Fleshmauler "A Gargantuan Structure of Mutilated Bodies" (Review)

Fleshmauler "A Gargantuan Structure of Mutilated Bodies"

2024 Pathologically Explicit Recordings (CD)

God damn it. I knew this would happen eventually. In my pile of things to review, I knew a record I absolutely detest would come up. First the good - the cover art is awesome and the label has released some good brutal shit before. Now for the rest.

This is boring-ass slam. And it's not just that that I have a problem with, although it's the primary thing. The largely minute-and-a-half to two-minute songs have the same formula. Slam riffs form the basis of every song, and sometimes it's the same goddamn riff, to my ears anyway. There are blasts but they exist to separate the slams. The vocals are typical gutturals, with the ever-annoying pig squeals making an appearance. So it's boring as fuck with no variation and basically no songwriting of any real effort.

Here's my other problem - this is hip-hop with guitars. I have nothing against hip-hop and I love 1980s and 1990s rap music (especially the forebears of gangsta rap like Ice-T, N.W.A, and on through Wu-Tang Clan). But this crossover bullshit needs to stop, and it's always slam bands with dumbass bass drops and stupid-ass vocals bringing it in. It's not fucking death metal, and will never be. If all you want is slam and don't care that it's serious, I guess it can be a thing, but this isn't serious music to me at all. Don't market it to death metal fans because the real ones don't give a fuck about it. Market it to horrorcore rap fans, hardcore fans (who will probably hate it too) or something. When people think this is death metal, we have a problem in the scene itself. Fortunately, most of these bands stick to their separate scene since they don't listen to the same shit we do. They don't listen to or play real metal at all in my estimation. It's an outgrowth of nu-metal. Call me a gatekeeper, whatever. But this music is important, and so is the culture around it, and stuff like this makes it feel less important.

The thing that really pushed me over the edge from writing this off as "just another slam record," and deciding to really write a bad review was the fucking "DJ horn" effect in the very first real song, as well as the horror intro that basically turns into a rap beat. Fuck this album. I don't even know why stuff like this and Peeling Flesh exist, but apparently there's a market for it like there's a market for beatdown hardcore that's all the fucking same. I'll let that scene have these bands, because they don't play death metal at all, and I'm pretty damn liberal in my interpretation of what death metal is. I love slam riffs. I like a lot of bands that use them. This just isn't good and it isn't real death metal. I promised to always tell bands why I hate something they do, and I think I did that here.