Festering Fuckhole Slop

Wow. This is really retarded. And that's ironic, because no more than twelve hours ago I was writing a positive review for goregrind band E.F.R.O., whose music was extremely retarded; but it accepted that fact and planned beforehand to prevent it from being boring. Think of it as fart jokes in the form of music. Well, as if to drive the point home, the next album I decided to review happened to be a split featuring Artery Eruption, one of the most notorious bands in the slam death metal scene due to the amount of poop getting flung in response to their music. Now every time I hear this statement, I think to myself: "No, it can't possibly be that bad. They have to be misunderstanding it somehow." And sometimes they are. Take, for example, Carnifex's The Diseased and the Poisoned. Sure, it's nowhere near great, but it's a lot better than most of the crap known as deathcore that jumps out of the toilet that flushes down ideas that desperately need to be discarded. But I'm getting off-topic. So yeah, sometimes these so-called "terrible" bands actually aren't that bad. 90% of the time, however, it seems the general public is right - the band they're talking about is shit. Enmity, Waking the Cadaver, new In Flames, Satanity, and the list goes on and on. So that's one more point for you, general public - you were correct in your belief that this is indeed terrible, terrible music. Of course, the mentality of brutal death metal usually is to make splits so that even if your band sucks ass, you can create a split with a great band so people will buy your music anyway; following this modus operandi, Artery Eruption have decided to be a leech to fellow slam death metal band Inhuman Dissiliency, and while ID is nowhere near as offensive to music as its parasite in this split, they are still a below-mediocre slam death metal act that won't do much to shock and amaze you, especially compared to the shit band with whom they're sharing a split.

Artery Eruption seem to have created this album under the impression that music can be infallibly great as long as it has a time signature and a riff that has been used less than two quadrillion times before. If they honestly believe this, I suggest they sign up to receive part of the revenue collected from the Help the Really Fucking Retarded and Deluded Fundraiser. Artery Eruption's guitarwork is never anything special: the slams are all typical "dun, dun, dun-dun-dun" chugging sequences, and although they are sometimes decent, more often than not they end up sounding like a parody of slam bands that don't suck. Then you toss in the guitarists' habit of sloppily playing pseudo-technical tremolos on the higher strings, which come across as so clumsy it's impossible to take seriously. On top of this craptacular guitar playing, you have the drumming, which is much better than the guitars but still below average. I'll give him this much: the drummer knows his shit, and the drumkit sounds nice. He makes good use of the cymbals, and it gives the music a lot of needed dissonance. His playing style is filltastic, as outside of the slams he never seems to ever be playing an actual beat, but this could just as well be pinned on the erratic, incoherent music that Artery Eruption have composed. It's not catchy, and it doesn't evoke any emotion from me, so for all intents and purposes this music is worthless.

Artery Eruption's vocalist is most definitely the high point of this extravaganza: his gutturals, though not low, have a bestial, rabid quality to them that not many brutal death metal vocalists can achieve. They are possibly the only thing that tries to combat the feeling of spatial emptiness Artery Eruption's music creates. On the other hand, you have the cricketesque vocals - essentially guttural deathcore brees, for those of you unfamiliar with the genre. And these are...undesirable, to say the least. Even as backup vocals, they come across as entirely annoying, and the music would greatly benefit from their absence. But even with all the flaws I've named so far, I haven't named the single greatest problem in Artery Eruption's music - the tone of the instruments. Artery Eruption's production is crappy, yes, and I can tolerate that. But at the same time, it feels as if every single instrument was recorded with an entirely different mindset. The end result is that though all the instruments are indeed playing the same song at the same tempo (or attempting to), it feels as if the overall sound makes every single element - guitars, drums, vocals - feel as if they're supposed playing a totally different genre. The guitar, in particular, sounds like it was tuned to play in some sort of garage-level punk rock band. Altogether, it hurts the music more than Artery Eruption's shitty amount of talent ever could. There is a cover at the end of Artery Eruption's side of the split, and I can tell, as it's at least three times as better as the songs supposedly written by AE. Still, with the crappy instrument playing, it's not worth listening to.

