Prior to listening to this album, I was only familiar with Christ Denied after hearing their 1998 release …Got What He Deserved. Although being Mortician-worship for the most part, wasn’t that bad of a release, and considering I’d heard good things about Aborted, I was rather optimistic about this CD. I should have known better. The split starts out with the three tracks by Aborted, a brutal death metal group hailing from Belgium who sound extremely similar to the majority of american brutal death metal groups, with the exception of the vocals which are a lot higher and more typical of deathcore than brutal death metal. There honestly isn’t a lot of interest on their half of the split, as the only thing which really caught my attention was a slow heavy section on "Sea Of Cartilage" with an audio clip of some serial killer’s interview. I was highly unimpressed by the band’s complete lack of originality and plethora of unmemorable riffs and rhythms and found them to be little more than a sub-par Suffocation clone. The Christ Denied section of the release didn’t help improve my overall impression of this album much. Although they do a decent version of Pyrexia’s "The Uncreation", nothing can save this band from their own poor music writing and playing ability. The band uses a drum machine, which I have never been a fan of, especially when it’s programmed to do nothing but blast for 5 minutes straight. The guitaring of David Nigger (that’s his name, I swear) is amateurish at best as he just turns the distortion up and chugs away. The vocals of Dave Rotten are extremely brutal, as he seems to just stick the microphone in his stomach and record himself vomiting, however, there’s just something about the high pitched slosh to his growls that ends up making me want to punch him in the face. Well, that and he likes Mortician, which I think is reason enough to punch someone in the face to begin with. The average brutal death metal fan would probably enjoy this, however most fans of this genre of music have an IQ lower than my shoe size and often find enjoyment in ramming their head into a wall repeatedly. Anyone looking for great brutal death metal should pick up Devourment, Disgorge (US), Suffocation or Pyrexia and ignore Christ Denied and Aborted until they’ve matured musically, they’ve both got a long way to go before they even come close to level of those aforementioned bands.

Written By: Teufel