Lately Aborted‘s been crafting their own unique beast. No longer content with the Carcass and Suffocation worship of the past, they’ve been embracing other elements and adding their own stylized take of those earlier influences more and more. After The Archaic Abattoir, we’ve seen a more individualized Aborted play. Now with Slaughter and Apparatus, Aborted continues down that path, crafting a distinctly hard hitting piece of grind death metal, melded with melody and without over abundant cloning.

This isn’t to say Slaughter and Apparatus doesn’t have its influences from other bands. There is a distinct aesthetic feel similar to the one acquired when you listen to French death/thrash act Yrkoon in some areas. And while it’s no where as clinical as Carcass, there still is a small influence left from Aborted‘s older days. However, Aborted continues to have its own feel entirely. The songs play out like blistering melodic death anthems, with clean, subtle production, and dramatic and appropriately timed fadeouts. Listening to "The Spaying Séance", catches you off guard: you hear the style of death metal Aborted perfected on its last album, the Yrkoon-esque climax towards the end, and then the raging guitar work that slowly dies into the distance. And from that same silence the next song slowly emits from, going right back into Aborted‘s remorseless melo-death. Then you get to songs like "Ingenuity in Genocide" which has a more bluesy solo and groove pattern almost at home on the last Cephalic Carnage album’s hard rock-centered segments, but totally compatible with the straight-forward, extreme metal present on this record. And "Underneath Rorulent Soil" is just a fucking excellent conclusion to Slaughter and Apparatus: catchy, tight, and fucking dead-on in its writing.

There isn’t much to say about Slaughter and Apparatus other than it’s damn good. This album is the sledge hammer that’s going to break down the fence people sit on regarding this band. It’s an excellent album all around.

Review byNecro-tron