Zombie Inc.-A Dreadful Decease

Massacre Records
2012

It's kind of like the old Reese's commercial. You know someone put chocolate in my peanut butter. Only instead of that someone put zombies in my death metal. Although really if you think about it they have been there all along what with Death's "Scream Bloody Gore" coming to mind right off the bat. Anyway, on this quite cold Monday morning and after a night of tossing and turning I find myself minutes away from watching this week's episode of The Walking Dead (yes, I read the comic first as well) and as a zombie freak myself (I hope to review Africa's first road zombie movie "The Dead" this week) I am slightly amused at yet again another death band paying homage to Romero's baby. After all we can all agree we have him to thank for introducing us to the modern version of the zombie right? With that Zombie Inc. is a newer name in the already crowded gore/death genre. Probably the most recognized name here is vocalist Martin Schirenc. The former Pungent Stench vocalist has joined forces with guitarist Wolfgang Rothbauer(Disbelief, Eisblut, In Slumber, Thirdmoon, GodHateCode), guitarist Gerald Huber, (Collapse 7)bassist Daniel Lechner (The Cascades, ex-Lacrimas Profundere) and drummer Tomasz “Nefastus” Janiszewski (Belphegor, Fleshcrawl, Debauchery). If you hasn't heard of anyone other than Martin (or for that matter if you haven't heard of any of these bands other than Pungent Stench) your not alone. Neither have I so lets all jump into the shark (and zombie!) infested waters together. Names like Entombed, Autopsy, Dismember, Obituary, Deicide, Edge of Sanity and Gorefest are tossed out by the promo and who am I to argue right? After the tried and true "the dead are coming to life and attacking the living" opening we are throw into some zombie movie inspired extreme death metal with samples of the living dead and lyrics that you can actually make out here and there. Somewhat surprising considering this is brutal, old school death metal and all. So, with aggressive riffs and horror movie samples aplenty your treated to an album that is fine in and of itself even if not breaking any new ground. What do you honestly expect though originality? It is what it is and unless I'm just a tad off thanks to my cold coffee it isn't anything I haven't heard a thousand times before. I will say the guitar work is nice and all even if it never breaks out into anything you could grab hold of. So, I guess the verdict is if you like zombies and gore/death get this. If you just looking for the newest death band though I'd leave this living corpse alone and move on.