Appetite for Flesh

"I think there's one thing that every metal fan can agree on: Zombies are definitely metal. Since that's the case, it was very smart for The Zombi to name itself that way and make their songs about horror movies and gore. From what I can tell, this is the first offering from The Zombi, and I stumbled across them because of a friend who showed me their album, and the cover was awesome. I basically said “Hey, cool, a head in a fridge! Can't go wrong with that.” and it was the beginning of my lust for flesh so to speak.

This is just your standard four-song EP so labels can start to notice you, and these guys should be noticed. There's five members in the band right now, but only three recorded this EP. The three being Paavo Härkönen on guitar, Ville Vuorinen on vocals and Aki Kuusinen (SinKing, Yearning) on drums. These four songs were originally done with a drum machine, but they contracted Aki to do some real drumwork on this EP, and I'm glad. He is a monster behind the kit when he wants to be but utterly controlled when necessary, a great mixture of brutality and sincere skill. Paavo's riffs are all different from one another, but are connected through fierce determination and precision. There's heavy death metal tones with even a slight thrash undertone in there at times. Ville does the usual death metal growls and his voice fits perfectly with the guitar and drum tones, setting you up for a headbangingly awesome time.

There's also definitely the horror movie influence. Just look at the song “Lawnmower Massacre” for a moment. I'm sure they're referring to the infamous scene in Dead Alive, and hell, in the middle of the song when they slow it down you can hear the soundbites of zombies groaning and moaning while being butchered by a lawnmower, which is totally metal as well. The same thing goes with “Reanimated”, which surely must be inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's tale called “Re-Animator”, and that was a damn good read. The other two songs I'm not so sure of, but that isn't to say that they don't rock you.

This is a very entertaining first step for The Zombi, filled to the brim with horror movie sewage, blood and guts and torturous screams along the way. Hopefully some lucky label picks up this band and pays very close attention to what they can do."

Originally for Metal Stomp.com