This is Lust of Decay's third album and much probably the heavier of the three so far. Here we have once again no big surprises, they kind of refined and thickened the scheme they already tested before on the previous two full lengths. Totally Brutal Death 100% American style, with some referrals such as Deeds of Flesh, Cinerary, Disgorge, Severe Torture, Bound and Gagged etc.; some slow fat riffs give heaviness to the mix but most of the time we're talking about a highly technical jumble of chaotic riffs blocks sewn together. Taken singularly each chunk is a coherent and neat microcosm, even more crisp due to a monster recording, but when put together you get the idea of a complete mess, it's difficult to get a clear idea of the whole picture but that's a cool thing, thanks Disgorge for testing this approach. Chaos from order. Again taken singularly each section does its job in a zealous, precise way: guttural growls with a full body, sharp technical riffs with no taint of melodies and abundant use of harmonics and a competent, grating drumming. As a whole, I generally like this Cd, it's effective on the path it has chosen. The "school" the riffs fall into is mostly the "chug chug" truncated chords one, it is no surprise the band started out in the vein of Pantera or something like that, the power chord and the massive sound are the main elements here, but well, the feeling seems to lag a bit. Even in a recording that seems flawless at first I can come up with some critics. The sound is maybe perfectly balanced but the sound of the drums so synthetic it sounds like a drum machine, the use of triggers is really shameless to the point of insolence. There is no way a double bass can have this sound, never. Anyway some people seem to like the ICQ typing drums of Vomit Remnants so I guess if one likes traditional '00s Brutal Death here one gets what he looks for. The lyrics deal with gore fantasy like self devourment and massacres, and well I always like this shit, so go Lust go!

And well... the real weak spot I think this time falls outside the music: this is the worse layout/graphic work I have seen this year. Computer graphics are really NOT my cup of blood, they really llok cheezy no matter if it's cheap stuff like late Morbid Angel or Incantation or professional like Visual Darkness works, they just don't click on me. And this time things are just in the bottom scale. The subject is cool, a nun with an axe in hand in a cabin full of mutilated female body parts hanging on a cross. Gore is always fun. But the skin tone and the textures are really looking false, they give the impression the nun is a Barbie doll dressed and painted. And there is that hateful use of embossing and this mania of filling every detail of this booklet with 2 minute photoshop filters. Really this artwork rates as a 2 in my scale. Overally though, this album is a piece o' cake, super brutal and guttural, intense, technical, this is a band that deserves to be counted among the top ones fro US today, for sure. At least when we talk striclty about derivative Brutal Death. I am personally more into dirtier, grittier stuff a la Pustulated, Suppuration, Reinfection etc.

 

Tracks (9): 1 - Exchanging Perversities 2 - Scarification 3 - Intolerable Cruelty 4 - Licking Bacterial Ecstasy 5 - When Anesthesia Fails 6 - Embryonic Breeding For Cannicalistic Devourment 7 - Raging Swarm 8 - Ejaculation Extermination 9 - Purity Through Dismemberment