SLAM! In South Africa! I was recommended to check out these guys by one of our writers and editors Erik Thomas.  First thing that came to my mind was whether or not there was a band called Pleased Disfigurement as well but that is a topic for a later date.  Having been around since 2001 these guys clearly have been working meticulously on their sound.  Origin opens up with an Intro with Hellraiser samples, granted this series is probably one of the most sampled series in all of Death Metal but I am going to let this slide for these guys as they are from South Africa and still might be waiting for the memo.

Now, as to the music kicking off with “Parasitic Devourement” my first thoughts were HEAVVVVVVVY!  These guys are by no means doing anything different for this style but they are quite proficient at beating up the listener with down tuned riffing and typewriter sounding blast beats and then finding relief points throughout the middle of the song for the listener to bang their head and maybe throw some elbows during an imaginary circle pit.

“Analgestic Subjection” starts off by absolutely wasting no time hyper blasting. Riaan Ondier Els is definitely a sick drummer and each track the drum performance stands out and does a great job of flowing with the riffs and there is enough breakup between the straight blasting parts and flying double kick parts displayed through Origin of Abhorrence. No guitar solos on this either. Just relentless slam riffs and awesome drumming. “Infernal Machine” is one of my favorite songs on Origin. I like that it doesn’t start off with blasting or flying double kick.  The parts build well from riff to riff and is a little bit more technical then other previous tracks. The riffing and drum work builds up to a very nice American Psycho sample that transitions into one of the heavier beat down parts on the album.

“Malignant Misery” is one of the featuring tracks which with the ways the drum fills come in you would think almost that this track would be a bit different versus the majority of the album. Nope right back into the slam and blasting. Also, there is not a huge amount of vocal variation throughout which is more or less an observation. Either you are going to have the attention span for this or you are not. Song length wise these guys seem to be in the three to five minute range which for this style of death metal is pretty impressive and for the most part every song seems to have similar writing structure. I would say it works.

“Human Cattle” finishes up the album and continues to stick to the same formula used throughout this release. If these guys keep on maturing with this sound and style of songwriting it wouldn’t surprise me to see these guys picked up by a label like Comatose or Sevared.  I hope this album does well for these guys as even though it’s not the most original thing it is very tight and well produced. I am also curious to check out the past projects of Riaan Ondier Els as his drum work really steals the show on this release. If you are in to brutal death with slam beat downs this should be right up your alley.  Enjoy!

[Visit the band's website]

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