What do you think of when you hear the word fluids? Soda? Water? Urine, semen, blood? With the band Fluids you know what you’re about to get… the absolute shit beaten out of your eardrums. Songs about the slimey and worm ridden carcass of this decaying planet and the human shit that inhabit it.

Reduced Capabilities is more than just a Brutal Death Metal Goregrind album. It’s like a journey into the mind of the most vile serial killer that hasn’t been born yet. There’s bowel rattling gurgle vocals from “newer” vocalist David Duran, a drum machine that really takes one for the team, and guitars that buzz like overdriven chainsaws.

I reviewed their disgustingly good split with Nunslaughter here, as well as the split with Lipoma and Trocar (which was basically an incestuous love child, since the members of Fluids are in the other bands in some way or the other.) Anyway, I recommended them with the intensity of Moses and that brings me to Reduced Capabilities.

This is a motherfucker of an album, nothing but skull fucking brutality and it all kicks off with “Poached” a :58 second Mortician loving blast fest, and just to get this out of the way: Fluids worship Mortician and what’s even better is that they own that shit. Reduced Capabilities means that the band has stripped down to the “Marrow” for this album (see what I did there.) There aren’t any samples, it’s just one after another of searing Goregrind deliciousness with each entrails gorging track after another. “Marrow” is the second track and it shows them flex out a bit there’s blasting but then they hit a slow breakdown (one of many I’m happy to report.)

This is followed by “Grifted” and “Reduced (Gastronomically)” the first featuring some deep piggy squeals while the second is just like the beating a severed head would receive if it were being used as a soccer ball. “Measured Antipathy” has killer riffs galore and it isn’t until the sluggish snail trail of the fantastic “Generational Taint” a slow and methodical gut churning track, a pick axe to the stomach that is then twisted around.

I tend to get apprehensive with albums that are seventeen or so tracks long, and I’m not going to lie, because it has the potential to turn into a sloppy gash of a mess. Reduced Capabilities is not that album, so let me tell you that while it’s only 27:28 minutes long, and Fluids pump so much toxic sauce into the album, it doesn’t lag or become a mess. After “Generational Taint” is the awesome “Soot” a chest beating primate, an angry Sasquatch if you will. I hear some Deeds of Flesh (“Parted”) and Dying Fetus in a couple of the later tracks “Devalued” with it’s ripping tempo changes and the title track, especially. But always, there’s the spirit of Mortician and the swath of destruction they left with House by the Cemetery and Darkest Day of Horror to name two off the top of my head… yes, I know that there’s more.

If you wanted to make the argument that they’re just a Mortician clone, you could, but Fluids are more than that. After the hard-hitting and aforementioned “Parted” and “Unresponsive” there is, wait for it… a cover of Moby’s “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters”… it’s amazing. It isn’t the first time they’ve diddled with electronic sounds and as a closer for Reduced Capabilities it’s a perfect choice.

How does Reduced Capabilities stand up to their catalog? Like a steel soldier. It’s blistering from the opener “Poached” to the final cover track (look at it with an open mind.) Even without samples it’s a crushing album.

Let’s see (scratches beard), if you like Mortician, Lipoma, and Dying Fetus plus the also mentioned Deeds of Flesh. You’ll feel right at home with Reduced Capabilities.

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