Butcher the Weak

On the original, green cover, 2005 version of this album, the vocals are more of an imitation of Molesting the Decapitated. Majewski is clearly trying to sound just like Rosas did, and that's not a bad thing when the formal works so well. He sounds more guttural and deep than he does on the rerecording, and there's not one word you could understand if you tried.

The production overall is raw, and similar again to Molesting. I really enjoy this album's snare which is so nasty and stands out in the mix, it sounds like a block of wood. That's brutal slam, dude. The cymbals are also more prominent in the mix, which lends a different feeling to some of the songs. This is most clear on Autoerotic Asphyxiation where you can hear the cymbals and triangle really well, and it makes the song feel bouncier and more jangling.

The guitar play style itself is a 'looser' or 'sloppy' on this recording. It kind of reminds me of Immortal's Battles in the North, just imprecise. However, Tomb of Scabs is better on this recording in my opinion, it's a lot groovier.

As for the material itself:

You have really heavy songs here. It's more blasting, more slamming, more brutality than the band had before. There's very few slower moments or chugging. The only noticeable slow moments are in Autoerotic, and Fuck Her Head Off. Personal favorites for me are Masturbating at the Slab and Serial Cocksucker. Crushing brutality, everything slamming at once, the kind of intensity Putridity would perfect later.

The drumming is fantastic! Park is working the bass pedal and doing a great job tying the music together. His performance is much better than the guitars. As I said, on this version the snare is so raw and the cymbals are louder and it's just all around a great drum job.

Babykiller is not that interesting (aside from the intro which is cool) and I don't know why there's so much hype - it's kind of slow, slower than the rest of the album, but it has the same feeling I get from the slower segments of Molesting the Decapitated: "It's like they stretched the chugging from Cannibal Corpse I Cum Blood into a whole album". But for those who love it, and there's a lot who do, it finishes the album off.

Overall it's great material. Songs are heavy slam, drumming is fantastic, vocals are fantastic even if not unique. Raw production makes it feel more old school, which is a plus, but the guitar playing is a negative. Final verdict for 2005 version: 80%.

Once I found out that Devourment had released a follow up to Molesting the Decapitated, I just had to hear it. The song Butcher the Weak is simply incredible, everything about this album is simply genius. It is not especially technical. The drummer doesn't play at 4000bpm. But what Devourment are ingenius at is creating a blast beat ridden groovy chunk of brutal death Metal.

The best thing about this album has to be the drumming. The drummer is damn capable at what he does, blast beats, really fast double bass and brutal stuff like that. He clearly has alot of stamina and he even displays use of gravity blasts, particularly on the track Butcher the Weak, which is definitely the best track of the album. The drums are extremely well produced, the bass drums being triggered but not overtly noticable and the snare sounding ungeneric but still good.

The vocals are unbelievably inhuman and the change from Wayne Knupp to Mike Majewski has not caused any significant problems. While the vocals are definitely different, they sound excellent, slightly higher but much more inhuman. The vocals are somewhat difficult to interpret, although surprisingly clear for the genre. They are not the generic cookie-cutter "cookie monster" growls of Suffocation/Cannibal Corpse/Deicide Stylings, of a much throatier, guttural form. The best track vocally is by far the groovy Babykiller, which has an intro containing somewhat different sounding, clearer vocals. The lyrical themes are typical, however, extreme in nature, and unlike other bands which just follow the trend, you can genuinely believe that the person singing is fucked up in the head, with lines like "Forcing the blood soaked gore mercilessly down my throat, Pieces of baby are lodged inside me."

The guitars in the songs play what is a mix of heavily distorted tremolo picked heavy riffs and groovy slams which don't drag down into slow and monotonous breakdowns. While their certainly are some slower down-tempo slam riffs, the songs don't incite any kind of windmill rituals for your neighbourhood emo to masturbate over. The guitarists clearly know how to cause chaos too, the blast beat - guitar combination actually sounds heavy, not just another gimmick that bands use. The riffs, while not exactly technical, are groovy and heavy, and that is what this band aims for.

The bass, unfortunately, is not very noticable, and so warrants a -5% penalty.

Overall however, this album is genius and is a perfect sequel to Molesting the Decapitated. Keep it brutal!!

When I first heard tracks from Molesting the Decapitated, I ordered it at restream.com instantly. When I heard about 1.3.8, did the same.

And when I head that Devourment was coming out with a SELF PRODUCED 2nd Album.. well I nearly hit the ceiling. I have never heard a self produced from any great band that I didn't like. No restrictions, no overproduction.

So I ordered Butcher the Weak, and when I got it, I did hit the ceiling. More of everything that made Devourment great, chalk full of every amazing quality that made Devourment. Nothing new, nothing more. Just new ways to arrange the brutality, still sounding raw, and brutal as ever.

All I could ever ask for. Too many bands are forced to change their style for the attention defict, change hungry, bastards that force bands to change when they've got a good thing going. If you need a new sound? Pick up a different band, let bands who are great just keep doing what makes them great. Ya Devourment isn't breaking new ground, but it proves they know there are fans like me, who buy Devourment records only hoping to hear pure Devourment.

