Degenerating Anthropophagical Euphoria

I cannot describe enough how much I absolutely love this album. I'm a huge brutal death metal fan and I've found my fair share of great brutal death metal bands along my musical journey. But this band and this album in specific, it hit different, it changed me. I've never heard a brutal death album in my life that's just as fabulous and great as this one.

One thing for sure is that this album is HEAVY, and all of it is pure relentless heaviness and brutality. This album is appreciated by the fans and the underground, but this needs wayyyy more attention then it currently has, Degenerating Anthropophagical Euphoria is a staple and beauty in the brutal death metal genre, people seriously need to know about this album. When you start playing this album, a quiet guitar squeal greets you and gradually gets louder, introducting the heavy start to the opener, Cannibalistic Postclimax Flesh Consumption; which is definitely the best track this album offers. The song opens with machine gun blast beats, crushing deep gutturals, and a overall heavy feel in general. The bass drum along with the guitar tone is what's mainly responsible for this albums heaviness, and the bass is what glues it all together. Yeah, this would still be somewhat heavy without bass, but it wouldn't sound the same at all.

All of the musical roles each member has been assigned isn't lacking at all, every instrument is straight up, clean, fresh, and present. The drums played by BrutalDave is some of the most mind-blowing outstanding drum work I have EVER HEARD. When I said this album is pure brutality, I wasn't lying. The drums are always blasting, creating little sections and swift fills, filling in every single part of every single song, nothing boring or unfilled. This is some insanely skilled drum work right here. The guitar work done by Ciccio is great, this album has its own unique sound which isn't like most brutal death records, actually. Ciccio is the founder of this band, he's founded the style and playing type, and it's good. His style of playing heavily relies of consistent fast-paced chugs, mid-paced strumming, followed by sudden guitar squeals at the ends of pretty much every section he plays on. I will admit at some times this can be kind of bothersome and annoying, but it's barley ever, you'll pretty much think about it like once and then not care ever again. His style may be not as special as desired, but once you establish his style in your head, it's amazing, you'll get used to it. I'm not saying his playing is bad, which it ISN'T, simply just saying you may be slightly bothered by this at one point or another, but it won't really get to you or matter at all. Anyways, the guitar tone is very distinct. It's deep and solid, yet thin and fun at the same time. The guitar does lack speed and hyperness; the drums take that responsibility. The insanely fast-tempoed drumming is what carries everything together and makes it all sound good and natural. This is the band's special formula in their songwriting. Very creative and pleasing! I don't really know how to exactly describe the guitar sound on this record, but I'll just say it's satisfying. It doesn't disappoint. As I've said before, it's heavy, crushing, and relentless. This is Putridity.

Every song is great, they may all sound familiar once you're more deeper into the album, but it's not an issue at all. The more and more you listen to this the more you'll understand it's greatness and grow to love it. This is brutal death metal, most songs sound identical but it's never an issue for the most part. None of the songs on here are bad, none at all. Some of these songs have small intros consisting of horror and gore samples, and it surely does fit the album well since the lyrical themes are sexually violent and focuses on perversion and etc. The only interlude this album has, Wallowing in Aftermath is a great divider. As I've mentioned before this album is nonstop brutality in every song, so having this horrific heavy interlude to divide everything and take a short break is awesome, you'll just have to listen for yourself. The albums length may be a tad short, but once you listen for yourself you'll understand that the length actually isn't short at all, it's the perfect length for an album like this.

The vocals are guttural, deep, and meaty. Very suitable for this album. You can't have bass-reliant heaviness without some good vocals to make everything even cooler. Good vocal work as always. The bass is very good, it may seem like it doesn't matter, but it really does, as I mentioned earlier above. "Heaviness" isn't truly "heavy" without some bass to provide the backbone. There are parts in the album, mainly in the very beginning of the opener track, where all the instruments stop for a sudden and the bass is exposed for a few seconds showcasing it's presence and greatness, once you hear the bass you'll understand why it needs to be there, and you'll also hear it's great deep and plumpy sound.

This release here never gets old for me. I can listen to it regularly, not an ounce of sickness in sight. When you understand how beautiful this album really is and how it works, and where everything takes it's place, you'll feel this way too. One of my most favorite brutal death metal albums EVER, this is iconic.

