Mindloss

That characterization fits first Gorefest album pretty good. As I was already a fairly experienced death metal listener and Gorefest beginner fan before first getting to know this album, I've found nothing sparking and catching your attention. If there were some approaches, they slip away in rather comedic ways. Yes, the album is not short, and there were some really decent places like Frank Harthoorn's solo on "Confessions of a Serial Killer" or "Putrid Stench of Human Remains" - but that's not much in comparison to what you'd expect considering rather high album score there. The advances of later death metal acts of the Netherlands like Acrostichon on "Engraved in Black" or Altar in "Youth Against Christ" leave this album behind with a gap big enough to not be overlooked.

If I had to choose one certain hit song there, my idle choice is "Tangled in Gore" - a bit mushy and mid-tempoed, it sounds nice overall but poor Alex van Schalk's solo ruins its buildup. Another popular song worth mentioning is "Horrors in a Retarded Mind". Even though re-recorded Fear EP version is cooler and clearer, especially with newer, trademark Jan-Chris vox, I'd choose the 1990 demo version. It's kinda raw but for a demo it's very coherent. The spooky guitar harmonics and van Schalk's solo sounds way better in the demo. Alex managed to butcher such a simple solo, in the Mindloss track it sounds like kid's plastic piano running out of battery charge. Jan-Chris de Koeijer growls way better on a demo, too. If the demo version sounds menacing, the clearer sound reveals slightly vulnerable and rookie sound of it. There was a lot of roomspace to improve, and Jan-Chris made sure he'll use the opportunities. False album showed drastic improvement of bassist's vocal abilities.Snare sounds a bit "woody" and too loud. Mark Hoogerdoorn's drum work sounds decent but any comparison with Ed Warby's creative drumming on later albums would obviously be meaningless. An English sound wizard Colin Richardson was the producer for this album, but honestly there's barely any specific comments I can give about his work. It's not perfectly solid, but most of my concerns and dislikes are not connected with his job.

The only positively positive thing about the album is the lyrics. The album's menu is full of raw and tough-to-digest gory cuisine. The band also stuffed it with some rhetoric questions inside the songs, like in the "Mental Misery" track, which is the only one to have a political message, this song all lonely and alienated from all those gross violence and perversion tales. So to any carnivorous death metal fanatics this album is recommended with mandatory booklet read-along. Those song names like "Loss of Flesh" or "Tangled in Gore" are still among my favorites. These spoiled meat schnitzels are just as nauseous and stinky as they are gourmet in their nature.

So, in conclusion, we can say that the first effort of future rock stars is flawed and the future Gorefest albums show significant improvements on all directions, but it's definitely worth the attention if you like the genre more than your darling. And I can definitely agree with the previous review - check out them goshdarn demos! Because they are failry nice-sounding (Delirium's Zzooouhh has somehow worse sound even though it was recorded with full blown studio capabilities by well-known sound guru Han Swagerman Sr.), so there's no reason to be all prudish.

Originally written for https://www.darkside.ru/album/4377/

“I prefer their demos” is a common (if slightly irritating) phrase used by death metal purists. It has some validity though. All your favourite death metal bands from the 80s and 90s built their reputations on demos, long before they thought about releasing an album. The best tapes from those days gained international renown after being traded by other bands, collectors and scenesters. The reason death metal music exists at all is thanks to the success of the early tape-trading scene. To ignore demos is to ignore the bedrock of the genre.

Some great death metal bands could never recreate the magic of their demos with their albums. To my mind, Gorefest are the ultimate example. Their two early demos (“Tangled in Gore” and “Horrors in a Retarded Mind”) showcase some of the most barbaric, gutsy and feral slabs of death metal you will ever hear. Everything about those tapes is pure sledgehammer brutality. They have catchy songs, great riffs and hooks everywhere. They are pretty much death metal heaven. If you've not yet heard them then stop reading this review and go and listen to them right now.

Gorefest's debut album "Mindloss" is a testament to the strength of those demos. Opener “Mental Misery” is the only new song here. The rest of the album is comprised of all eight songs from the demos. Taken at face value, “Mindloss” is an enjoyable, above average old-school death metal record, the playing is solid, the songs are good, there is plenty of decent riffing and soloing. All the hooks are still here. The difference between this and the demos is that everything has been tweaked and cleaned up, the performances are tighter and better rehearsed. The production is clean by the standards of the time.

