It’s been 6 years since New Jersey’s Embludgeonment released their brutal debut album, Infinite Regress.  Now after the wait their follow-up, Barn Burner sees its release on the excellent Comatose Music label.  How about let’s bring in John Hartman from Mortal Decay to add that extra bit of brutal spice.  BAM!!!  9 songs in 33 minutes the band has little time for noodle guitar riffs or melodic passages for you to sit down and think about the existence of man.  Naw dude, this is pure brutal death metal-Tri-State area style. “Transfixed Impalement” comes forth right out the starting gates and Ken England sounds ruthless.  Switching between low gutturals, high screams and clogged sewer pipe vocals to cause you to mess your bowels.  Mark Green bashes the crap outta the drums with some super nice double bass that will run over your throat.  Lee Cozens and John provide the brutal guitar riffing and Lee doubling up to add the bass guitar lines.

“Vociferation” is up next and offers more slammin’ brutality with some nice isolated guitar riffs, during the middle section and a damn guitar solo to boot you upside your horrific looking face.  Monstrous blasting with Ken laying waste with his throat.  The 2.56 part has quite the slow beat down slam.  Seriously if you’re not wind-milling by this point you are probably 3 sheets to wind or a damn corpse.  The end part has some interesting barking growls as well.  “Corpse Shed” provides a nice visual feast as the title ties in with the album name, but most importantly the album cover.  Ever since The Walking Dead T.V. show reinvigorating the zombie genre in terms of movies, other shows, video games and books it has also influenced a lot more death metal bands and cover art being one of them.  The Barn Burner album cover is simply too cool and a lot of fun to look at.  I love the shadowing and light of the flames.  Simply stunning.

“Corpse Shed” sports a very 90’s era NY death metal influence, from the pinch harmonics and guitar riffing and some of the slam parts.  Some of the guitar harmonies, towards the end of the track, are really excellent.  An excellent song, which Embludgeonment must incorporate into their live set.  The rest of the album follows the same formula.  Lots of blasts, slams, gutturals.  If you’re looking for a 100% original death metal album, look elsewhere.  If you’re looking for a killer brutal death metal album to strip your skin away and knock you from your house all the way through the core of the molten earth than Barn Burner better be in your collection.

Embludgeonment have crafted a great brutal death metal album where there are some moments of melody, but by and large this is brutal American death metal simply crafted to bash your skull in.  The production is clear and I really dig the snare drum production.  It pops better than microwave popcorn.  The cd booklet layout has lyrics and the cd tray has a band photo with the band showing off their finest death metal shirts.  At the end of the day if you’re into brutal death metal and are looking for something new, check out Barn Burner, it’s a fun and great album.

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