Punctured "Punctured" (Review)

Punctured "Punctured"

2024 Independent (Digital)

puncturednwi.bandcamp.com

Here's my obligatory PSA that I always put before reviews of digital-only material. Bands, get at least a cassette tape pressed for the fans like me that prefer physical. 100 tapes is only around 400 bucks. Ok, on to the review.

I stumbled on Punctured right before Justin Horval mentioned them on his YouTube channel, since they'd asked him for a review. When I hit play, I was rewarded with some seriously heavy mid-90s style Midwest brutal death metal. Big, fat, chunky guitars, thick drums, competent and manly death metal vocals, and a solid heavy bass tone all combine for a very heavy sound. This is well-recorded, too, which is nice. These lads know how to write a song, and they'll only get better with age, I'm guessing. There are hooks galore, and even when they utilize a slam riff, they know when to get the fuck out of it and move the song along. Suffering from a slam-a-thon is what dooms so many bands for me.

I can't say offhand that they even sound like a particular band, although I can easily point out the region they're from based just on the style. They obviously know their forebears' styles. I thought there may be perhaps some Fleshgrind influence, perhaps Lividity. I hear Internal Bleeding in the slam riffs - old Internal Bleeding - and the slam riffs are brutal as hell. Maybe Broken Hope in a few spots, too. It just remiinds me of the sound the Midwest used to have, very heavy, not typically high velocity, and dense.

My favorite track is easily "Prophecies of Achlys" and the massive stomp riff they employ during the middle of the song, breaking down the otherwise semi-doomy aura into pure brutality. It's violent, fun, and just pure destruction. They fellas know how to get heavy as fuck! "Hands of Torment" also stands out with the interesting drum beat in the leadup to the verse, and "Adversary Enfleshed" begins with another hard-ass riff that amps up the violence and keeps it leveled like a gun barrel at your face. I like the more simplistic approach this band has, and it burns with nostalgia for me, since every damn brutal band used to have elements of this sound, and I miss the days before "slam" was a word used to describe a subset of death metal. This is a great example of a brutal band using slam riffs AS A PART of their approach to death. It shouldn't be the whole approach, since it loses all its luster at that point. This band is doing it just right.

If this band sticks with it, they have a bright future, and I definitely want to see what they do next. They gained a fan here, and I am thoroughly impressed with these youngsters. Keep writing guys, I'll be here waiting!

This is one fine-ass logo, very readable and very death metal.