I’ve always had a soft spot for Aborted. Despite their tendency to pick up on Suffocation and Carcass worship, I’ve always found my head bobbing along to Sven and Co.’s brutal death metal. Needless to say, I’ve followed Aborted for quite awhile now.

Goremageddon saw Aborted moving into Necroticism and Heartwork­-era Carcass territory, so after that slab of metal one would expect this new album to go further into Carcass mimicry. But strangely enough, it doesn’t. The Carcass worship is still present, but the riffs and vocal approach are definitely going in a different direction. It’s a lot more melodic, but not in the sense that it is moving into the realm of Gothenburg-style or metalcore solos. And the vocals have deviated in their initial brutality. Sven is still brutal as hell, but his delivery comes across more varied, delivering more of his cleaner, high-pitched screams besides his standard guttural outbursts. This could be in part of the various guest vocals throughout the record, but the vocal delivery is pretty constant in its variety. The end result is that Aborted, after several releases of being a Carcass wannabe have finally started to carve their own identity.

The downside is that The Archaic Abattoir is no where near as brutal as previous Aborted efforts. It doesn’t have the rampant constantly grinding punch that Goremageddon did have. However, it is more solid and a lot more focused than Engineering the Dead, a release that seemed all over the place and pretty substandard in its song-writing. Also of merit is reduction in sound samples: while they’re still present they are no where as annoying or prone to act as filler as they were on previous Aborted releases. The production seems to have been restrained since Goremageddon (the guitars don’t seem as loud in this mix)- which may explain for the slight drop in heaviness- but it still serves the music very well and doesn’t muddy up elements.

The slight change in sound might throw off some fans, but this is definitely the best release of Aborted so far. The best parts of their past Carcass worship are still intact and The Archaic Abattoir sees Aborted finally discovering their definitive sound. If you are going to grab an Aborted album, this will be the one to get started with.

Written By: Necro-tron