Now this is a band which for one reason or another was widely known but also widely forgotten when listing classic albums. I am not sure why, but I always liked this band with a visceral passion. This debut album on Grind Core records might not be incredibly refined, but shows a straight in your face dose of gore infested Brutal Death Metal which predated a lot of the modern scene's current sound. I am tempted to put some soundclips for listening but I remember this album was re-released on Metal Blade (and more recently for a third time as a combo with "Bowels"), so no luck today, I don't want to be sued for such shit! They have complained for the sound of this album in the past, but well, for me it's grandiose, and perfectly fitting this band's sound. It has also been recorded with the same Akai Adam DR1200 of "Swamped" so what's your problem? The drum in particular have a slightly echoing sound that might be taken as an ingenuity in engineering but I personally find the effect enthralling, it's like drum beating from beyond the land of the living. I really dig the style of this drummer. He's fast and powerful at the same time, and he has personality too. I always enjoyed saying that this album stands to "Eaten Back to Life" as "Swamped in Gore" stands to "Tomb of the Mutilated". Well the comparisons holds but listening to this Cd after so many years, I admit that this "Swamped in Gore" is way heavier, and more brutal than "Eaten" for damn sure. It has several drawbacks however, and the worse is, there is a huge dose of tarantella riffs (shit, listen to the refrain of "Swamped in Gore" and "Incinerated", they're horrible, I can't shrug the vision of Pulcinella dancing at the vocals of Joe Ptacek clapping hands!). If you manage to ignore those few terrible moments, this debut offers moments of sublime gore rapture. The drumming is forceful, the guitar riffs chunky and full of brutal breakdowns, the vocals of Joe still unripe but already deep and guttural (hey he was still clean shaven here)... The lyrics here all deal in a way or another with death, rotting corpses and zombies. This is the essence of gore itself isn't it? NMow Now Clem Cow Griffin and company have a real gift for writing gore lyrics, even if in this album they were a bit unimaginative, their use of English was fluid and enternatining. It is a intro of things to come, but I enjoyed reading them all again. "Uuuh gore hog brings death, hammocks from hell!". I won't reccomend this album since the following one just destroys everything, but I would reccomend buying all four albums of this band, they're real pioneers of the genre, this was 1991!

 

Tracks (11): 1 - Borivoj's Demise 2 - Incinerated 3 - Swamped in Gore 4 - Bag of Parts 5 - Dismembered Carcass 6 - Devourer of Souls 7 - Awakened by Stench 8 - Gorehog 9 - Gobblin' the Guts 10 - Cannibal Crave 11 - Claustrophobic Agnostic Dead