Deceased

More 'meat and potatoes' American death metal here. I discovered Accidental Suicide a couple of years ago. I remember listening to this album a couple of times before shelving it, planning to return to it one day. These guys have since been on my list of bands to investigate in more detail. I guess the writing was on the wall for my relationship with this album. I wasn't desperate to listen to it when I first heard it, and I'm not desperate to keep it in my rotation now either. Some things just don’t stick.

The band's only album ("Deceased") is solid, but it won't entice death metal neophytes, nor should it excite death metal veterans. The band squirm through a bunch of formulaic, grubby death metal songs over the course of 45 minutes. There are occasional faster sections that resemble Morbid Angel (such as the beginning of opener "Misery Hunt"), but most of the music is on the slower side. The predominant influence was probably Autopsy. This influence rears its head from about a minute of the opening song, and the stench dominates from that moment on. I could highlight other filthy death metal bands, like Tiamat ("Sumerian Cry"), Asphyx ("Embrace the Death), or the emergent Finnish scene (Abhorrence, Rippikoulu, Disgrace), but “Mental Funeral” is still the closest reference point.

What lets Accidental Suicide down is their lack of song-writing acumen. They succumb to a common problem of lesser death metal bands; their songs don't really go anywhere. The music is little more than a sequence of sections without much of a narrative. The best moments (like "Morbid Indulgence") offer some creepy melodies that remind me of Autopsy’s classic second album. "Method of Murder" has a cool, trippy section where things slow down and open up. "Unknown" has some nice fast riffs at the beginning. Beyond that, the songs tend to segue together. Little else stands out. The album works fine as background listening because the riffs are good enough, but it doesn't have the hooks to draw you in.

One of the major problems is the drumming. This guy was no Chris Reifert. He could do the basic stuff but he mangles some of the fills here. This leads to clumsy transitions that ruin the atmospheric effect. There is a section near the beginning of "My Dangling Corpse" that is woefully out of time, and the song never recovers from this poor start. The production on the drums is odd. The snare sounds like it was played in a different room. It floats (loudly) above the mix and doesn't anchor anything down (see "Flesh Parade" for example). The guitar tone is passable, if a little dry. It sounds similar to Viogression's debut album from the previous year (which was also produced by Eric Greif). Any gripes about the drumming could have been eased with a fuzzier production that smoothed the edges (as often happened in Finland).

This album is a decent listening experience. I don’t mind it. Old school death metal junkies will find something of interest here. I don't think I'll return to it any time soon. There is so much great death metal out there that I can't see much use for "Deceased". Why would I bother listening to this when I can blast something like "Mental Funeral" or "Beyond the Immortalized Existence"? Exactly.

I can't remember how I stumbled upon this band. It might have been some years ago using the random band feature in the site, but the point is that back then I heard this release completely and by the other day I had forgotten about it completely, I couldn't remember a single riff. So, an hour before writing this review, I decided to sit down and listen to the whole album again, and I'm listening right now as I write these words because I entirely forgot it just a minute after it finished. The first thing I've got to say about this release, is that it's pretty damn forgettable, as you might have guessed (at least for me), but it doesn't mean it's bad, let me explain:

Deceased presents us with ass-kicking tracks, all of them being solid (yet a bit generic for today's standards) death metal, which is mixed with some doom metal, which results in mid-tempo death with some heavy, slow parts. Most riffs are based around 5th/power chords and tremolo picking, most songs mixing some half-tempo sections with heavy usage of power chords, reminiscent of, obviously, doom metal, and somewhat-faster (but still not high-tempo'd) sections with aggressive riffs involving, as I've already stated, mainly tremolo picking and simple 5th chords progressions. The guitarists also make use of arpeggios in some songs such as "Morbid Indulgence" as a mean of creating atmosphere and sticking to the doom-side of the music, and they also play some artificial/pinch harmonics here and there in some riffs, but that's rather rare. The riffs are somewhat boring and repetitive, there isn't too much innovation or experimentation really, but this was released back in a time when death metal was still developing as a genre, so I can't be too harsh with it.

