Crimson Butchery "Violence by Design" (Review)

Crimson Butchery “Violence by Design”

2024 Independent / Digital

crimsonbutchery.bandcamp.com

BADASS SONG TITLES: Defleshed and Shredded, Sodomized to Insanity, Sacrament Excrement

BADASS ONE-WORD DESCRIPTION: Inertia-driven.

This album is one badass motherfucker, a bastard mix of Floridian death metal, Bay Area style thrash, and chunky, slamming brutality. Violent riffs, well-programmed sampled drums (every bit as good as what Infestdead used to do), vicious vocals, and incredible songwriting are on display here, and the guitars in particular have a razor-sharp tone and there are finely crafted, divebombing solos all over the record. This is real death metal for headbanging deathmaniacs!

Punctuating all the thrash riffs are brutal slams, and this is a band that knows how they should be used – sparingly, tastefully, impactfully, and kept extremely heavy. It adds to the inertia of each song, and exponentially increases the violence of the music. They remind me just a little of Exhumed when they trade high and low vocals in “Henny and a Plan B,” which is a song that almost seems a tiny bit out of place on the record, but after I read the lyrics I see what the intent of the song really was, and it made much more sense. I could do without some of the excess bass drops here and there throughout the record, but I have a feeling this was also a conscious decision. I think the band’s sense of humor can be a little tongue-in-(ass)cheek, and I dig that.

Another track of note, “Evolution of Malice,” has a Cannibal Corpse-style bounce to it, tempered with those brutal slam riffs, which on this track remind me of the excellent Amputated from England, and absolutely perfect solo guitar work. By this point, I was thinking that this mix of thrash and brutal death metal is really refreshing, and not many bands are successfully grafting these two styles together. In “Nightmare Blunt Rotation,” there’s even a solid guitar harmony, which is a rarity in death metal. They close the record with a cover of Morbid Angel’s “Cleansed in Pestilence,” and it absolutely destroys the original, mainly because the guitar-playing is superior on Crimson Butchery’s version and their guitars don’t sound like an angry beehive. I thought it was a brave choice of covers to do, especially since that record is only a fair entry in Morbid Angel’s catalogue. They truly polished a turd and made it shine.

Aside from the nitpicky criticism of the bass drops, there’s nothing bad I can say about this record. It’s a great record and every song is outstanding and memorable. The only other thing I would suggest to the band is to get this out in a physical format of some kind. It’s only a two-man operation, so there’s no shows to speak of to sell the record at, but I have to believe that a fair few people would buy it through Bandcamp, since I definitely would. From the comments left on their page, it seems I am not the only one that really likes this album, so I think the band should seriously consider it. Run 100 cassettes and see what happens! Sign me up for a copy when it happens.