Reviews

If you know the first Offal album, forget everything about it. This is pretty much a different band, different line-up and quite a different music style. This is still Old School Death Metal, but the Autopsy worship is almost completely gone. The clarity of the sound production and the elaborate guitar work remind me of early Morbid Angel or Cannibal Corpse (“Eaten Back to Life” era) but the song structures and rhythms are maybe closer to Impetigo. Very dark, doomy and mid-tempo death metal driven by intricate and thrashing guitar riffs. Song writing is very involved and this is one of the most interesting death metal album I’ve heard in a long time, the whole album has a gloomy, eerie, scary vibe. This is pretty amazing. André Luiz of the legendary Lymphatic Phlegm does a stellar job on the vocals, very articulate and dynamic, a cross between Stevo of Impetigo’s perverse throaty vocal style and Chris Barnes deep growls.

Obviously I totally love all the movie references on this one… The first few songs on this album seem to be inspired by one of my all-time favorite movies, Fulci’s Zombi 2. “Cold Grips of Death” is also about Tomb of the Blind Dead and “Mortuary Waste” clearly about Return of the Living Dead. And veering away from zombie movies “Onslaught of Dismemberment” is inspired by Bloodsucking Freaks.

And “Deep Red” is actually a real Goblin cover version with variations of the theme. (Damn, I actually wanted to use the Deep Red trailer intro used here on a song for my own project Blue Holocaust… But that’ll teach me being so slow releasing new stuff… Anyway it’s a great honour seeing André Luiz wearing a Blue Holocaust shirt on the band photo!) Oh and the album ends with a Friday the 13th inspired song. All these movies are also references on the album’s cover art by genius artist Putrid. The lyrics sheet is a classic black writings on white background thing and re-inforces the old school death metal vibe even more. If you’re looking for traditional death metal, look no further, it almost sounds like this band went back in time in the early 90′s and recorded with Scott Burns as a sound engineer!