Gourmet of Ill Shit

This is one of those rare cases when a 50% review is not necessarily a bad thing. Cumbeast are pretty much the epitome of wigga-slam, complete with slams, breakdowns, and dumb rapping gurgle vocals that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. There are even the very frequent pig squeals that I love so much (spoiler: sarcasm). Ultimately, it IS entertaining, to say the least, from the traditional gory cover to the oddball brutal death metal/gangsta-wannabe mash-up. I think the most entertaining aspect of this band is the fact that they are from Finland, although I sincerely doubt there will be any world tours supporting Skepticism in the near future.

To put it all into perspective, imagine Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks." Tim Burton is a very shitty director, and all of his movies are crap, but then he puts out a movie that is intended to be crappy and everyone cries about it. Well, this is intentionally crappy, and the proof is scattered throughout. The intro riff to "Spewing the Jungle Semen" could have come out of any late 90s/early 00s nu-metal ditty, and the closing song "Blasting the Bling Bling" is clearly the punchline to this elaborate joke. Complete with silly white boys dual-rapping (with bad Finnish accents and near pre-pubescent sounding voices), this track and "Dr. Dongledore" pretty much solidify their intent. Fred Durst meets Cannibal Corpse?

I was previously familiar with Cumbeast from 2006's "Human Pinata", so I pretty much knew what to expect. On their sophomore release, the production is a little less punchy than what is needed to get the full effect, I think. None of that really matters since they really don't know how to put together a good death metal song even if it saved their lives. Every breakdown comes between two other breakdowns, and everything culminates into yet another breakdown. It is plainly obvious that they are playing this style jokingly, and we are all along for a fun ride, but I suppose it's the staunch critic in me that refuses to give "Gourmet of Ill-Shit" a thumbs up and go along my merry way. All apologies, it's just way too stupid.

However, that is the point. Brutal death metal fans looking for something to laugh at, bang their head to without caring about anything really musical, or simply funny song titles will find a tiny bit of gold in this release. However, I prefer a little more substance, and in the case of grindcore (of which I am a humongous fan) something a little more grind. I've said it before elsewhere that I'll just stick with my Dying Fetus and be O.K.

Cumbeast are a bit of an oddity. A brutal death band that's all about the grooves, sports over the top song titles and fields a gurgling vocalist who wouldn't be far from home in Devourment... yet they're not playing slam. What they have here is far more along the lines of what Jungle Rot would play if they were dosed up on hip-hop and NYHC. Or if Dying Fetus suddenly lost 50 IQ points and started imitating Vomit Remnants.

You know those grooves a lot of BDM bands throw in to seperate the blasts from the slams without giving everyone whiplash? Cumbeast live in that zone, rarely stepping up to a tremolo-worthy pace or down into traditional slam territory. Even when the drums go up into blasting, the guitar rarely follows. They intersperse the whole thing with samples, a good chunk of which are actually part of the song rather than simply signalling another oncoming assault.

Speaking of the samples, Cumbeast are clearly fucking around with people when it comes to selecting samples. From the opening to Schlong Kong (see, I told you about the song titles) where they layer one of the thousand and one war movie intros over the top of an equally ubiquitous porno sample, to the closing sample of Blasting the Bling Bling where the narrator is shown as anything but a fearless badass, they seem to almost mock the usual wigger slam image.

If anything, that's an idea solidified by the vocals that appear on Blasting the Bling Bling and Dr Dongledore, where one of the band members seems to have recorded his best impersonation of the stereotypical helium-voiced nerd and snuck it in as a joke. Any gang shout where the line 'Cock with butterfly wings' shows up is going to inspire some amusement anyway, but right on the back of the offkey wailing it's downright funny. Add in that the entire song seems to be about nothing more than a mad doctor creating his own frankencock and there's no way this could be anything but a piss-take (the rest of the album is on the same level lyrically. Including a song about twin fetuses raping each other and one about a leprous man managing to rip off both his arm and dick while jacking off). The same thinking seems to hold for Spewing The Jungle Semen, where the drums adopt an almost African tom-heavy style in one section. It may be a joke but a fair amount of thought obviously went into this album. Albeit from people whose collective IQ may not exceed room temperature.

There's not really a huge amount to say about the instrumentation. The guitars have the usual downtuned, scooped tone that hammers away at you, the bass is still terminally buried and the drums, while as groovy as they come, don't really do anything new – they're still using the same old kick-and-snare patterns every band since Suffocation has been borrowing. Just with a pinging snare and more abuse of the heavy cymbals.

Vocally, there's some variety. Gurgles, the guttural pig vocals of BDM (as opposed to the cleaner inhale squeals popular as of late) growls, low shouts, the aforementioned out of key whiny nerd vocals which really have to be heard to be believed and the odd shriek. Even a rap section in the final song. If you don't like the guttural approach they won't do anything to convince you otherwise but they're on the competent side for the genre.

Purists will hate this. Those who demand the appearance of utter seriousness in their ludicrously over the top music will hate this. Those who like brutal, catchy music and can stomach a bit of Immortal style over the top imagery will love moshing out to this.