On this effort we find Austrian grinders Rotten Cold teaming up with Filipino ultra brutal death metallers Human Mastication. Having never heard of either of these bands, or the label that released the effort, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Rotten Cold start off the festivities with eight tracks of early 90s Napalm Death-inspired grindcore, with a sound that leans heavily towards Utopia Banished. The vocals are raspy and sound similar in approach to Barney Greenway, only nowhere near as powerful, sounding more like a 15 year old screaming in his bedroom while "I Abstain" shreds through his ghetto blaster. This isn’t actually a bad thing, though a slightly deeper vocal approach would be an improvement.

The song writing and structure pretty strong and the tracks flow well with nice sharp and catchy riffs, with a solid percussive assault. The production isn’t the best, as the sound lacks the proper weight and bass, but with a bit of fine tuning Rotten Cold could become a really solid band, even if they aren’t the most original band you’ll come across. Even their cover of Entombed’s "Wolverine Blues" is decent. Not bad… not bad at all.

Where Rotten Cold show promise, Human Mastication, on the other hand, are pretty hopelessly shitty. The sound they seem to be going for is super down tuned and distorted mid/slow-paced death metal.

The music itself is pretty boring and uninspired, which is bad enough in itself, but the production is pretty rough and just winds up making the really bland music just sound extremely irritating after about 10 seconds. Basically, this is just really terrible death metal with an even worse production, making Human Mastication basically pretty much not even worth listening to.

While Rotten Cold’s half of the split shows promise, it’s just not enough to surpass the utter shit that is Human Mastication to make buying this effort seem worthwhile, however, should Rotten Cold decide to record a full length, I definitely want to hear it.

Written By: Teufel