Degenerating Anthropophagical Euphoria is a whole nother level of brutal death metal, this is an adventurous listen. This is different, and different is good. This album seriously has no flaws. Needs more attention, and we all need more Putridity material similar to this. Great job guys. Thanks for this.

• Overall, the instrumentation is 10/10.
• Songwriting is 10/10.
• Style/atmosphere is 10/10.
• Effort and etc is 10/10.

This is it. This is the most ruthless brutal death metal album. Ever.

From start to finish this album is just pure non stop blasting brutality. As a brutal death metal fan, i must confess that this is the purest BDM album that i have heard. They improved upon their previous album in every single aspect. Song writing, lyrics, sound, artwork and design. Yes those count too, after all you are buying the full thing aren't you? Just not to mention that the artwork helps the listener to submerse himself in the atmosphere that each album tries to create, just like you would in a book for example.

Even though the music sounds chaotic, it is actually pretty catchy and never repetitive. The total playtime is a bit low for the genre, a total of 24 minutes and 13 seconds of music and a couple of samples. But this is actually a good thing, because it doesn't saturate the listener, thus not making the album repetitive as many other albums can be.

The drumming is just devastating, taking everything in it's way, with the usual "pop pop" sound that the best BDM albums have. The guitar riffs are very well done too, accompanied by some chunky pinches that will make you eargasm, while the drums are still insanely blasting your subwoofer. Something worth mentioning, is that the drummer of this band, Davide "BrutalDave" Billia, also plays in four other bands of the same genre at the moment. The vocals are incredible, although personally i would like them to be more guttural and less grunted. This album only has two audio sample, the first is placed at the end of the first song. Contrary to many bands that have a ton of samples and most of them are just plain boring, this one is catchy and short! And the other one is at the very end of the last song, and again, pretty short and straight to the point. The band definitely thought about not overloading the listener with more things other than it's music, but also creating a bit of an atmosphere with those samples and just crush their way through the rest of the album's length.

The artwork was made by Guang Yang, a young artist from China. One of his best pieces so far. Depicting zombies eating flesh and a monster in a throne that is probably associated with one of their songs. The album layout and design is one of the best that i have seen. According to some info, Davide was the one who made the layout and the band's logo. The cover also features an amazing custom album title that sure looks sick and fits perfectly with the album's setting, which i find worth mentioning because almost all bands just opt for a simple font. Creativity and originality should always be praised! The creator of the custom album title is unknown to me though. When you see a physical copy of this album in front of you, you won't even think twice before buying it, even if you just want to make your living room a bit more gory and classy and just put it on display.

As you can see, Putridity nailed every single aspect of this release, even in the graphic part of it. NO, this is not an album for everybody to listen too. It takes a lot of passion for the genre to appreciate what was done here. Even i had a hard time to start enjoying this album, but i guess that brutal death metal is something to be tasted and cherished with time and dedication, only to understand it's true power later, with an open state of mind. This might not be my favorite BDM album, but, Degenerating Anthropophagical Euphoria stands to this date as the most ruthless album that ever came out and the pure definition of brutal death metal. So because of that, i give this album a score of 100%. A must for a any fan of the genre. An album that will dominate it's throne, just like the monster in the cover, for years to come!

Metal does not live by brutality alone, and anyone who might suggest otherwise is encouraged to consider the contents that lay within Putridity's sophomore effort. While it's kind of a cop-out to excuse an album like this on the grounds of it being a brutal album released in 2011 (yes, a lot of 3rd rate shit came out that year in this style), the style did achieve a rather auspicious over-saturation of sorts that served to even surpass the deathcore one that happened several years prior. The mistakes made by these bands were largely uniform as well, proceeding from a premise that simply throwing together 3-4 words synonymous with gore titles picked at random in a thesaurus and laying on the chugging, occasional pinch squeals, and an endless regression of blast beats and machine gun bass drum work will somehow strike musical pay dirt. Suffice to say, the approach is entirely wrongheaded.

