(PROTIP: if you're in a hurry, don't read my reviews; if you hate reading, like I do, skip the first two paragraphs and be amazed at the lack of context)
I think it's pretty obvious by now that Brutal Death Metal, and to some extent modern Death Metal in general, are pretty much completely detached from the original genre they spawned from. Sure, we have the “retro” kind of releases here and there, Rotten Death or The Dominant being gleaming examples *sarcastic cough for those not brain-dead enough to intentionally read my drivel*, but they mostly seem to be just as pathetic as the 2nd generation Glam Metal bands that are actually 1st generation Glam Metal bands hiding behind an HD band pic and loudness war. The really important stuff, the kind that has more thought than fanboyism injected into its creative process, seems to have moved very far from the Sabbathian way that birthed it.
You won't hear a hail of melodies anymore. You won't hear one memorable riff supporting an entire song. You won't hear solos that stick to your unconscious and cause insomnia when you're reminded of them. Nowadays, you don't hear a powerful wail from the vocal cord person. You don't have the right for the comfort of knowing what the hell is going on. Malignancy, Mitochondrion, Ulcerate, Wormeaten and such are still definitely Death Something, just nothing resembling Metal, or even Rock, for that matter. If I had it my way, I'd actually have these bands be called Death Something and let the Bloodbaths and Tormenteds of the world stick to their precious suffix. I honestly don't mind, as long as, time and again, Something proves itself to be an absolutely fascinating genre and way of thinking.
Wormeaten are a Brutal Death Something band from Colombia. Now that we're familiar with the band we can move on to their album. Actually, no. I'm the lead procrastinator in the play “Endrey's Social Circle”, so let's properly impersonate the character by first dissecting the prefix behind Death Something that I employed two sentences and a few commas earlier (I won't dissect “Death” only because that's a perspective on what music should be and a perspective is a human thing, meaning that it's full of fallacies right to the core and then some, so dissecting it would make me sad). “Brutal” is absolutely not necessarily a specific sound, it's more of an intention. A method of delivery, if you will. What I mean by this is that Brutal music can come in any shape and style it wants, as long as it coincides with the original objective of straining and just overall messing with the mind of the listener, although having the snare sound be terrible helps. Even more than classical music, Brutal music outright forbids a casual listen from the get-go. The sloppy production, the confusing playing, the loudness, the chaotic composition, it's not accidental. It's not the aggression that makes the music Brutal, it's the listener's necessity to make sense of it. It ends up being a high effort / high reward system, so that's an addictive element ingrained here as well. To sum up, once you properly dig into Brutal Death Something, you don't get out.
Meanwhile, this band I'm supposedly reviewing is removing all the unnecessary noise, all the layers of residual Metal left behind, bit by bit, until the pure embodiment of this form of artistic expression I totally just pulled out of my ass is branded deep into the hippocampus. These guys are all that is subtle and misleading that comes with being Brutal. Beginning with the traditional shitty b-movie sample intro, Tortured Cadaveric Humanity lures the listener in with a relatively competent dose of BDS/M (contain your adolescence). Then, with each song, they alter their sound a bit, until by the last track we're left to savor the controlled and mechanical abstraction of the riffs and the pulsating quality brought on by the spastic songwriting. It's similar to having a manipulative acquaintance who with every calculated move dominates every aspect of your life and makes you their bitch. Anyone able to pull something so meticulous off in a musical form, even in the marginally half-assed manner we get here, is a genius.
Now allow me to explain what's half-assed about it. The first half is just pretty good, quite far from the holyfuckingshitthisisflawless-ness of the second. The songwriting ranges from absolute brilliant employment of micro-riffs and fills, not to mention some incredible skills in theme development, to some rather serious occasional structure and dynamic problems, lazy slam placement and a slight overall blocky feel in some of the tracks, particularly “Dismembered Victims”. Which is weird, considering that dynamics and slams are also the album's strongest points in other places. That tiny pause in “Rusty Chains And Claustrophobia” which then leads to the main riff gets me every time. And some of the riffs, wow, are they awesome, and some of the riffs, wow, are they just okay.
So what we get is an impression of what Wormeaten were seeking to do, which has to marinate for a long time before making sense, meanwhile there's “Dismembered Victims” and one misplaced riff in “Ground Human Flesh” ruining your day every time. Luckily, the experience just gets better and better, so there's an incentive to keep listening. And when you hear the breakdown at the end of “Internal Killer”, you know these guys have style. By the way, the BDS/M thing from earlier, it's Brutal Death Something / Metal, just in case you got amused.
Standout tracks:
Crying Cadaverine
Rusty Chains and Claustrophobia
Internal Killer
Wormeaten
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