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With a line-up consisting of Havok vocalist Johan Bergström, Visceral Bleeding bassist Martin Eklöv, Deranged vocalist Martin Schönherr on drums and guitarist Johan Hallberg, you’d probably expect Sweden’s Splattered Mermaids to be a brutal death metal band, or a grindcore project.  You’d be half-right on both counts.

Splattered Mermaids are a brutal death grind outfit whose debut full length offering, Stench Of Flesh, was released on none other than the Czech Republic’s Bizarre Leprous Productions, a label synonymous with extreme grind.  Stench Of Flesh contains 10 tracks of relentless brutal death metal-flavored grind spread out over 24 minutes, filled with bark-growls, pig squeals, lots of up-tempo drumming and shredding riffs.

Musically the material is on par with the majority of European brutal death metal acts with many riffs sounding like they’d fit with any of a number of brutal death metal releases.  They do mix things up with some massive crushing breakdowns, including a few brief NOLA-flavored moments, slightly reminiscent of the breakdowns on Leng Tch’e’s Marasmus, but with a brutal death metal vibe.

The most surprising part about Splattered Mermaids is the vocals, specifically, the vocal cadence used by vocalist Johan Bergström.  The vocal patterns he use are nearly identical to those used by Don Decker on Anal Blast’s Battered Bleeding Bitch.  The vocal sound is different from Decker though, Bergström’s barking sound more like a distorted version of former Beheaded frontman Lawrence Joyce’s relentless barking.

The drumming of Martin Schönherr reminds me a bit of Beheaded drummer Chris Brincat, in a stylistic sense, obviously Brincat has been doing it a lot longer and is more technically proficient, but  Schönherr has a similar blasting technique where it’s obvious he’s blasting as fast as he can, but it sounds like he’s blasting faster than he’s capable of.  He also puts a similar emphasis on each beat like Brincat does, it took me a few listens to really wrap my head around it, but the similarities are definitely there.

The song writing on Stench Of Flesh is hardly new, unique or terribly exciting.  The majority of the tracks are straight forward brutal death metal, just not as technical, with distorted barked vocals and blasts.  Despite the rather generic sound the material is actually surprisingly infectious and catchy with the repeated breakdowns and tempo changes.  The straight forward blasting brutal death metal stuff gets old pretty quick, but the rest of the material is pretty fucking solid.

Splattered Mermaids are a bit of an odd signing for Bizarre Leprous Productions, considering they’re neither pure grindcore nor goregrind, but it’s not completely out of place with the rest of the label’s discography.  I’m not sure if I’ll listen to Stench Of Flesh much, if ever, after reviewing it, but it’s good enough and varied enough to be worth at least a dozen or so listens, but with it’s relatively short running time you could easily listen to this effort a hundred or so times before growing tired of it.  It’s not incredible, but for brutal death grind it’s pretty damn solid, definitely worth checking out if you’re a brutal death metal and grindcore fan.

Review byTeufel