Abscess
Dawn of Inhumanity
Peaceville
Abscess hearkens back to a time when death metal wasn’t just shaven-headed tough guy posturing more akin to hardcore and boring, mathy song structures. Abscess is more like the fun of watching some gonzoid horror flick like the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Evil Dead instead of the grim torture porn of, say, a Saw or Hostel flick. (Just compare the Bosch-meets-high-school-notebook cover of Dawn of Inhumanity with a Drawn and Quartered album. Which would YOU rather listen to?) It’s like, laughter and blood gurgle up in the throat in equal measure. And there is an essential sloppiness to the music that Abscess bashes out; like Darkthrone does for black metal, Abscess exposes the pulpy, red punk-rock heart in all of the best extreme metal. And, most crucially, band leader (and death metal godfather) Chris Reifert and company realize that the essence of death metal is not necessarily to be the most precise or the fastest or the loudest but to make every note sound sick, weird, and wrong. In all of these three respects they succeed admirably – and that makes them a fucking rarity.
Peaceville: http://www.peaceville.com