On the other hand, Inhuman Dissiliency isn't as much of a musical failure, but still doesn't show off anything gasp-worthy. They certainly appear to be more intelligent than Artery Eruption, both musically and vocabulary-wise. Whereas both bands are somehow fascinated by explosion of objects, as evident in both of their band names, ID have chosen a more poetic route with their description of the process. Their songs are also a bit more elegantly named: compare "Faggot Holocaust" to "Entangled in Abdominal Viscera" and tell me which band sounds less like it's composed of a bunch of retards. Sadly, the music is still relatively unintelligent; most of the music, like Artery Eruption's, is a bunch of mediocre, clichéd slams occasionally interrupted by a sudden blast section, comparable to Waking the Cadaver's infamous "Chased Through the Woods By a Rapist". This band, however, apparently has at least a small grasp on the concept of musical originality, so they've at least tried to keep the slams interesting by using variations in riffs and bass pedal beats every now and then, though it's only somewhat evident in "Extirpating the Disemboweled". "Entangled in Abdominal Viscera" is probably the highlight of this entire split, as it seems that Inhuman Dissiliency had a flash of genius while writing the song and actually wrote not one, not two, but THREE (!) decent riffs to use through out its four-and-one-half-minute length. The guitarwork is overall thirty times better than Artery Eruption's, and it actually sounds as if the guitarist specifically put their guitars in a tuning suitable to play slam death metal. The drums are programmed, and although they're decent, the cymbals have some of the most synthetic, annoying sounds I've ever heard in my life. It's usually tolerable, but there are some times where it makes you want to skip the song altogether.

Artery Eruption's vocalist is the only positive quality they have over Inhuman Dissiliency. ID's vocalist's gutturals sound surprisingly suppressed and weak, and struggle to be heard over the instruments at times. There are much more cricket vocals on ID's side of the split, and they're often used as standalone vocal tracks, almost never used as backing vocals for the gutturals as they should. They're just very weak in general. So while Inhuman Dissiliency sprint their hardest to make up for Artery Eruption's incompetence, they simply pass out from exhaustion inches from standards that keep me returning to a slam death metal band like Devourment. And speaking of Devourment, ID have contributed a cover to the legendary song "Babykiller" on this release, and believe me when I say it's nothing worth your interest. The whole band feels like they struggle to understand the morbid mood of the piece throughout the cover, and instead go for a more threatening, imposing feel, which falls on its face more often than it succeeds. The vocalist, in an attempt to sound more or less like Ruben Rosas, is more silent on this song than he is on the two original Inhuman Dissiliency songs, and he's near-impossible to hear until the second half of the song. Another problem with the vocalist on the "Babykiller" cover is that the vocalist has forgotten another element that made the old version so addictive: Ruben's contribution to the rhythm of the slams. On the original, he growls in a very catchy fashion along with the guitars; here, ID's vocalist simply growls out the lines as he remembers them. There are quite a few instances where the music stops abruptly as slams do, but when the music returns the listener is greeted with shitty bass drops that cause the song to reek of amateurism. Add that to the fact where the song is slowed down to the point where it can barely carry rhythm and you are left with the conclusion that this is simply not a cover worth anything.

Although Artery Eruption is a total failure and my best advice for them is to throw away their instruments and go work at Taco Bell, Inhuman Dissiliency seem to have a bit of redeeming quality in their music. "Entangled in Abdominal Viscera" is not a great song, but it shows this band can indeed create something decent if they put their mind to it. That being said, this split is in no way something that you need to hear. Go listen to some other slam death metal band: even pulling straws out of a hat, I'm sure you could find something better than this pair of embarrassments.

Scoring:
Artery Eruption: 7/50
Inhuman Dissiliency: 24/50
Total: 31/100

First band on this split album is Artery Eruption, the worse of the two. The production is god fucking awful, sounds like one big wall of sound blasting through your speakers. I know technically thats what brutal death metal is, but fuck at least make it interesting. From what I hear they need to fire their drummer, he's fucking up every single thing he hits. Everyone of the songs starts out with this lame bass drumming intro, you can't tell any of them apart. The guitarists bring nothing new to the genre, typical chug-chug riffing with the occasional boring breakdown. The vocalist has one of the worse growls I have ever heard, again though, it might just be the awful production but I doubt it.

Inhuman Dissiliency is up next, wasn't expecting much seeing how the first band blew large amounts of ass. And what do you know, they also suck. Well, it's not so much that they suck it's just that they sound like every other brutal death metal band out there. All of which are doing much better than these guys. Upon downloading the album the first thing I saw was the cover of Devourment's classic Babykiller which got me extremely excited. Only good thing about it is that the singer's growl resembles Wayne Knupp's from the original. Besides that though, terrible. It sounds like they slowed down the song tremendously. Their original songs are by no means worthless but they are also far from being good. The bass work is inaudible, the guitar work is laughable and the programmed drums sound missplaced. Like in the cover, the only redeeming factor is the singer who should really find a different band to better use his talent.

I only gave this album 20% because I like the album art. If you're a fan of the genre there are so many other bands doing it way better, avoid this at all costs.