Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Gutslit – Skewered In The Sewer


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.

Be sure to check out and like Gutslit on Facebook!

Highlights
All of it

Final Rating
4.0/5 or 80%. 

Written by Scott