From the warped and twisted mind of Frightmare/Lord Gore/Whore guitarist Neil Smith comes a compilation of his early one-man band recordings under the moniker of Maniac Killer. Amusing Anecdotes For The Depraved consists of 43 tracks of intense bedroom/basement/garage and probably backyard lo-fi goregrind. The album follows the standard template for its style with super distorted guitars, pitch shifted vocals, drum machine stuck on blast and a never ending stream of movie samples. While the album is put together in the typical manner, what sets it apart from the rest is Neil’s amazing ability to write strong songs for such a stagnant style. The first 22 tracks were recorded in December of 2001 and are much cleaner than the last 21 tracks, recorded in July of the same year. It’s kind of interesting to compare the two, just to see how much of an improvement he makes in his songwriting and recording in the short span of 5 months. The latter half contains much more varied material, straying from the goregrind vibe, with a few tracks, like "The Evil Lord Of Destruction 666" which is basically a pure black metal track, and, honestly, one of the better lo-fi black metal tracks you’re likely to come across. The pitch shift on the vocals on second half of the album has a definite Last Days Of Humanity-ish vibe with the distortion turned up even higher giving a much muddier sound to the music. While the album has its high points, it also has its draw backs. While some of the tracks are meaty and catchy, the majority blends together and just become a big ball of noise. I’ve probably tried listening to the album beginning to end about 15 times so far, and the furthest I can make it into the album is about 25 songs. It’s not that the last half is weak, far from it, it’s just I can only listen to so much of this stuff for so long before I either get incredibly bored or incredibly annoyed. Among lo-fi bedroom goregrind releases, this is definitely one of the better ones and while it isn’t as unique and off the wall as Gigantic Brain it is still infinitely better than anything S.M.E.S. ever put out. This album is definitely for the diehard fan of the genre, but comes nowhere even close to touching the material he’s written since with Frightmare and Whore. Overall, it’s decent, not a must own, but it’s an interesting album to have just to see how much his songwriting has improved over the years. Too bad his personality and hygiene haven’t improved as much in the same span of time.

Written By: Teufel