Gradually Melted

If you’re into extreme brutal death metal. Then there’s a 99% chance you love or have at least heard of Deeds of Flesh. These guys are masters and legends in the brutal death metal scene, especially when it comes to the more technical aspects of the genre. They have a very strong and consistent discography. And in 1995 they released their debut EP “Gradually Melted”. A 4-track 14-minute steamroller of some of the best brutal death metal in the mid to late 90s.

For a debut EP, this band really came out swinging. This release is a nonstop punch to the skull that is constantly in your face and slamming you against a wall. And for this band being a trio at the time of this EP being released, they really made it work. Each member is extremely talented and writes fantastic songs.

This EP has a perfect production. Every single note and riff is heard perfectly, and each instrument sounds fucking gnarly as hell. The guitars have a nice fuzzy and buzzsaw edge to them, the bass sounds awesome and is prominently displayed in the mix. And goddamn those drums sound amazing, especially the kick drums and the snare. It’s got a nice blend of raw-ass production and a bit of good production. For a debut EP released in 1995, the mix sounds fucking fantastic. It’s not extremely polished, but it has enough of it to where each instrument is heard and sounds punchy as hell.

The musical aspect of this release is brutality and nothing else. There are a lot of blasting and extremely violent grooves that’ll make you go absolutely nuts. The vocals have a great balance and sound batshit crazy, while not sounding overdone and cringe. One thing I love about this release is how it has a very strong sense of groove and rhythm. For a very short EP, they made it count. Because each song is catchy and memorable.

The music also throws in some technical elements here and there. So it’s a perfect cocktail of pure brutal death metal mayhem. Tempos range from these extremely fast as fuck blasting sections to the more mid-paced chuggy grooves. You also get some slow parts but it’s mostly fast and mid-paced brutality from start to finish.

The guitars/bass have some really great and hooky sections when it comes to overall sound and songwriting. There are a ton of these gut-wrenching chuggy riffs and groovy bass lines. Everything flows perfectly and has a nice rhythm and variety. This style of brutal death metal is also where the technical aspects of the music come into play.

One of the best examples of how groovy this EP can be is the opening moments of the title track. That opening groove and double bass sections roll over you and beat you relentlessly. Like many of the greats in brutal death metal, it has a perfect balance of great musical talent, technicality, and straightforward corpse-smashing death metal.

Vocally this EP is nuts. The guitarist Erik Landmark (R.I.P), and the bassist Jacoby Kingston handle vocal duties. Erik has this great style of gutturals that sound abrasive and aggressive. While Jacoby has this style of higher raspy shrieks. The vocal trade-offs sound pretty gnarly and don’t sound silly. It reminds me of how Lividity do their vocals. You have the gutturals, you have the higher screams, and you balance/trade them off. While also layering the two sounds together to make them sound nasty. This EP does that formula well.

The drumming here is just as tight as everything else is. It’s blasting, catchy, and is written really well. There are a lot of head-smashed double bass sections and frantic blast beats. The sense of groove in the music makes the drums sound heavy and loud. They flow well with the guitars. Just like everything else the drums have some nice variations and are very rhythmic. It’s not all blast beats 24/7.

Two songs that are some of my favorite Deeds of Flesh songs are “Three Minute Crawlspace”. A very ruthless and groovy song that opens up this EP well with a very nice mid-paced hook. This rhythm allows the bass to shine and groove along with the music. And the other song is “Human Sandbags”. That title just screams metal and brutality to me. Every time I think of this EP that song title always gets stuck in my head.

This EP is the beginning of a very long and brutal career for the band. I’d say this contains some of Deeds of Flesh’s best songs, and it contains some of their tightest as well as their best-written music to date. For a first offering, this thing fucking rips and it’s extremely impressive. Not many bands can make their first EP or album as badass and as great as “Gradually Melted” is. So check this thing out if you want some catchy brutal death metal. Great shit.

Here we got Deeds of Flesh’s first offering and it’s short but measly by no means. Four songs of unyielding and gorey brutal death metal. Deeds of Flesh adds an element of merciless bloodlust to an already extreme form of music, less emotional and more mechanically hellbent on disfiguration, mutilation, and all those other lovely things. Hard to digest upon first listen, but if you have an ear for brutal/death metal, it’s not hard to see the musical intelligence and instrumental mastery offered here combined with relentless aggression.

Gradually Melted is cold-blooded but doesn't push the limits of brutal dm wherein it would sound like extremity for the sake of extremity. With constant variations in speed and technique in drums, vocals and riffs, Gradually Melted flows together real nice, not for a second coming off awkward or incomplete. No song sounds alike and no five seconds of a song within itself sounds alike; still the songs are somehow rhythmic and don’t sound like a series of randomass noises in the name of brutality. With a lot of brutal death metal especially in the recent decade any regard for the quality of music is lost and replaced by “how many different brutal techniques can we fit in one song,” not so here. Each effect and change of pace has its own rightful place within the song. Especially after you listen to this one enough times, like any other album you memorize all its little nooks n’ crannies but you also develop appreciation for this album’s explosion of abrasiveness without losing its musical capacity. Deeds of Flesh doesn’t squander a second for showy effects like minute-long belches or go-nowhere blasting or even gorey clips from movies. They pack the most intense and ungodly death metal into the few minutes they have given us here.

This ep ends just as abruptly as it starts and without wasting a second of its length you are left wanting more (thus needing to replay it or moving onto another selection of the never disappointing Deeds of Flesh catalog). That’s always a good sign of a good record. I don’t care how big a brutal freak you are, shit gets old after 50 minutes and usually requires generic movie clip intermissions; this is not an issue here. The satisfaction I get from a listen to Gradually Melted plus my respect for Deeds of Flesh’s “application” of brutality only grows with time and I’d recommend this to any (brutal) death metal fan.

Once again, since this disc is almost a decade old, I am forced to take it in the context of the time in which it was recorded. Let us consider that in the year 1995, "Slam" or Percussive Death Metal was very much in it's infancy. And where it did flourish...the deepest impacts were made by bands in the vein of Pyrexia and Suffocation. Then came Deeds of Flesh' landmark EP "Gradually Melted". A bit of a sleeper at first, although the influence of this recording echoes throughout the Death Metal of today. What's this?! A band from the west coast not bent on pure Autopsy worship? Hmm...Interesting indeed. Heaviness of this magnitude happens about as often as the members of Manowar have sexual encounters with persons not of the male gender (And that's not very often, folks). From start to finish, Gradually Melted delivers the goods, and with a snappy production to boot. Only problem I have with it is that it's a bit too short (just under 20 minutes, I believe). Good thing I didn't have to wait long before Trading Pieces came along, but that's neither here nor there. This CD is almost essential in any collection of Brutal Death Metal.