Like the majority of death metal fans, the first time I heard of the U.K.’s Gorerotted was when Relapse Records announced they were going to re-issue the group’s Mutilated In Minutes debut. Upon hearing it, I honestly couldn’t figure out why they bothered as it was easily one of the most unoriginal and crappy releases I’d ever heard.

The group followed this up with their Metal Blade Records debut, Only Tools And Corpses, which was, surprisingly, even worse than their debut. They followed this up with material for the Split Your Guts 3-way split along with Gronibard and Gruesome Stuff Relish and presented the most boring material of the 3 acts.

Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting much for the group’s third full length effort, A New Dawn For The Dead. This is supposedly the group’s turning point, and, in a sense, that is true; they’ve transformed from a really shitty band into a band that can only really be described as unoriginal and boring.

I played this album three times, and not once did I nod my head with the music, not once did I feel any emotion towards the release at all. It was so boring that after each listen I had to take a nap.

The new material takes the music in a new direction, opting for a more generic death metal sound, and virtually abandoning grind completely. The music takes on a strong Cannibal Corpse feel, both new and old, only performed by far less skilled musicians, with vocals better suited for Carcass-clone acts.

The problem is everything just sounds "okay", nothing sounds amazing, the high-low vocal assault is okay, but not great. The riffing is okay, but not mind blowing. The drumming is adequate, but hardly anything that’ll take the music to the next level. The material isn’t terrible, it’s just not good and the only emotion it gets out of me is complete indifference.

This is exactly what you should expect from a Metal Blade death metal release for the new millennium; watered down, unoriginal and uninteresting material that’s hardly worth the time to discuss, let alone the money to buy. Some people may pick this up and consider it one of the best death metal releases in years, then again some people are fascinated by poo and like to eat it and smear it all over their faces.

Come to think of it, Gorerotted is a lot like coprophilia; they took the meaty music of other bands and greedily ate it as it plopped onto their plate, then went through their own digestive tracks only to end the cycle by pooping it out into compact disc form and slapping horrible artwork on top, trying to encourage others to have a bite. Hmm… I guess that means A New Dawn For The Dead is crap then. I guess they really didn’t change that much afterall.

Written By: Teufel