Dead Infection
Surgical Disembowelment

"Surgical Disembowelment", the first album by the Polish band Dead Infection, is a concentrated dose of low-budget fury. These 10 songs sound like demos recorded in an old abandoned shack; you won't be faced with a death metal tank, but rather a niche work for genre enthusiasts only. The name of this band has been very important for the evolution and consolidation of the most used styles of grindcore, but only starting from the next album. Here, you'll find just solid old-school death metal, 1993, indebted to certainly more illustrious names in the death field, but it undoubtedly marks an important step towards the sonic evolution that two years later would lead the Polish combo to record their most memorable work "A Chapter Of Accidents" in 1995.

The great merit of this album is soon said, the 10 tracks are very similar to each other, all around three minutes long. The tempos are not very fast; I would say mid-tempo with some double bass drum outbursts. The riffs used are not particularly memorable, although crude and vile enough just right, the drums sound static and monotonous except for rare exceptions where the blasts take over. The rare guitar solos during the tracks are only faintly hinted at, as brief as they are piercing, and end up being choppy and carefree. The growl is monotonous and guttural, I would say cadaverous with no particular style variations. In short, a series of good elements that fully perform their rotten duty within a respectable death metal album.

The lyrics: they talk about rancid guts turning into flour for worms, worms coming out of the throat and out of one's flesh when coughing and expelling yellow pus from the oral cavity, or they tell the story of an 18-year-old model hit by a 10-ton truck; she manages to survive but has both breasts amputated along with her lower limbs, so that from being a girl admired by the male gender, she becomes a monster, a freak… from being an "object of desire" for all men, she becomes an object pressed and crushed under the asphalt of a road.

In the 2001 reissue, released by Morbid Records and in my possession, the 1998 EP "Poppy-Seed Cake" is also included, where an important shift at the level of sound can be noted. The tracks are more immediate with shorter duration (tracks of one minute or slightly less), with a growl no longer low and guttural typical of purer death metal but rather acidic and crazy, a trademark of the gear shift made in terms of the sound texture.

I recommend to you readers this "Surgical Disembowelment" for those who want to retrace from the dawn of their birth the exploits of this important Polish combo and listen to their beginnings as a death metal band, to witness through its listening the sonic evolution they achieved in the short span of time that passed between the release of their first and second album, and for those who want to start getting to know the story of this band.

Rating 7/10.