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Guttural Corpora Cavernosa > Munching on the Red Carpet > Reviews
Guttural Corpora Cavernosa - Munching on the Red Carpet

Decent, but hardly remarkable in any way - 67%

MutantClannfear, June 29th, 2013

I'm starting to become pretty convinced that slam death metal is strictly a matter of geography. Bands from the US are generally pretty good. Japan is also good. Russia BLOWS, and so on. It's pretty easy to accurately judge how a band is going to be by merely looking at their country of origin. This leads to some pretty funny observations and interesting situations when elaborated upon. For example, look at Taiwan - it's in somewhat close proximity to Japan, but it's also pretty close to the Philippines and Indonesia, which are generally sub-average countries as far as brutal death metal goes. So, is the music's quality stuck pretty much right in between the brilliance of Japan and the mediocrity of the Philippines? You bet your sweet ass it is.

Guttural Corpora Cavernosa are a brutal death metal band who are ultimately kind of forgettable in favor of dozens of other bands, but their album Munching on the Red Carpet is a decent release when observed on its own terms and without anything else in mind. The band play slam-oriented brutal death with a fair helping of tremolo riffs and blasty sections to help spice things up a little bit along the album's running time (and let's face it, the album kind of needs it; 37 minutes is pushing it just a bit for the length of a BDM album). The slams are basically standard-installation stuff: tons of triplet patterns and adaptations on the "Babykiller" slam riff with no variation or frills whatsoever about it. There aren't any unique atmospheres that Guttural Corpora Cavernosa evoke, and they don't necessarily slam harder than any other band you could find. I mean, they're obviously better than your average trite Russian band, but sadly that's not a very ringing endorsement as far as slam goes since even dogs rubbing their asses around on a carpet, given an infinite amount of time, will end up making more pleasant sounds than Abominable Putridity can.

The tremolo riffs aren't very notable either. They're not exactly boring, but they don't leave much of an impression on me either and I mostly like them because they mean that Guttural Corpora Cavernosa is usually using a snare-driven gravity blast around the same time, and those are slightly more fun than the band's slams. (They'd be more fun if the drum kit sounded better, though... the snare is too clanky for this kind of low-produced brutal death metal and a thicker, more wooden-sounding snare would probably make the riffs stop having such an annoying "ding" to them.) The vocals here are pretty good, seeing as they're a mix of Cephalotripsy purrs and "ohr rawr" gutturals, but they're hardly enough to redeem the entire album.

But here I am, saying "redeem" as if this album needs to redeem itself for something. Don't get me wrong, it's decent and I might even call it "good" every once in a while, but it just doesn't have any exceptional elements that would make anybody want to come back to it. It's just an Indonesian-styled slam death metal album that became slightly better than that country's average by being in closer proximity to Japan than most Indonesian bands. Slam diehards might as well try it, but it's not really essential in any sense of the word.

As an addendum: kudos for Guttural Corporal Cavernosa being the first band in years who have tried to be funny and didn't just end up embarrassing themselves. I'll admit, I giggled quite a bit at song titles like "Extra Large Order of Fecal Platter" and "Cleveland Steamer Is the New Missionary Position". Now if only the music could be as intriguing as the song titles, these guys would be golden.