The Bowels of Repugnance

After brutal death metal pioneers released their classic debut Swamped in Gore, they come back two years later with The Bowels of Repugnance. This time around, the band went into a more raw and primitive direction with the production, as well as doing more blast beats and breakdowns than what you heard on Swamped in Gore. Not to mention that Swamped in Gore got the band a lot of attention and eventually signed with Metal Blade Records. With that said, I definitely prefer the production on Swamped in Gore, the band is showcasing energy on this album. Jeremy Wagner and Brian Griffin are an underrated guitar duo in death metal. While maintaining the brutal roots of the sound, a few acoustic interludes are included on this album, which showcases Jeremy Wagner's melodic influences from bands he loved such as Metallica.

Ryan Stanek's drum work is top notch. Doing more blast beats that are heavily inspired by grindcore. But the M.V.P. of the album is without question, Joe Ptacek. While his voice was more raspy on Swamped in Gore, he goes deeper and more demonic on this album and the rest of the albums for the band in the 90s. Lyrically speaking, it's the typical Broken Hope lyrics of gore, death, and gross things. However, "Preacher of Sodomy" is a track about priests raping children, which is an interesting change of pace, lyrically. The bass doesn't have quite the presence on this album compared to Swamped in Gore, which was a result of the more lo-fi approach.

The track "Hobo Stew" is much more of a death/doom song that include some melodic guitar lines, which another layer of darkness to the song. "Remember My Members" is a gold standard song for brutal death metal and would act as a slight influence on eventual slam death metal genre for its constant blasting and breakdown. "Felching Vampires" which is my favorite song of the album and is the closing track, has a lot going on. Tempo changes, melodic riffs, and a solid melodic guitar solo. The band is definitely going outside of the confines of brutal death metal and taking inspiration from their contemporary death metal of the day such as Death and Obituary as far and introducing subtle melody at times into their sound, without it overpowering their brutal vibe. Broken Hope is a band that deserves more respect for pioneering a style of death metal along with Suffocation that became a template for slam bands in the future.

Favorite tracks (excluding the melodic interludes):
Peeled
Hobo Stew
Preacher of Sodomy
Remember My Members
Felching Vampires

Relatively capable groovy/blasty death metal that sounds like early Lividity. It's not very interesting; at this stage in their career Broken Hope pulled off neither the grooves nor the blasts in any unusually good way, and this album is really just a retreading of death metal convention from start to end. The songs are rather unusually short, which is a bit different, and the incorporation of clean guitar interludes is somewhat interesting, but it's really a case of putting lipstick on a pig.

As previously stated, this sounds very similar to Lividity plus some early Cannibal Corpse; lots of atonal midpaced sections before going into grooves and blasts. The production is hollow and sort of distant, one of those cases where you feel like you always need to turn it up but are never quite able to hear everything you want. Vocals are a straight growl, which, like the rest of the music, are very one-dimensional in execution and placement. This is not an album with any surprises on it, and it's no wonder that the name Broken Hope is somewhat synonymous with stupid death metal fans who lack taste.

It's not a particularly bad album; it's simply mediocre and came out at the very beginning of death metal's slow slide into irrelevance before reemerging at the end of the millennium. The band's later works like 'Loathing', ironically released in 1997, arguably the absolute nadir for death metal as a genre, are much more worthwhile and genuinely interesting and unique works. This is simply filler and I don't particularly recommend it.