Although I enjoyed the debut from North Carolina’s Abhorrent Deformity, Entities of Malevolence, I can say I have not revisited it since its 2015 release. It was a solid slab of brutal/tech death that hinted at something better, and here is the something better. Way better.

Though certainly still lingering in the putrid Comatose wheelhouse of tech/brutal death metal with song titles like “Of Blood and Cum”, “Three Piece Flesh Suit”, “Ripped From a Mother’s Mutilated Womb”,  and “Swamp of Intestines”, the music has improved from knuckle dragging brutality into a more malevolent, technical and dare I say, intelligent form of savagery. Even the cover hints at something a little more elegantly brutal.

Aided by the less gurgly and more mid range vocals of Mark De Gruchy of symphonic deathcore act Lorelei, there is a more tangible ‘core’ element, but choppy time signatures and chaotic technicality more  akin to acts like The Red Chord or Ion Dissonance (just listen to “The 2016 Esoteric Model” and “Of Blood and Cum”) and still dripping with brutal/slam tech death metal viscosity that makes for attention grabbing album .

Though only 35 minutes long, the album feels much longer due to the strong song writing and plethora of sick breakdowns and intense blast beats. Opener “Sexually Transmitted Coma” starts the album (after an short intro), with a intro to the band’s more developed sound with a huge mid paced lumber, and the tone is set. There’s oodles of dirty, devastating lurches and lopes (“Three Piece Flesh Suit”, “Ripped from a Mother Mutilated Womb”, killer “Swamp of Intestines”, standout “Vermin Burial”) and the blasting is plenty vicious (“Purification Through Bodily Dismemberment”, pummeling “Unspeakable Perversity”), but certainly not simple broodle death metal. Heck there is even an acoustic interlude “Necrotizing Fasciitis”).

Though you usually know what you are getting with Comatose, as evidenced by their 2018 releases by Posthuman Abomination, Kill Everything and Aborted Fetus, however,  Slaughter Monolith really surprised me with how creative, and well crafted yet still brutal it is (“The Fine Art of Amputation” is a perfect example) and how it slightly deviates from the Comatose paradigm, but still fits on the roster, and is one of the label’s best releases in recent memory.

 

[Visit the band's website]

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