obscurityrecords1.bandcamp.com
8/10 CRUSHED FUCKING SKULLS
The Archives tells me next to nothing about this band, other than they're signed to Michigan's Obscurity Records and that they're from Colorado. They're a complete mystery, and that's interesting to me. Their music is a vicious hybrid of death metal styles, half the material being firmly rooted in groove-oriented, almost 1990s style brutal death metal, and the other half being vicious deathgrind. I can't figure out if the drums are programmed or there's just heavy trigger use. If this is a real drummer, he's a fucking beast, a grinding god. The blasts are super-tight, even on the gravity blasts, and the double bass is inhuman. Vocally we get mostly mid- to low-range growls, and they're aggressive, which is nice to hear on something this brutal instead of the typical gurgles. Some of the riffs are straight out of the 1990s Florida camp, and there are slower, heavier Dying Fetus-style transitions and breakdowns. The grind influences mixes with these two things to form incredibly brutal death metal the way it ought to be played, and the nice part is they're not actively playing in anyone else's style like happens so often with brutal bands. This is totally original sounding. So far, no sign of CDs or LPs, but you can get a digital copy at the label's Bandcamp site. I think this deserves a physical release, so hopefully someone will step up and make that happen.