern gore grind I was expecting.
I’m not sure why No Escape/Razorback felt the need to re-issue Horrors the same year it came out, but either way, these are two solid albums are solid pick ups for Carcass worshippers and show Carcass worship is as far reaching as any genre out there today and isn’t limited to a select few bands from a select few countries.
