Slaughtery - Path-(T)o-Logic

Slaughtery is an underground technical brutal death band from Belgium (although I have them listed simply as technical death). The reason why I’m choosing to write a review on these guys is because they’re one of the ones that have stuck out to me the most out of all of the tech death bands I’ve been discovering over the past few months like Insidious Decrepancy, First Fragment, Dystrophic, Carnophage, Cerebric Turmoil, and many others. This isn’t an album that I listen to a lot but it really comes in handy when I need something technical, but Obscura and Decapitated aren’t brutal enough for the moment. So this is one of those bands that is perfect for you if you’re in need of a brutal death band that is filled with technicality and chaos. And not only that, THEY’RE REALLY GOOD!! I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen these guys on the Summer Slaughter Tour yet! Hopefully that year will come where I see these guys on the roster.

There seems to be an increasing amount of tech death bands that use metalcore-style breakdowns in their music (breakdowns that stick out and aren’t subtle like the ones Dying Fetus do). Bands like that are popping up like daisies which include (but are not limited to) Fleshgod Apocalypse, Rings of Saturn, and The Faceless. Slaughtery is similar to Decapitated in the sense to where most of the technicality lies in the drums. Unlike Decapitated, there is still tons of crazy shit going on in the guitars and bass, but the drums are unbelievably complex and lead to why this is considered one of the most technical bands to some people (probably because they haven’t heard Rings of Saturn). Although not NEARLY as technical or as brutal as Rings of Saturn, Slaughtery definitely stands out to me as being one of the best new tech death bands to reach my ears.

The vocalist does deep guttural inhales with the occasional exhaled screams for the moments of ultra-high tension like at the very end of Chimerism. I usually prefer the vocals to be DEEP guttural exhaled growls (like in The Faceless). But there have been several times where deep inhaled growls are just what the music needs, and this is one of those cases where it works out perfectly. The general theme that this band follows is really hard to pinpoint in this case, but it obviously has some sort of strong sci-fi influence. I feel that I should elaborate more on the type of breakdowns that these guys use because they’re not the type of breakdowns that you would expect. When someone hears the term “breakdown” chances are that they’ll imagine utter chaos that has a sudden EXTREME drop in tempo similar to what you would hear in an older Suicide Silence record. But the breakdowns that Slaughtery uses are slightly less profound than that, but they’re still much more extreme than most bands out there.

What would have made me smile is if the first track, titled 9 Minutes, was actually exactly nine minutes in length. But that’s not something that I’ll point out as a lack of creativity; instead I’ll just throw that out there as a suggestion for a special “9 minute extended version” that they could use as a hidden bonus track on a future record. For me, the first track introduces the chaos, the second track introduces the brutality, the third track introduces the creativity and technicality, and then after the 1.5 minute interlude, the rest of the album has all three of those elements combined in a perfect brutal tech death sandwich (which is great because I’m about to eat breakfast). The sound production is great, but I would like it if the band turned up the treble a bit on the drums and gave them more body, especially on the kick drums (which are very important in tech death). Faults? There aren’t many but the band does drift out of tempo in a couple of songs like The Pal Catharsis. Although not as good as some, this is definitely an album that you should check out ESPECIALLY if you are a sucker for brutal and/or technical death metal. This earns a score of 16/20.