If Death Metal on the extreme end of the heaviness meter is your thing, then Cutterred Flesh’s Love At First Bite (Transcending Obscurity Records) is worth a listen. 

This band from the Czech Republic is perfecting their craft with their sixth album. Without settling in an exercise in brutality, the guitarists work hooks into the songs. Not hooks in the Pop sense but memorable bits of melodies that make it worth more than one listen.  Where most Death Metal has a fixation on horror, these guys seem to be into the bleak realities of space. 

Sonically, the difference is felt in how the atmosphere helps get the story across. An example of this can be heard on “Repeated Intersexual Misunderstanding” as they give the song the room to allow angular dissonance to steer the ship closer towards technical grooves not focused on just mathematics. 

Six albums into their career they know what they are doing. They attack your ears with renewed feral zeal with “Code of Zuurith,” though this is where the album begins to get mired down in a blur of riffing that does not clear up until “Descent Into Torment Of Abyssal Whispers.” The guitars give the vocals room to create a more purposeful narrative. 

Up until this point like most music of this kind, the vocals are more of an afterthought.  The riffing is also more memorable on this song, making it one of the album’s best moments. The production of the guitar tones begins to conform to the current trend of modern Metal: to have a very processed, machine-like feel. They compensate for this on “Sarkam’s Wrath” with a more nuanced attention to songwriting. 

The band is at its most effective with the deliberate chug of “The Last Supper”. It displays the restraint most Death Metal bands of their ilk do not employ when it comes to resisting the urge to indulge the need for speed. 

This restraint allows them to use faster tempos more effectively to create dynamics, rather than just numbing your eardrums out by pummelling you with unrelenting blasting. This restraint helps them find moments on this album where they solidify their sense of intent in a genre that could have easily turned them into a faceless blasting machine. 

Cutterred Flesh are skilled players who have mastered the art of grinding this brand of Death Metal into your ears in the most efficient manner. This is a heavy album that chooses songs over just dialing in the expected sound, so makes it a worthwhile listen for fans looking for powerful aggression that is just not recycling the same old tropes. 

Buy the album here:
https://cutterredfleshband.bandcamp.com/album/love-at-first-bite

8 / 10
WIL CIFER