Come on, you know what this is. A band shows up with a name like Mutilation Barbecue with an album titled Amalgamations of Gore (Maggot Stomp Records)and you know the Green Day crowd’s ears perked up. This will be the talk of the town on TikTok or wherever else annoying teenagers congregate and commiserate about missing out on Hawthorne Heights’ day in the sun. Hell, this one may even make the playlist at your local Starbucks. You just get a feeling, you know.
Not quite. Although obvious jokes aside, I would certainly like to live in a world where Death Metal got featured prominently at coffee shops, corporate or otherwise. Imagine being greeted by Suffocation’s ‘Thrones of Blood’ while picking up an iced black coffee before punching in at the cubicle farm. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
And yes, Mutilation Barbecue’s debut LP would more than likely make an appearance in such a hypothetical playlist. They feature lots of samples and song titles like ‘Abortion Ambulance’ and ‘Auto Anthropophagy’, so you know someone has been dabbling in vintage Skinless records. Guitarists Nick McGroder and Dylan Andras rip into searing lead work on ‘Spontaneous Human Combustion’ and ‘Trampled Under 18 Wheels’ with ferocity and laser precision. Frankly, their talents are a weapon that may be spending too much time in the holster on Amalgamations of Gore.
Drummer Harrison Good also puts in the work on the blast frenzy of ‘Hive Mind Homicide’ but his talents are hampered throughout the album. The man’s snare drum tone is not doing anyone any favors. Is it St. Anger bad? No, getting hit by a car is better than that. I would say it’s somewhere between Joey Jordison’s snare sound on Slipknot’s self-titled and kitchen equipment. Also, I’m very surprised that so much running time on this record is spent decidedly in mid-tempo territory. And one final note, we need to get rid of the use of layered vocals in Death Metal. You already sound like a Terminator having rough sex, we don’t need to double down on it.
Grab your tall latte and blast some Amalgamations of Gore. Sure, there’s better quality stuff out there, but this will do just fine.
Buy the album here:
https://mutilationbarbecue-maggotstomp.bandcamp.com/album/amalgamations-of-gore
6 / 10
HANS LOPEZ