Abominable Putridity is a Russian slam death metal band that has had a number of different vocalists over the years, including well-known grunters like Big Chocolate and Matti Way. This album features the much less well-known Vladimir, but nevertheless was one of my favorite slam albums early on. There is not much to say here, it is just typical slam, but it is performed highly competently. There is a reason Abominable Putridity is one of the first bands recommended when getting into the genre. It is a very good gateway.
I have not had this one very long but it made an immediate impression on me. This is a truly original album by a slam death metal band with a variety of other influences and some highly unusual moments thrown in. Part of the reason behind the odd moments is the fact that two of the members were previously in Stream of Consciousness, a progressive metal band. I am not really sure what the decision-making process of going from progressive metal to slam death metal was like, but I have absolutely no complaints. This is one of the best slam death metal albums in years.
This album is one of the very early roots of slam death metal. It came out in 1995, after the beginnings of the genre were carved out by Suffocation and Pyrexia. Internal Bleeding took some of those ideas and built upon them, which eventually lead to the basic sound of slam death metal as we know it. Devourment then took the ideas from Internal Bleeding and kept improving on them. This though is one of the early true slam death metal albums. This was a hugely influential album on the beginnings of the slam death genre. The music itself is fairly simple and it is clear that Suffocation was the band's major influence, but Internal Bleeding did not have the technical mastery that Suffocation had, which helped lead them into the slam genre.
A one-man slam/brutal death metal band, Putrid Pile is still an extremely powerful and extremely loud band. The band is Shaun LaCanne who performs all of the vocals and guitar and bass parts and programs the drum machine. The drum machine is barely noticeable as the rest of the music is done so well. This is a very impressive album which shows the ability to make slam death sound fresh and interesting. This is a much faster-paced album than some other albums from the genre and the speed of the riffs is probably its best quality. I am also very impressed with the Deicide-esque layered vocals.
This is kind of cheating. This album from Japan's Vomit Remnants is actually a compilation of the band's Supreme Entity full-length from 1999 and the Indefensible Vehemence EP from 2001. So it is actually one and a half albums, but I am still counting it because I absolutely love it. Vomit Remnants bring an almost machine-like precision to slam death metal. There are parts that are almost industrial metal-esque. Japan has been blessed with a number of very good slam death metal bands, Vomit Remnants is probably one of the best.
Thanks for this write up, I just have a slight nit to pick with you:
ReplyDelete"...but Internal Bleeding did not have the technical mastery that Suffocation had, which helped lead them into the slam genre."
I must correct you here:
It was a strongly conscious decision to completely AVOID any Suffocation like technicality in our music. Although we all dug Suffo, we thought the excessive speed and technicality was off putting -- and quite frankly -- boring.
We purposely wanted to concentrate on groove as opposed to anything else, and keep the speed to a bare minimum and concentrate on hooks and grooves that moved bodies. It wasn't our lack of technical mastery that led us to what we came up with.
I'm not trying to be difficult, I just want the record set straight, because since the beginning of the band, we were always concerned with grooves over all else.
Cheers!
Chris/Internal Bleeding