| Reviews for Gruesome Malady's Infected with Virulent Seed |
| So goddamn good. - 90% |
| Written by Noktorn
on November 1st, 2009
|
| I guess if you want to get right to the point it's that if you like goregrind and don't own this album you should purchase it immediately. I mean, it's really not just that 'Infected With Virulent Seed' is sick, weird, and wrong, because there's plenty of bands that do that, but this album is sicker, weirder, and wronger than almost anything else out there, matching up with luminaries like Lymphatic Phlegm, Paracoccidioidomicosisproctitissarcomucosis, and Blue Holocaust in weirdsickwrongness. I guess the closest comparison is Lymphatic Phlegm, but really Gruesome Malady are in a league of their own; really nothing sounds quite like this. There's a lot of parallels to noisier, more deranged goregrind bands like Last Days Of Humanity here even though a lot of the riffing is out of a more death metal school. Not to say that you could necessarily tell at first listen; the guitars, like everything else in the production, are coated in a sickly, sewerlike drench of distortion and reverb, leaving a lot of the music muddled and verging on incoherent (in the best way possible). The riffs, played from guitars which seem to be tuned to somewhere around Z flat, are wildly bizarre, much like Lymphatic Phlegm but with the strange '70s influences replaced instead with late Gorguts-style abstract weirdness, with sudden bursts of dissonant chords popping in out of nowhere, much like the frantic keening of a solo which might be around for thirty seconds or half of one depending on how the band feels at the moment. The music has an immensely spontaneous feel to it which is essentially impossible to replicate deliberately. Despite this spontaneity, there's also a bizarrely mechanical edge to this music bringing to mind Catasexual Urge Motivation. The drumming (ostensibly real but almost certainly programmed) etches out long strings of blast beats collapsing into abrupt fills, not necessarily crafted appropriately for whatever riff might be going on at the time. These rigid, uncompromising rhythms tend to work in tandem with the ultra-rhythmic, quite technical riffing to create a pulsing wave of biomechanical sound that periodically disintegrates into noisier, more chaotic territory. The vocals are a big, blunt, ultra-distorted and pitch-shifted instrument layered in slower patterns wherever the drums are; they're just another layer of noise, really, and I imagine that lyrics, if present, were an afterthought. Like a lot of goregrind, your enjoyment of this depends heavily upon your enjoyment of the aesthetic more than individual riffs or structural ideas. That's not to say that this album lacks those things entirely; the guitar melodies are very alien and interesting and the songs are compact and move in exciting directions. But none of that is really going to override the fact that this music is essentially a quickly-moving wall of sludge which batters you over and over again for a half hour. However, for those that can stomach the sound of this sort of thing, this is just a great release and one I can listen to over and over again without a trace of boredom. Highly recommended to any and all goregrind fans and especially those who enjoy weirder, more atmospheric incarnations of the genre. |
| Good Music, Crappy Recording - 70% |
| Written by optimuszgrime
on April 1st, 2008
|
| Man, I have never heard anything resembling this before. The guitar sound and playing style is absolutely unique, no one plays like this at all. There are some elements of Carcass in that there are very short leads put in at random places during the riffs, and the riffing sometimes resembles bands like LDOH and other gore grind bands, but for the most part, they stick to their own formulas. Which is pretty incredible because gore grind is a very highly formulaic genre. The main problem with this recording is the terrible recording quality and the drums. The recording quality is bad, but not because it is basement or noisy or anything like that, it is just a bad mix. The guitars a re way too loud, the vocals are distorted and gurgly, but you cannot tell what is happening in the vocal department for the most part. The drums sound like a drum machine, a particularly crappy one at that, but it says here on the website and on their won correspondence that they have a live drummer. If this is the case then they must have been recorded on v-drums or some shit, I have no idea, but they do not sound like a person is playing them, other than the fact that there are sometimes syncopation problems. That could just be the result of crappy programming, but I doubt that. Anyhow, the vocals when audible are real toilet water gurgling, nothing else, and although a bit one sided, they are pretty sweet. But the guitar is what takes the cake, I have seriously never heard riffing like this. It is psychopath riffs played pretty fast, but at the same time, there are mellower riffs, but they all stay intense. Not so much shredding, not even so much trem picking, at that, mostly just weird harmonics and even weirder off time riffing, combined with the aforementioned Carcass type leads. Very interesting playing style, unparalleled, too bad the mix all but ruins this recording. Seriously, it is a chore to listen to this on headphones, although with speakers they sound a lot better, if you turn the bass all the way up, because there is none of it on the recording. So if you can get passed some weird recording and crappy drum sound, you will be treated to a unique gore fest, imaginative and weirder than anything else out there today. |