There is virtually nothing to make any of these songs distinct from each other, no sense of build up of climax, or anything resembling an attempt at development. Essentially, this album is like having a cake with nothing but frosting from top to bottom, and the resulting pile/mass hits the ears as just that, a massive blob of non-digestible detailing. Arguably the only thing that really stands out here is a minute long stretch of guitar noise dubbed "Wallowing In Aftermaths", which is itself a testament to problem this album has with coherence. Otherwise, it's just a continual fit of drummer ADHD and guitarists with diarrhea of the fingers and only a few actual tricks in the book that are cycled through at random. Seriously, "Euphoric State Of Dementia" has so many damned pinch harmonics weaved into the seemingly endless sea of chug riffs and sludgy chords that upstages Brain Drill's constant obsession with sweep patterns.

But the greatest cardinal sin that this album commits is in the production department, which brings new meaning to the term amateurism. One of the things that makes fully chaotic brutal death a difficult style to pull off well is getting the mix of instruments right so that the vocalist's gurgles and the bass don't get buried under the drums and guitars, and boy do they get buried on this sad little collection of 2-3 minute episodes of violent musical mud butt. Paolo Chiti actually manages to pull off some pretty impressive guttural sounds on here, but it's really hard to hear it amid the extremely shoddy mix that has the Flo Mounier worshiping BrutalDave's banging on the crash cymbal like a Western lowland gorilla on crack way too loud. Likewise, the constant harmonic screams out of the guitars gets about as annoying as an angry swarm of gnats constantly attacking the ears, which serves to also clash in the most overt way possible with the constant drum masturbation.

Putridity exemplify what talent sounds like when it is 100% removed from any level of discipline. Contrary to what some may argue, there has to be at least some semblance of restraint in even a style as extreme as this, lest it all just becomes a compilation of random noise. Even when considering the horrific imagery depicted on the album's cover art, there is a certain symmetry and nuance to the distribution of objects in the illustration that ought to be reflected in the musical contents, but obviously are not. Somewhere in the bizarre world that the lyricists of every brutal death band live in is a pile of discarded corpses that represent every botched attempt at turning unfettered carnage into art. Degenerating Anthropophagical Euphoria is one of those albums resting somewhere in the middle of the pile, lacking neither the distinction of being the most repulsive failure, nor one of the bodies at the fringes that just fell short of cutting it.

Italians Putridity are one of those bands of brutes who fully intend to add your name the list of the hearing impaired, pushing the end of the slaughter spectrum until it breaks. Degenerating Anthrophagical Euphoria is another calamity in the vein of their 2007 debut Mental Prolapse Induces Necrophilism, which is to say not a lot different than any other amalgamation of slamming force and alternating chug/squeal/blast/groove aesthetics that are rather exhausted this late into the game. Combined with crushing production that feels as if it's about to shake your speakers down like an avalanche, perverse and violent samples made to stir the man-flags and carnal voyeur fetishes of the disaffected audience, all pretty par for the course.

Thing is, none of these are necessarily impediments to this sophomore. It's the stubborn lack of dynamics that dampen its appeal. While many of the Italians' local and international peers are ripping up the fretboards in displays of acrobatic arrogance and diligent proficiency, Putridity are content to return to the same percussive concepts time and time again, and though there are interesting connective tissues (the noise/ambient/feedback interlude "Wallowing in Aftermaths" or the grinding mosh slog that inundates "Masturbating the Infibulated"), it feels like a single song hacked into about eight nearly identical fragments. Granted, close examination will reveal separate tempo changes, guitar fills, and drum variations, but effectively its just a 24 minute excursion into pummeling monotony with nary a compelling pattern of notes in listening range.

Chug, chug, grunt, grunt, squeal. We've simply heard this too many times for it to persist in its shock value of the 90s, or for it to honestly feel that aggressive anymore. Sure, from a technical standpoint, the down tuning and sheer strength and precision with which the musicians batter their instruments might feel 'heavy', but it's all been done by Devourment, Mortician, Disgorged, Suffocation, Deeds of Flesh and hundreds of others, and ultimately Putridity come off as little more than exhausting. I dig the band's canny vernacular: "Syphilic Menstrual Rejection", "Cannibalistic Post Climax Flesh Consumption", "Draining Necro Anal Disgorgement". I giggled just like I did when Carcass and Cannibal Corpse started the practice. I dig the cover art. The logo. I even dig the band's commitment to such overwhelming brutality. I simply don't dig the tunes all that much, and Degenerating Anthropophagical Euphoria is little more than a linguistic and musical clutter, albeit a brief one.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com