Engorged is one of those bands where you look at the cartoonish cover, the cheesy lyrics, and you know these guys are horror freaks. Just from the cover art alone, I envision several balding, obese, forty year-old men living in their parents basement that only past the time by collecting the new issues of Fangoria and masturbating to Linnea Quigley’s strip sequence in Return of the Living Dead. Such a description doesn’t say much of their music capability, though, and these guys actually can play contrary to what I was expecting. Rather than belt out a horridly produced slab of sloppy Mortician worship, these guys completely skirt my expectations and deal out a decently crafted brand of death thrash.

And I like this really strange breed of death thrash. It’s catchy, well-performed, and decently written. Hell, the guitar solo on "The Thing" almost throws me back to the old days of Bay Area thrash; I could swear that solo is picked up from an older song. The songs are all very well-arranged and are pretty decent. Not to mention the drumming is pretty good- not to the extent it will win awards- but it’s enjoyable and keeps the beat well. Vocally, I can’t help but get a feeling of a Chris Reifert influence in these tracks: the vocals portray that same gargling, blurpy quality I get from some Abscess and The Ravenous tracks.

There is possibly only one complaint I could derive from the album. It’s the matter of the samples. Most bands get on my bloody nerves with them constantly throwing around sound bites, but Engorged actually has discretion. The sound samples are kept short and appropriate, and the production actually did a good job at making most of them mesh well with the music. As a result, these guys manage to avert one of my biggest gripes.

Engorged’s Where Monsters Dwell offers a pretty package of death thrash as a whole. You’re not going to really find anything drastically new in this album, but what is here is worth a listen. However, I still think these guys whack off to Linnea Quigley.

Written By: Necro-tron