From the surprisingly metal-abundant country of India comes
Gutslit and their hilariously titled debut album, “Skewered In The Sewer”. As
you may have guessed from the album cover and band name, these guys join the
legions of bands playing the most brutal death metal around. It’s no secret
that this is a tough genre to play; most bands sound exactly the same and have
no variation, but luckily, Gutslit do everything right to make “Skewered In The
Sewer” an enjoyable release. In general, the formula for making great brutal
death metal is diversity and pacing. At 26 minutes, this release has the latter
down, but it also has plenty of variation. Songs can go from insanely technical
tapping leads into huge slams, into blast-beat-laden moments that are followed by crazy pinch harmonics. The tempos vary
considerably to accommodate the different feel of each section, but overall,
this is definitely a fast release.
The vocalist of this release is on the more impressive side
of this subgenre. There are no obvious gurgles that I picked out, and the style
of gutturals as a whole is pretty old-school (it would fit right in line with
some of Chris Barnes’ early work). He also has the ability to hit higher notes
when necessary, but generally sticks with his lower range. From a memorability
standpoint, “Skewered In The Sewer” is right in line with other brutal death
metal. There’s not a single riff that will really shock you because of either
its uniqueness or its sheer awesomeness, but I’ve come to expect nothing more
from the subgenre. In this regard, the variation definitely helps to deal with
the monotony that usually occurs due to a lack of memorability.
One aspect of this album that definitely helps it is the
production, and, in particular, the drum sound. A lot of brutal death suffers
from having a high, pingy snare drum, but the kit of the drummer of Gutslit has
a much more organic sounding snare. It’s definitely pretty tight sounding, but
it almost sounds like they didn’t do much production work at all and just
rolled with the natural sound of the drum. Unfortunately, however, that’s
pretty much the only drum you’ll hear during the majority of the fills. That is really the only
major gripe I have with this album though. For a sound that is not among my
favourites, Gutslit managed to deliver an impressive release that is enjoyable
from start to finish. This album should be heard both by fans of brutal death
metal and fans of other styles of metal looking to give this sound a shot.
Highlights
All of it
Final Rating
4.0/5 or 80%.