When they came out this August with a new re-recorded version, I was actually apprehensive. Not because I'd ever been disappointed with Devourment before, but because I thought Butcher the Weak was perfect as it was. Sure enough I gave into temptation and I picked up the re-record, and O MY FUCKING GOD, IT's STILL RAW as hell, and they changed enough fills/tempos, to make it actually neither a better/worse take on the album, but just an entirely new brutal interpretations of all the songs on Butcher the Weak.

Personally I consider this the 3rd Devourment album cause I can throw on either version depending on my mood, just like I would between different seperate releases, and there has never been 2 versions of any one album I could do that with before.

All hail the mighty Devourment \m/ can't wait for album #4

With a name like "Devourment", one would most likely expect a lot of gutteral vocals, blast beats and heavy as fuck guitars. And yes, Its all there. Good news for some...and thats about it. All it got is its load of aggression with absolutely no direction or intelligent form. Songwriting? Something unique? Hahahaha!

After getting this album from a friend who hyped it up to the sky, I eagerly played it ,expecting the moon. The album starts off with a creepy spoken word intro about some guy talking about his job in a mortuary, (I think that little bit is more interesting than the rest of the album.) and then the music explodes...blast beats and growls and all. Good so far.

Ill admit , the first time I heard it , it was kinda cool for the first 2 minutes and then I started to wait for something interesting, or at least something different. But sadly for me, it never happened. One thing that sucks hard about "Butcher the weak" is that the songs are all repetitive, in a very annoying way. I can listen to Marduks Panzer division marduk all day , the sheer speed, aggresion and ambience of the album makes up for any monotony.

The album mostly goes "*really fast part with blasts *CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG *cum gargling pig sqeals* CHUG CHUG CHUG" and so on... for 30 whole minutes.

Im not impressed. So its got blast beats, and the guitars sound heavy as fuck and some gutteral vocals. So what what??? The point is, I can name 40 other awesome bands who have all this and still do a better job with their music in terms of songwriting and riffs.

The vocalist (whos name I really dont care about) seems to be merely showing off how "gutteral" he can go with his vocals. Im speaking for myself when I say that vocals being indecipherable DO NOT count as "brutal". Pronounciation is a very important thing in death metal vocals. This means you pronounce the words you have written for your band, you dont print "I fuck corpses and kill babies" on the lyrics booklet and simply make gargling sounds into the mic that bear absolutely no resemblence to the words.

I feel they could have might as well saved themselves the trouble of coming up with their retarded lyrics about gore and perversion which already have been done to death, only a couple of million times. Dont get me wrong, Cannibal Corpses "I cum blood" and "Butchered at birth" were fucking classics, but then again, those two songs had kick ass music, and vocals to go along with it and even after more than a decade they remain classics to this day.

On to the vocals now.Its bad enough the vocalist sounds like a chimp with down syndrome getting fisted by big foot, its even worse that it has become a trend , yes I said "trend"... a trend in the "br00tal death metal" scene to have vocals like that. Leave it to bands like "devourment" to over saturate the scene with their (lame) brand of metal. This pathetic excuse of an album is run of the mill, mosh core which brings nothing new to the table.

If youre looking for something more technical or multi faceted, dont even think about looking at this album. Go listen to something else. If monotonous CHUG-A-CHUG riffs and retarded pig squeals being passed off as "gutteral" gives you a hard on, then by all means, be my guest and pick this up. You see, there are plenty of people in the under ground death metal scene who simply just want their music to be brutal without caring for anything else.

These are the same primitive idiots who fling poo at bands for *gasp* not having blast beats and vocals that DONT sound like toilets being flushed. And devourments "butcher the weak" serves as great wanking material for many of these empty headed br00tality seekers. Im pretty sure it has given many an empty head something to bang to.

Im giving this piece of shit a 2 rating for sound quality and enjoying the CHUG-A-CHUG for the first 2 minutes.

It's 6 years later and after much delay and lineup changes, Devourment return with their follow up to 1999's Molesting the Decapitated. Over this course of time MTD has become the album from which most brutal, slamming death metal is compared. Many, myself included, thought, "How the fuck are they gonna do something as good?" Well, fuck, they've actually done it and I might say it's even better.

After many lineup changes over the years, Ruben Rosas and Mike Majewski are still the main men behind this outfit. Ruben has switched over to guitar (and bass for the recording) from vocals and Mike is now the man on the mic.

What we have here is 7 brand new songs, as well as a newly recorded and revamped version of "Babykiller". 8 tracks of utter brutality. The title track starts us off and as soon as it kicks in, you're pummeled with the massive, low end-heavy production. The guitar sound on this thing makes MTD flee for cover.

The next thing that's noticed is how much better and tighter the drumming is. Eric Park (ex-Suture) is behind the kit now and he's very welcome. He's able to keep the Devourment style, with the two hand snare rolls and gravity blasts, but also adds his own element of technicality with cool fills throughout.

As for the vocals, Mike sounds pretty much like a mix of Ruben and original vocalist Wayne Knupp. Overall he's lower than Ruben, like Wayne, but doesn't quite gurgle quite as sickeningly. The vocals were the part of this album I was most afraid to hear because Ruben did such a perfect job on MTD. Well, in my opinion, I still prefer Ruben's vocals, but Mike does an awesome fucking job.

All in all, the production, song quality and overall ferocity of this album make me enjoy it more than the mighty Molesting the Decapitated. Devourment have shown to me that they are still the undisputed champions of brutal, slamming death metal.