Verminous
Impious Sacrilege
7.3
It doesn't FEEL new. It really takes me back to my thrash/speedmetal days when I was discovering the joys of fast, heavy and ugly music. All the fun of the first couple of Slayer or Exodus records. Yeah, the drummer plays with modern blasty kicks and all that, but I swear this CD just makes me think of '85. And I mean that in a fucking good way. Get past the now completely used up and hack intro thingy which every band could just as well stop putting on their fucking records now as we have heard ALL of the shit they could possibly come up with ... and you have a pure metal up your ass CD with a distinct lack of bullshit or pretense, a great raw production and performances that just scream energy. In the late 80's I was in a barband that was fucking stupid, playing GnR covers and lame - LAME originals. We practiced in this group of storage sheds along with a few other local bands. One of these bands was a speed metal outfit and after our rehearsal myself and the guitarist would walk over and watch them jam. Once the door came down and we took our seats the band would simply fly through their set. No one could move - no room, the light was bad, the sound was iffy, but the band didn't care. They just fucking smoked. They weren't the tightest or most talented or prettiest, but when it mattered they were worth more than twenty "better" bands. They got IT. They were metal as fuck. Listening to this disc is like seeing that band play. Verminous has a lot of punch, and you can trace that to the fiendishly cool sounding bass - very early Voivod. Growly, distorted and percussive, it gives the music a lean yet powerful sound, especially when the band fires little slabs of staccato chords at the breaks. If you try hard enough you can hear a few mistakes, and that is cool as shit. A recording like this needs the spontaneity of immediate performances, and sometimes that means things get away from the band - just for a moment. It enhances the feeling of hearing a band play live. The vocalist mixes up his delivery, keeping you with him at all times. Not the typical shouting droner, he has a few bloodcurdling screams and emphasizes his lyrics very well. The guitars are as would be expected, but combined with the punchy style of the rhythem section they come off corrosive and filthy. The solos are Slayeresque, chaotic and appropriate. And the CD is done just as you are starting to get used to it. Perfect timing. Any more and you could get bored with it, any less and you might feel a little cheated. The songs are great, if not remarkably origional. The tempos and melodies are changed often enough that you never get overly familiar with any of them. Each song retains a certain excitement from beginning to end. Topically I guess they are all about Satan, but I don't really pay attention. They would sound just as good if they were about raising baby Koalas. Bottom Line: Yeah, I recommend this to you, mister or mizz metal person. This is the fun, fast, nasty meaty shit every metalhead needs now and then to bring them back to basics. Neither too underground nor too accessible nor too anything but living, breathing, ugly metal. The sum is far greater than the parts, as you see from the dichotomy of my scores versus my text, but some things can't be quantified. So I add a little number of my own - Overall Deadly Filthy Assfucking Metalness = 6. I believe this CD might get played again....
