Guttural Engorgement - The Slow Decay of Infested Flesh

Guttural Engorgement is one of the many bands that I discovered on Amputated Vein Records’ website (some of those bands I’ve fallen in love with). I saw Guttural Engorgement advertised as “progressive slam death”. Well, I like slamming brutality, so it can’t be too bad, but how the hell can it be progressive?? Well, after a few months of listening to this album, there isn’t anything progressive about them that I can hear. But if you have proof that they are or want to point anything out that I missed in their music that can be considered progressive, feel free to drop a comment below letting me know! Ok, this album is kind of hard for me to listen to because I like grindcore, and I like really slow brutal death slams, but I’m not a huge fan of them being combined (just like what Awaiting the Autopsy does).

If you’re not a DIEHARD fan of grindcore, SLAMMING brutal death, goregrind/pornogrind, or death grind, there’s no reason for you to read this review because this album isn’t for you (unless you just feel like reading reviews for some reason). When you ask around, even plenty of grindcore fans don’t consider this record to be amazing. But of course, people usually don’t give much publicity to bands that aren’t amazing. I certainly have heard worse than Guttural Engorgement, but seriously, these guys kind of screwed up badly.

Here’s where the grindcore seeps in; almost all of the songs are under two minutes in length. As well as that, the legendary grindcore shriek that only sounds good in grindcore and, if used in any other kind of record, can fucking BUTCHER the music in a split second. This is exactly what Awaiting the Autopsy did (is there an echo in here?), except their music is much better than Guttural Engorgement’s. Since Guttural Engorgement doesn’t have a female vocalist like Awaiting the Autopsy, the shrieks are delivered at a lower pitch. But seriously, they kind of ruin the moment. The reason why the shrieks ruin the moment is because EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING in this album is so fucking DEEP and tuned so LOW. The guitars and bass are SLOW and DEEP, the inhaled growls are deeper than anything I’ve even heard in my life. You have all that, and then “BLUAAAAHHHH!!!!! BLUAH BLEAH BLEAHHHH!!!!!!” It just doesn’t sound cool at all, man!!

But the vocalist isn’t the bad member of the band, his growls fit the music perfectly; it’s the drummer and the guitarists I have a problem with. The drummer just sucks in general. I swear he has never been able to keep a steady beat in his life. His ability to keep time SUCKS, being forced to play extremely slow tempos only makes it harder (because it’s harder to keep time when playing slow because you keep unconsciously speeding up, which is why the good musicians have the ability to control that). He doesn’t know how to play a blast beat, his double kicking sounds completely uneven when he attempts to play fast, and he plays the EXACT same drum pattern in every single REALLY slow breakdown. Ok, now I’m getting to the point where the vocalist’s deep growls are getting really bland and increasingly annoying (just thought I’d throw that in there).

The faults of the drummer cause the guitarists to sound like elephant diarrhea. But the guitarists and bassist really aren’t that bad and do a great job of keeping the music going despite the anchor known as the drummer. The bassist plays a number of complex bass lines to keep each song at least somewhat unique. Although they don’t sound any different if you don’t have an ear for bass tones like I do (mainly because I’m a bassist myself). Oh, by the way, I scored this album 6/20 for completely failing to impress me, but not making me regurgitate my burger because it’s not a total disaster and I’ve heard a plethora of worse bands. I would only recommend this to hardcore goregrind/pornogrind, grindcore, and brutal death fans.