With my interest in brutal death metal waning greatly in recent years I admit to being less than excited when four discs from a label named Brutal Bands showed up in my post office box a few months ago. I’d put off reviewing the material because I figured I’d have no interest in it and would just ship it off to one of my underlings, luckily I decided to listen to the album before sending it off.

Incised Wound Suicide is a five track slab of drum kit mashing, guitar shredding, vocal chord wrecking ultrafuckingbrutal death metal. Listening to the effort is like listening to None So Vile, Supreme Entity, Molesting The Decapitated, The Bleeding, Recounts Of Disembodiment, Consume The Forsaken and Festival Of Death playing together at the same time. You can’t help but have a feeling of deja-entendu when listening to the album as at every turn you hear something familiar mixed with something else familiar creating something surprisingly unique, yet far too familiar to ignore the similarities.

Abysmal Torment is a six piece hailing from Malta, home to Beheaded and… umm… Beheaded. Like their country-mates Abysmal Torment play a technical style of American brutal death metal with a similar presence on CD, which is likely due to both groups recording their albums at the same studio using the same producer, but it is noticeable.

The riffing, while varied, does often lean towards either the simple heavy brutal Devourment style, the technically complex modern Disgorge (US) or the mid-90s Cannibal Corpse guitar flair (think The Bleeding or Vile).

The vocals are handled by two instrumentless vocalists who gurgle and grunt in a traditional brutal death metal manner, nothing that’ll blow your mind, but a solid consistent effort on both Nicky and Gordon’s parts.

The drumming is generally pretty high speed and is somewhat reminiscent of Chad Walls-era Brodequin, though nowhere near as relentless with the blasting, as the music contains a lot more breakdowns which should appeal to fans of bands like Vomit Remnants and other catchy-but-brutal acts.

While certainly not the most original or creative death metal acts around, Abysmal Torment offers up enough speed, technicality, catchiness and brute force to appeal to a vast majority of American-styled brutal death metal fans. While the album does has it’s drawbacks, there is enough going on to keep my attention for more than a handful of listens, which speaks volumes considering I generally don’t listen to any new brutal death metal album more than once or twice. If it’s good enough for my fickle tastes, it should definitely be more than enough for the average fan. I’m definitely interested to hear what a full length effort would sound like with this line-up.

Written By: Teufel