Human Boundaries

Stabwound was a band that seemed to occupy a very similar musical space- and fanbase- as another band: Visceral Bleeding. Oddly enough, both have been basically forgotten by now, but for a little while, they were pretty big names. Stabwound was the less popular of the pair by far, but 'Human Boundaries' does still have its fans here and there. Honestly though, I don't think forgetting this album is such a big deal: Stabwound was playing a style of death metal that was popular for maybe a year, so their demise was something of an inevitability. There goes the march of time steamrolling all beneath it.

Visceral Bleeding was more technical, faster, and more straightforward than this band. In contrast, Stabwound focuses a lot more on midpaced brutal death breaks that are frankly straddling so many fences it's difficult to see the grass. On one hand, you have the proto-slam style of Dyscrasia or mid-era Dying Fetus, but this is bounced off a very clear NY hardcore influence in the bouncy breaks which seem to form the majority of the music. Bits of Fleshgrind are apparent to in the tight, convoluted, palm-muted riffs, but the blasting sections seem a bit more modern; though I could say this is United Guttural in style, it's really not, as it brings a lot of the Swedish streamlining of song structures into the field as well. The problem with that is that the United Guttural style of brutal death is entirely based around chaos and unpredictability, and when you combine that with a Swedish sense of songwriting, you end up with something that's spastic but also predictable.

There are certain elements of this I like- the overwrought, absurdly piggish vocals are pretty awesome, and the drumming has just enough tasteful technicality to keep things moving along- but the majority of the music is too still. In a big reversal for me, the most interesting parts of this stuff are the Malignancy-style blast-and-fill passages, packed with sudden rhythm and riff changes that manage to flow pretty lucidly. But after a certain length of time, no matter what, the band drops into a midpace and just doesn't have the creativity or sense of groove to pull it off. The hardcore rhythms would probably be more effective if they didn't linger for such a long time- breaking them up with more blast beats would have worked, or maybe just varying the rhythms in those hardcore sections, but as it stands, they tend to sit around and not move the music to anywhere in particular.

A lot of people seem to like this- non-brutal death fans in particular- but it's never gripped me in the manner it seems to others. Visceral Bleeding is my preferred alternative, but I honestly think it's just that this album is pretty dated by now and never managed to hook me like it should. Buy it if you find it cheap and aren't a typical brutal death fan, but I honestly think this just doesn't have a whole lot to offer.

P.S. Is it just me or does this album have the goofiest tom sounds ever?

Ouch. This CD sounds rather like a blunt object covered in little sharp bits hitting you over the head. It’s sick, violent and clinically precise at the same time. Sure, that terminology could be used to describe a lot of stuff, but it’s painfully appropriate for Stabwound’s one and only full length album. Clocking it at the usual sub-half-hour length, the band bashes their way through 10 tracks of downtuned, guttural sickness, with a thick, powerful sound optimized for extreme violence. Every instrument is crystal clear, the drums having been blessed with a proper EQ job which allows the bass-drums to actually pulverize instead of merely clicking away in the background. There’s plenty of mixing up between intense blasting and crushing midpaced chunk riffs, with a bit of a hardcore influence poking through in the latter sections.

Naturally, Stabwound have opted to go for the “tortured farmyard animals” approach to vocals. For all their sick perversity, the lyrics are reduced to reading material only, as the vocalist abandons all diction in favour of a litany of grunts, inhaled pig-squeals and choked gurgled vomiting. Much in the path set down by Lord Worm of Cryptopsy, there’s absolutely no point trying to read along with the words, because you’ll get lost after half a verse. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, even the most simple line of lyrics comes out as “blurgh urghhh eek eek urrrrgh bleeeech”. It’s best to just ignore the lyrics (which are the usual sexual gore perversion and violent death stuff, including a lovely ditty about a man’s crotch being devoured by tapeworms. Splendid.) and let the vocals roll over you like a tank. Too bad they couldn’t keep the band together, but at least Stabwound has left this festering wound pressed to plastic to remind us that Sweden is still capable of creating some utterly disgusting death metal insanity.

Fuck.

I tried to use various tactics to ignore the fact that these guys are a death metal band from Sweden... largely using optomism and reminding myself that there are still SOME non-melodic keyboard-crap bands from Sweden.

For want of a better way of putting it, this strikes me almost like Dying Fetus style death metal, only ramped all the way up to 11 and covering Devourment/ Pustulated songs.

That's not even beginning to mention the guitars & riffing in this album.... Possibly because it's very much my kind of thing - what with being mixed with the guttural style vocals and occasional slam riffs - but also cause the pinch harmonics and squeals are used regularly yet comparitively so sparingly.


This is what makes me so fucking mad about this.... It's always the fucking interesting bands that end up splitting up either just after you've found out about them or before you can see them live.

Quite frankly I feel I will be in some debt to the friend that recommended this band to me, and whatever road the former members of Stabwound take, if it's anything like 'Human Boundariess', I for one will certainly be buckling in for the ride.

If you want death metal from Gothenburg that doesn't sound like Gothenburg death metal, Stabwound are the answer.
Admittedly there's more than a little debt to the influence of US-style brutal death and American guttural DM bands, but quite frankly in my honest opinion, there's far too few bands playing that sort of music as competently as Stabwound are on this album.

This is probably not one of those "highly constructive/ analytical" reviews that are cherished on here, but I think I made my point clear.
Get this fucking album!