To many metal aficionados, Devourment is a punchline. The subgenre they helped create, slam death metal, is often described using the adverbial modifier “ultra fucking” before such adjectives as “guttural,” “brutal,” and “sick.” Their ultra fucking offensive t-shirts certainly don’t gain them much respect among thinking metal fans, who can more guiltlessly wear a shirt knocking Christ down a peg than one grotesquely defiling half the human population (namely, the half with uteri). I hadn’t spent more than twenty minutes of my life listening to or thinking about Devourment before seeing them at Maryland Deathfest, which I waxed so eloquently about right here on these e-pages.
And boy oh boy, were they fun to watch. They didn’t have any gross onstage gimmicks or any offensive banter. They were just four dudes who came up and played some tunes with titles like “Deflesh the Abducted” and “Masturbating at the Slab” and, for some reason, maybe the groove, maybe my exhaustion, made me want to dance like an idiot. I got a hold of Unleash the Carnivore when I got home and it is the same ultra fucking brutal, guttural, slamming, sick, epic death metal I loved so much at the fest. Don’t plan on looking to your left or your right after listening to this album because your neck is going to be ultra fucking sore.
Grindcore Album of the Year
De Anarkistiske An(n)aler by Parlamentarisk Sodomi
I apologize in advance. I don’t know anything about this band, except that it’s just one guy and he’s from Norway. The song titles and lyrics are all in Norwegian, and I hear he’s mostly writing tongue-in-cheek critiques of the Norwegian government? Maybe? To crudely paraphrase Sam Cooke, I don’t know much about (Parlamentarisk Sodomi’s) history, not to mention his biology (or the Norwegian I took). But I do know that I love De Anarkistiske An(n)aler, and I know that if you love it too, what a wonderful world this will be.
It’s all fast as fuck, in a grindy way, not in an über-technical death kinda way. It flows nicely with a raw Napalm Death kind of vibe for most of the record, with plenty of energy and grime. Then, out of nowhere, comes “Klæbukrønikene (De Anarkistike An(n)aler),” a grind song that’s nearly eleven minutes long. In a subgenre known for songs that usually span less than a minute (and many less than a few seconds – Cripple Bastards’ recenty four-CD box set featured 1,036 songs), this is unheard of. Sound like a gimmick? Well guess what, asshole, it fucking slays for ten fucking minutes and forty-seven fucking seconds. In the world of grindcore, this guy’s an A student, baby.
Andrew’s Two Favorite Metal Albums of 2009
Death Metal Album of the Year
Unleash the Carnivore by Devourment
“Field of the Impaled”
from Unleash the Carnivore
To many metal aficionados, Devourment is a punchline. The subgenre they helped create, slam death metal, is often described using the adverbial modifier “ultra fucking” before such adjectives as “guttural,” “brutal,” and “sick.” Their ultra fucking offensive t-shirts certainly don’t gain them much respect among thinking metal fans, who can more guiltlessly wear a shirt knocking Christ down a peg than one grotesquely defiling half the human population (namely, the half with uteri). I hadn’t spent more than twenty minutes of my life listening to or thinking about Devourment before seeing them at Maryland Deathfest, which I waxed so eloquently about right here on these e-pages.
And boy oh boy, were they fun to watch. They didn’t have any gross onstage gimmicks or any offensive banter. They were just four dudes who came up and played some tunes with titles like “Deflesh the Abducted” and “Masturbating at the Slab” and, for some reason, maybe the groove, maybe my exhaustion, made me want to dance like an idiot. I got a hold of Unleash the Carnivore when I got home and it is the same ultra fucking brutal, guttural, slamming, sick, epic death metal I loved so much at the fest. Don’t plan on looking to your left or your right after listening to this album because your neck is going to be ultra fucking sore.
Grindcore Album of the Year
De Anarkistiske An(n)aler by Parlamentarisk Sodomi
“Statsbudsjettblues”
from De Anarkistiske An(n)aler
I apologize in advance. I don’t know anything about this band, except that it’s just one guy and he’s from Norway. The song titles and lyrics are all in Norwegian, and I hear he’s mostly writing tongue-in-cheek critiques of the Norwegian government? Maybe? To crudely paraphrase Sam Cooke, I don’t know much about (Parlamentarisk Sodomi’s) history, not to mention his biology (or the Norwegian I took). But I do know that I love De Anarkistiske An(n)aler, and I know that if you love it too, what a wonderful world this will be.
It’s all fast as fuck, in a grindy way, not in an über-technical death kinda way. It flows nicely with a raw Napalm Death kind of vibe for most of the record, with plenty of energy and grime. Then, out of nowhere, comes “Klæbukrønikene (De Anarkistike An(n)aler),” a grind song that’s nearly eleven minutes long. In a subgenre known for songs that usually span less than a minute (and many less than a few seconds – Cripple Bastards’ recenty four-CD box set featured 1,036 songs), this is unheard of. Sound like a gimmick? Well guess what, asshole, it fucking slays for ten fucking minutes and forty-seven fucking seconds. In the world of grindcore, this guy’s an A student, baby.