“Listen here you beautiful bitch, I’m about to fuck you up with some truth”– Kenny Flowers (“I Can’t Believe She Got in the Van with Me”)

In 2013 , I reviewed the second album ..The Dissection of Christ, from these Kansas City death metalers, it was a solid hodge-podge of death metal styles that showed some promise if a lack of direction and tonal focus. The only consistent thing was that the band really disliked the holy trinity.

Featuring some truly bizarre yet grotesquely wonderful artwork that shows the albums lyrical themes and style, the album is a vast improvement of ..The Dissection of Christ, as the band seemed to found a nice balance between burly goregrind and some whiddly melodies that give the album a little more character and style amid the deep bellows and twisting brutality. The backbone is an obvious Cannibal Corpse/Broken Hope sound and imagery, but the lead work of Nick Yeates, elevates the whole thing to something a little more. The last album did have a few moments of melody but it was a bit of a mish mash, but here, its used and rendered with much more confidence.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is by no means a game changer of classic album, but it is very good. The album is riddled with the cliched samples of women suffering, horror quotes etc (including the above reference quote from Eastbound and Down in the album’s opening track) , and that’s  OK if you are into that sort of thing, but amid the genre typical gore and misogyny, the band put together some memorable tunes and moments. Case and point towards the end of second track “Autopsy of a Cunt”, there’s a pretty cool sweep and groove, that you normally don’t hear in this style. A few other flourishes such as “Digested Genitals”, the oddly introspective mid sections of  “Sulfuric Semen Skank Dunk Tank” and “Inserted Vaginal Castration Device” and the penultimate title track are sprinkled around the album, making your ears perk up amid the carnage.

Of course the majority of the album is rife more standard, effective gurgling, blasting brutality that has much more focus and chops. The likes of opener “I Can’t Believe She Got in the Van with Me”, “Skinned and Sodomized”, “55 Gallon Crypt” deliver ample, cleanly produced gore grind savagery, that’s par for the course, and I’m intrigued how these guys continue to develop.

[Visit the band's website]

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