Septical Stomach-Pumped Remnants

I think that blurb from the booklet sums up the appeal of this one-and-done Wisconsin death metal band better than any review ever could, but that would be a pretty short review, so I'll go into a bit more detail.

This is one of those weird old quasi-slam bands from the early 2000s--that awkward timeframe after Internal Bleeding and Devourment, but before the stylistic homogenization spearheaded by Cephalotripsy et al--who probably just proudly considered themselves a braindead brutal death metal group and nothing else. It's kinda debatable whether they're genuinely slam, or if they only qualify as slam in retrospect, but anyway, who cares? It's very groovy stuff, there's about 4 or 5 breakdowns per song, yet it's also rather finessey and technical with lots of breakneck riff transitions, and plenty of tremolo madness between the "slams". The slams themselves don't follow the "Liege of Inveracity" template either--you get lots of speedy shuffling Cannibal Corpse type breaks, a couple crookedly bluesy, creepy-crawly Autopsy-ish moments, etc. The influences are rather eclectic as far as brutal death metal goes, but it all comes together into a singularly macabre frenzy.

It helps, by the way, that they can play their asses off. Note the drummer--slightly showoffy, capable of amazing speed in the double bass department, yet he has tons of swing and feel. Fun, creative fills all over the place in this thing. You get a couple haunting, melancholic lead guitar parts here and there too, another vestigial trace of brutal death metal as it sometimes sounded before the ubiquity of Devourment clones (on one hand) and Defeated Sanity clones (on the other hand).

The cherry on the sundae is the vocals, which are some of the oddest you'll find in slam/brutal death metal--and that's saying something. They're sort of a mix of guttural cricket chirps and dry, rattling predator croaks, a bit like Clean Flesh, yet more monotone and bizarre. Not a single word is pronounced, the vox just breathe the scent of carrion and armpits all over the songs, and add an extra rhythmic dimension. Some will hate them, but I find them incredibly entertaining in how radical and stark they are.

It's a very loud album, and one look at the waveforms reveals it's sadly quite brickwalled. Yet, somehow it sounds good. The mix relegates about 80% of its space to the bass and that ridiculously nasty, crunchy guitar, with drums and vocals in the back--audible, but never crowding anything. With the mix being so guitar-forward, it gives you plenty of time to bask in how good the tone is--kinda scooped but nevertheless warm, rich & vibrant, pleasantly squeaky, and utterly ripping during the palm muted parts. The incredibly fitting mix, plus the focus on midpaced stop/start riffing with little moments of silence between the chugs, ends up giving the impression of dynamics (although there are almost none).

A slightly important note, there's another version of this album (basically unreleased, aside from one CD-R in 2009 called "Vindictive Addiction to Violate") floating around online which features the songs in a rawer rehearsal form. There's nothing wrong with it, but unfortunately, that release is often mistagged as this album on p2p networks and even on youtube. So if you aren't hearing the album in physical form, there's a chance that you're not even hearing the right version. Never underestimate humanity's ability to fuck up incredibly basic things.

While you're never gonna hear anybody but the most diehard brutal death metal fanatics reference this curiosity, it's a personal classic for me, and doesn't deserve its obscurity. The best mishmash of Internal Bleeding, Devourment, Clean Flesh, Disgorge and Autopsy ever recorded... probably.

Well, 'Molesting The Decapitated' did come out four years before this, and Internal Bleeding certainly had a career before this was even a twinkle in its daddies' eyes, and the whole idea of 'slam' wasn't really a mysterious or unheard one at this point, but I still see 'Septical Stomach-Pumped Remnants' as a sort of proto-slam album. You know, where fairly regular brutal death/grind bands put something approximating slams in their songs without really knowing what to call them or what they were there for, just that they sounded heavy and provided a nice break between blasts for the instrumentalists to recover? It falls prey to a lot of the same issues; it gets a little confused at times, unsure of exactly what to play or how to keep things interesting, doesn't know how to transfer from a groove to a blast properly, you know the drill. At the same time, though, the album manages to be entertaining despite its pitfalls, and while I'm not entirely sure why it has a sort of Incestuous-type canonization in the more oldschool brutal death scene, it has its place as a formative and solid album.

The song structure of just about every track on the album can be summarized as the following: blast, breakdown, go to step one. There's a lot that can be done with that; it can be surprisingly intricate, well composed, cleverly paced. None of that is really here. A breakdown on 'Septical Stomach-Pumped Remnants' is generally begun by just stopping a blast beat and going directly into the groove, consequences or pacing be damned. It makes for an altogether abrupt and kind of weirdly-paced listening experience, like that of a local band suddenly given a decent amount of recording money but still trying to find their feet stylistically. The band is comfortable with blasting and abrupt, technical fills, but not so much with the slams, which often come off as a little half-formed. There's some surprisingly mature moments which use very modern styles of rhythmic variation to keep a slam going even though in essence they're playing the same riff, but I think these moments are arrived at somewhat accidentally.

The vocals and the drums really carry this since most of the riffs are kind of forgettable when they're not just being used as a blunt instrument syncing up with the bass drums. The vocals are almost absurdly wet and slurring, certainly some of the more 'brutal' (if that's the word you'd use) for their time, and the drumming is pretty fun and reminds me a bit of what Digested Flesh would do just a year later on their full-length, with a certain amount of funk and playful bounce giving a bit more life to riffs which on their own come off as rather sterile. The production is pretty bottom-heavy and seems more reminiscent of older styles of death metal production; mids are overly scooped and the guitar tone is a little wonky and synthetic. I suppose there's enough bass to do what's necessary but a bit more depth would be appreciated.

The slim running time is pretty beneficial; by the time the last track rolls around this is usually wearing on me a fair amount and the band knows that it's time to gracefully exit. So goes the rest of the album; it's decent if oddly executed but eventually you want something with some more richness to it. Nevertheless, it's fun while it lasts and stands out as a sort of curiosity for its time that shouldn't be entirely forgotten, though it's probably a twice-a-year listen for the most part.

Four sickos from America's dairyland playing guttural brutal death metal. That's pretty funny. But I guess nothing out of the ordinary as we all know both Dahmer and Gein both hail from Wisconsin... This album actually surprised me... I thought these guys, after releasing a killer split with Ohio's sickass Dislimb would, for lack of a better word, "drop the ball on their full-length"... my skepticism was crushes after downloading this from the band's website. The riffs have lots of groove and there's even a few leads! This album actually reminds me of the Skinless' "Foreshadowing Our Demise" riff-wise, but with SLAMS...not weak ones like later Internal Bleeding. Only difference, the riffs are more varied and tend to have a LOT more groove than that of Skinless (And the vocalist doesn't suck). The drummer blasts, blasts and blasts...while there are slower parts. The best part of the album is the vocals, and boy what a vokillist he is...he spews gore vomits, shrieks, a few barks, and belches... Also, another part of this album is the samples, not stupid zombieflick samples over-and-over like Mortician, but hilarious samples, with people like, getting their ass kicked for making fun of potheads, for example: "I only camee here to do two things, man; kick some ass and drink some beers, looks like we're almost out of beer"...lol . At any rate, check these cheeseheads' album out. It's sicker than a SARS-infested AIDS clinic!