Apart from the riffs, there are some guitar solos in some songs, which to my liking are kinda bad, as they are mostly senseless shredding and tend to fall out of key, creating dissonance with the rest of the instruments are sound like ass, but I can't actually complain much about this because it's death metal and who the fuck cares about dissonance in an extreme genre, but I'd still rather hear a somewhat good, well-thought solo, over a senseless shred or whammy-bar randomness put there to fill an apparent void caused by a lack of ideas from the guitarists as to what play there (I guess). Overall, the lead guitar work in this album isn't nothing to be amazed by, it's quite mediocre to be honest, as there are almost no licks of riffs played by the lead guitar, and there's almost no harmonization in most riffs, which would have come great with those tremolo-based ones. As a side note, the lead guitar tone is awful and it can barely be heard in many parts

The drums aren't this release's main fort, all the contrary, they are, in my opinion, the worst thing in the whole album. While the drummer is decent and can play well, there's a serious lack of variety in the beats the drummer plays, the fills are too basic and predictable, and in various parts you can clearly hear how the drummer fucks up and either falls behind or gets ahead the rest of the band and has to compensate for it, and at times he might miss a cymbal or something and play it off-beat; I've heard worse drumming in the past and this is an entire mile ahead of the best of the worst I've heard, but in my opinion, this kind of drumming isn't ideal for a professional recording such as this one.

The bass is pretty much inaudible to me, so I can't comment on it. The vocals are decent, but nothing else, just your average death metal growls, a little higher-pitched than the common growl, but pretty generic overall. The lyrics just talk about nice and friendly stuff, such as brutally murdering someone, depictions of a dying person, going to hell... you know, every-day stuff.

The sound quality is decent, not great, it didn't age to well, but for a 1992 record is good enough. Maybe whoever mixed this should have put more bass and increase the guitar solos volume a bit, because the solos are almost inaudible, and I can't hear the bass or the bass drum at all; of course this might be due to by headphones, but I can clearly hear these things in other recordings, so maybe I'm right.

This album is decent, I'd even say it's good, but not awesome in my opinion. It's extremely boring, it lacks good and interesting riffs, and after hearing it three times I still keep forgetting about it, but it's still somewhat of a decent listening experience; maybe a big death metal fan will find this as a masterpiece, but it's definitely not one for me. I do like it, but I couldn't bring myself to listen to it for a fourth time because at that point I'd be forgetting other stuff apart from the songs themselves.

Quit your job, sell everything you own, ditch your girlfriend (or boyfriend), disown your family, and castrate yourself---then immediately go and buy this record if you don't already have it. Finding it will be difficult, to be sure, as it does not seem to have been re-released since its initial unleashing in 1992, and my friends and I are quickly buying up all of the original-pressing, unopened copies we can find. This is one of the creepiest, most eerie death metal albums ever recorded.

The overall aesthetic combines an unavoidable sense of horror with a weird sense of mystery, as if you're waking up in a confused stupor, in a room filled with greenish rotting corpses, with no idea where you are, how you got there, or what your name is. About the only thing that is clear from this album is that we are all going to die, and no matter what, you are completely helpless against this. The circumstances of your own death are wholly beyond your control---and they are likely to be gruesome and weird. Hell yes.

This is an album for those who love---from the bottom of their heart---the sounds of early-1990s death metal. It is a great album for death metal beginners and veterans alike.

The guitars move quite quickly throughout the record, but the overall tempo of the songs is mediated by the drums, which run from slow to mid-tempo, with only a few fast parts. The strings utilize a foggy, blunt tone that is fuzzy without being ear-piercing or unclear. The bass is low and deep, with blunt attack and no punch (likely the bassist uses fingers rather than a pick). Add to this some vocals that rely on quick jumps from high-pitched shrieks to guttural growls in the same syllable, and the net effect is a sound that is gentle enough to convince you to let your guard down, yet for this reason manages to infect you with absolutely sickening melodies and tones.
Sickening is just the right word, too: the songs make you feel like you're vomiting endlessly into an abyss filled with rotting green corpses, and I mean that in a good way.

The album is therefore a real headbanger. You won't find overwhelming blast-beats and vein-popping snarls, but rather some good songs that allow you to fully drink them in rather than overpower your ears by sheer virtue of speed and volume. That said, the songs are still simple enough so as not to be ostentatious.

There are some moments on the album that will make any red-blooded metalhead burst into gore-obsessed giggles. The vocals themselves are hilarious in many songs, and just make you want to bang your head
to a pulp against the nearest concrete slab. Notable gems include "My Dangling Corpse," which ends with a sound clip of flowing water apparently meant to symbolize blood draining across a floor, and the first few songs: "Misery Hunt," "The Life I Hate," and "Morbid Indulgence" are a real treat.

To do this album justice, I suggest sitting in a dark room with a few of your closest friends, surrounded by choice intoxicants, and perhaps some appropriate props (melted candles, blood red if possible, and ceramic or actual human skulls). Get it on vinyl if you can. Then turn up the volume, abandon all hope, and prepare to have your arms hacked off just above the elbow.

This is one of the real gems of the genre, and is not to be missed. If you love that eerie early 1990s death metal sound, this is the album for you.