Putrefy - One Nation Under Gore

I forget how I came across Putrefy. All that I remember was that it was in the summer of 2010 when I REALLY got into the whole underground brutal death thing. I was fascinated by any band that could play pure fucking brutality. I remember seeing Putrefy on Spirit of Metal and noticing the (few, but) high ratings users had given it. One thing that I remember was that besides the extreme brutality, the vocals kind of bothered me (possibly an understatement). I loved the really thick and crunchy sound the guitars had and I thought that the sound of the drums was pretty cool. Well now that I’ve listened to this album for the first time in what seems like forever, I can now say with pure confidence that this album is a worthless piece of crap that doesn’t deserve to be listened to, touched, looked at, or even thought about. Out of all of the brutal death/grindcore/etc. albums that I’ve heard, there are only two albums that are as bad as this (which means that there’s obviously something wrong with Putrefy). But instead of going on a pointless rant about how this albums sucks, I’m going to answer your question as to WHY it so repulsive!

Here’s the surprising thing, THIS BAND HAS BEEN AROUND SINCE 1992, which means that they’ve had PLENTY of time to improve! Although I should mention that they split-up in the mid-1990s (I understand why after listening to their early shitty demos) and then got back together in 2002 with the drummer being the only original member. But to be honest, the new lineup isn’t any better than the old lineup. In fact, they’re 100 times worse than they did in the early 1990s. Bands that suck THIS bad usually don’t last very long at all, and yet Putrefy has managed to break the 20-year mark. How is this possible? I have no fucking idea.

It’s impossible to pick a favorite OR least favorite member of the band because they all suck shit-dripping asshole. The guitarist knows how to create a cool distortion, but that’s it. He attempts to solo (like in Fresh Meat) and fails to even pull off a simple sweeping shred! He does have the ability to tremolo pick, but not for very long. He plays really fast for about 20 seconds and then gets tired and falls out of time. If I were him, I would postpone the album-writing process so that I could get those skills down and PLAY BETTER! There’s nothing wrong with postponing an album (especially for a band THIS underground) in order to obtain a basic and much-needed skill to play the music. The problem is that he went ahead and tried to do it anyway…and failed miserably.

The drummer, the only original member, the guy that’s had THE LONGEST TIME TO IMPROVE, is one of the worst drummers I’ve ever heard in my entire life (that is not an exaggeration). He can’t keep time to save his lunch money (let alone his life). His blast beats are very sloppy and NEVER keep time. He fails completely to stay in time with the guitarist (and vice versa). In any kind of music (especially music that’s this fast and demandingly brutal), it is EXTREMELY CRITICAL that the entire band must stay on tempo with as much precision as possible! If the band fails to do that (a little sloppiness here and there is understandable), the music falls apart completely and sounds like a wet, shit-dripping asshole.

The vocalist is repulsive and makes me cringe every time a sound comes out of his mouth. Yes, it is possible to put dynamics and emotion into inhaled vocals; it’s just really hard. Most vocalists that do inhaled vocals get along with the bare minimum, which is fine because at least they show SOME skill. But this guy sounds EXACTLY the same for the ENTIRE duration of the album! Not only that, he’s turned up way too loud and there’s too much reverb on his voice, making the whole band sound unrealistic. His “vocals” are annoying, sickening, and just plain disgustingly HORRIBLE! In fact, I can’t stand to think about this album for another fucking SECOND! Do not waste your time, money, or brain space on this record because brokeNCYDE and Limp Bizkit are more worthy of your time than this record. Oh, by the way, I would give this album 1/20, but would give it a negative-numbered score if I could.