Here lies the problem. It is impossible to listen to this album without thinking about the demos. The earlier versions of these songs were living, breathing monstrosities, oozing from your speakers like some maggot-infested creature from the primordial mud. On "Mindloss", these same songs sound like museum pieces, failing to evoke any kind of basal response. Listen to the section in the middle of “Tangled in Gore” (starting at about 2:25 on the album version). This is the sound of a band constricted and constrained, no longer able to embrace it's inner ugliness. The horrifying blurred images and impressionistic 'haze' of the demos have been replaced by clean lines. "Mindloss" has no soul.

When I first heard this masterpiece, late 1991 to early 1992, I was very impressed by the unrelenting brutality of the music exposed by this dutch band, and after 27 years I´m still listening to this album frequently and it gives me goosebumps every time that I hear it; so, what makes this album so special ??? First of all, and definitively the highlight of the entire album, THE vocals, Jan-Chris de Koeijer simply destroys everything with his monstrous growls, what a performance !! The man is literally a beast, a god, with a low growl so vicious, infectious, sounds like he is vomiting his innards towards the mic; one of the most impressive vocal deliveries that I´ve ever heard, belonging to the Olympus of death metal vocals there with Schuldiner in Leprosy, Barnes in Butchered/TOTM era, Frank Mullen in Efiigy of the Forgotten, Van Drunen in Consuming Impulse and some more.

The music itself takes a simplistic approach, with heavily distorted guitars, and riffs using mostly power chords and tremolo picking, with a style somewhat similar to early Autopsy and swedish death metal from that era; I´m not a guitarrist myself nor a musician, only a person who likes death metal so much, so I´m not someone who will discuss about tecnique, it´s far beyond my limits, but the riffs are so catchy, so memorable, that this is an album that surely will stick in your mind forever once you give it a listen. By the time I heard it, it was the first time that I ever listened to Gorefest, and I haven´t any idea of their existence, over the years I listened to their demos and although they sound even more putrid I prefer the sound in the album.

Drums are not overly technical , basic skank beat played very fast, gives the music a sense of desperation, an asphyxiating feeling, the heavy distortion on the bass guitar helps so much to give that feeling. The atmosphere on this record is so sick, it reeks of rottenness, you can almost smell the rancid odour of decomposing corpses through the songs, whose lyrical aspect is the typical subject of death metal at the time: Gore, necrophilia, death, suicide, in most of the songs the lyrics are very short.

Best songs? Tangled in Gore and Confessions of a serial killer, they are so heavy and catchy, that you will be headbanging instantly.

Gorefest began their career with the 1991 album Mindloss, and while it's not exactly an obscure gem - you rarely hear it mentioned alongside other classics of European death metal. I've no idea why that is, as I consider this to be likely the best death metal to ever come out of the Netherlands. The best way to describe it would be a fusion of the tight songwriting of Death, the dark atmosphere of Autopsy, and the crushing brutality of Bolt Thrower, all layered under a very thick, brutal production job which complements the riffs perfectly.

Vocally, this album contains some of the most vicious and brutal death growls ever put to tape - Jan-Chris de Koeijer sounds like a fucking monster, his vocals are simply inhuman, there's so much strength and power behind his voice that it sounds like he's about to vomit up his vocal chords any minute. On this album, the primary lyrical theme is the typical gore and horror, though it's first track "Mental Misery" showcases a completely different approach, instead focusing around social commentary, a theme which would become more prevalent on the following albums. The gore lyrics are quite silly (ie: "Bisexual lust, low way of life" & "Sluts masturbatuing with bones of the deceased", as well as the fantasric song title 'Horrors in a Retarded Mind') and it makes sense that they changed it for their later releases, but nonetheless these lyrics tend to exude a kind of dark & morbid sense of humor, which I feel fits perfectly with the dark atmosphere of the album.

The songwriting is also top-notch, the songs are typically on the longer side but never feel excessive or unnatural, everything works to the benefit of the brutality and the songs are just as long as they need to be. There's naturally a lot of fast-paced stuff on here, but also plenty of slower, more crushing mid-paced riffs which provide a nice contrast and keep things from feeling repetitive or boring. In some songs, like the fantastic and anthemic 'Foetal Carnage', there are some nice, natural harmonic guitar flourishes (namely during the verse riff) which adds a unique touch, something I don't think I've ever heard on a death metal album.

