Mutilated Messiah-Total Fucking Slaughter

Slaney
2010

This Irish band has been around for seven years and have previously knocked out a pair of demos and been on a split album, but this marks their full length debut. Now my first reaction to the album title was "okay, these guys think they are going to be shocking". Instead much of the lyrics sound like a 14 boy had a bad day and quickly scribbled down the first names and topics they thought would get a reaction from "adults". Okay the lyrics are juvenile. Beyond that I expected this album to be death metal of the noisy variety, but that's not totally true. The vocals are mainly old style/early 90's death style with plenty of grunts and growls. The music is the surprise because although there is a strong death influence they also reach back to the 1980's and there's even some hints of doom worked into the onslaught. This trio obviously spent some hours listening to early Sodom, Hellhammer, pre-Into the Pandemonium Celtic Frost and maybe even the mighty, but all too overlooked Post Mortem. Despite the lack of creativity with their lyrics and a somewhat heavy handed approach overall, this band still manages plenty of moments where they pull together mountains of ripping riffs that vary from skull bashing death to spine rattling thrash to blood-curdling doom. For the most part they handle all of the styles with with skill and enthusiasm. It's in the music where this band really succeeds because they capture the spirit of the early days of death metal. They could stand to tighten up around the edges and broaden their topics for sure, but this album has plenty to offer.