All in all, this is a fantatic album and something I'd absolutely recommend to anyone who has a passion for old school death metal.

I'm one of those wretched people in the metal scene who rarely likes a genre without an adjective in front of it. I want my death metal slamming or technical or artificially brutal, my black metal raw or symphonic, and my doom funereal. It's for this reason that I find it very odd I'm attached to this album as much as I am; after all, this is very clearly plain 'death metal' without any obsessive categorization to help me expect what to hear in it, meaning I'll have to listen and determine for myself. It was a harrowing experience, to be sure.

This is really, really, remarkably good oldschool death metal, and in a lot of ways is exactly what oldschool death metal should be. It's most certainly death metal and makes few if any concessions to those who need everything to sound like the first Death album to get their daily intake of thrash; there are skank beats and the occasional fulminating thrash riff, but there's much more Autopsy plod than Possessed to be found. The vocals are extremely brutal, with a sort of Bolt Thrower guttural roar to them. It's also very definitely dark music and feels much more seriously ominous than most; some of the riffs are downright horrific (and of course extremely memorable due to it). There's not much that's extremely creative or original about it; it's sort of a 'Darkness Descends' for death metal, taking the basic elements and intensifying them past where they probably should be.

Every song on here feels like a sledgehammer to the goddamn face; it's ridiculously brutal, much more brutal than most 'brutal death metal' by virtue of its claustrophobic, hideous production and immensely downtuned... everything, it seems, even the drums sound like they've been pitch-shifted a notch. I would say that a specific element makes this album, but the fact is that it's ALL excellent; at one point I'd be saying it's the mangled, roaring vocals that define it, then perhaps the riffs like a tank over skulls the next, or the subtle but haunting bass, and then I'd probably do what I'm doing now: saying 'fuck it' and just demanding you listen to this. Each element is almost perfectly in place. It uses all the typical elements of death metal to their best; some sections are Autopsy sludge, others uptempo Obituary or Jungle Rot numbers, and still others deviant Swedeath chugs, and each is as stunning as the last.

This is the sort of music I hear when I think of the term 'death metal'; it practically exudes the words themselves. It's archetypal yet crushing and unique through how simply well-constructed it is, much in the vein of early Dismember or Obituary. I can't imagine this album being like anything other than what it is. Each track is extraordinary and then some such as 'Tangled In Gore' go above and beyond it to become instant classics. The riffs are unbelievably blood-drenched and the vocals simply must have been provided by some burly, skinless monster; I'm not sure that this music could be made by humans.

Anyway, it's a classic and it's pretty amazing to think these guys turned into a rock band a bit down the road. Wonders never cease.

One of the complaints about Mindloss when it came out was the fact that it only contained one newly written song. The other 8 were familiar demo songs. Still all their songs were present with a decent production and CD quality instead of our worn out tapes, so who were we to complain?

The new song ‘Mental Misery’ was decent but in fact less catchy and effective than the other up tempo tracks on Mindloss. Not a great opener for that matter (why not ‘Loss Of Flesh’ for instance or even ‘Decomposed’?). Jan-Chris later admitted a great deal of the up tempo part of ‘Mental Misery’ was based on the Death song ‘Mutilation’.

The other 8 tunes were familiar. The 4 songs from their first demo (‘Decomposed’, ‘Putrid Stench of Human Remains’, ‘Gorefest’ and ‘Tangled In Gore’) were a pleasure and the performance was equally good. Vocalist Jan Chris however had given these songs just his low grunting voice instead of the filthier vocals with moans and screams he used on the demo versions. This made these new recordings slightly less enjoyable and especially the choruses of ‘Tangled In Gore’ and ‘Decomposed’.

The other four songs came straight from their second demo ‘Horrors In A Retarded Mind’ and almost sounded similar except for the intro of ‘Confessions of A Serial Killer’ which was unfortunately shorter this time (why?). Other than that there wasn’t anything to complain about, All four of these songs are simply superb.

A great debut from what later would turn out be become one of Holland’s best death metal bands. Best songs: ‘Foetal Carnage’, ‘Confessions of A Serial Killer’, ‘Tangled In Gore’ and ‘Decomposed’