Devourment
Unleash The Carnivore

"Who is singing, a pig?" This is the inevitable reaction of the uninitiated when the stereo blasts the notes of any Devourment album—specifically "Unleash The Carnivore," their latest, released in 2009. Listening to this album, you'll naturally think, provided that the neurons that survive the sonic assault can still connect, that only two or three sadomasochistic brutalists, those who impale the cat in their spare time, know about the Dallas quartet and their works; yet, that’s not the case. Browsing the web, you'll discover that numerous reviewers are anything but stingy with praises towards Devourment. A massively heavy and highly independent band, a true gem of the most underground brutal death metal scene, that dark underbrush of blast beats and belches; a band, therefore, to be respected a priori—so it seems—that must necessarily feature among the listens of the true death-metaller. Wikipedia even claims that they are nothing less than the creators of a small but fearsome under-under-(continue)-genre, the slam brutal: bloody hell. Driven by curiosity, I then snagged this "Unleash The Carnivore," and while I was at it, I also gave their other albums a listen. So, what to say?

Let’s say first of all that these guys' three albums are absolutely identical, even though the expert critic will rush to explain that the first album plays, say, at 240 bpm and the others at 243. Essentially, they mix as per the manual (see Various Authors, Urgh. I'll kick your ass with brutal sounds, curated by Suffocation and Cannibal Corpse) blast beats and various slowdowns, then speed up the fast tempos until they devolve into barrages of chaotic beats, then they strengthen the very frequent slowdowns through the use of massive and viscous downstrokes—and so far, nothing new. They add a good dose of groove, that beautifully thick and pachydermic kind, and a "voice" that’s nothing short of repulsive, a sick mix between a hoarse boar and a clogged toilet (it’s the notorious inhale technique). Yes, it's been heard before, yet the debut album, "Molesting The Decapitated" (1999), had an oppressive freshness of its own, revisiting the classic brutal style in an even more exaggerated manner and adding a slow and bone-crushing groove that, come on, couldn’t help but pump you up. But after that album, that's it. Two absolutely indistinguishable and overall flat works followed. "Unleash The Carnivore" is exactly a photocopy of the previous albums, and that alone is enough to label it a semi-useless record. It’s hard to say much more: the eight tracks in this full-length form an uninterrupted stream of 34 minutes, without pauses, without solos, without any hint of melody to make the atmosphere less suffocating. More than songs, they are excuses to mash together tons of riffs and growls.

It will be said that brutal bands, whose sole purpose (even though there are exceptions, thankfully!) is to "crush," shouldn't give a damn about inventiveness and the desire not to repeat themselves. True, in part. But, aside from the all-alike album discussion, it is precisely the style of Devourment that doesn’t seem particularly original. The manic attention to form, to "how one must do to be true and kick ass," goes enormously to the detriment of feeling, resulting in an album where "Unleash The Carnivore" does not convey any emotion. It sounds heavy as a steamroller, but it is scarcely engaging. The fact is, the slaughter carried out by them, as exhilarating as it may be, is built on an idea as banal as ever: take brutal and push it to hypertrophy. However, - this is at least my personal opinion - it's not by making the music even heavier and more chaotic that one can say something new in a genre already paroxysmal like death metal. And I'm not talking about great innovations, but simply something that differentiates a little from the sea of similar proposals.

Summing up. You might have noticed that I talked a bit (not much) about "Unleash The Carnivore," a bit about Devourment's style, a bit about brutal death in general. I’ll try to organize and give a sense to this pseudo-review. Regarding this album, as I said, it is just like the previous works of theirs, thus I only recommend it to the most strictly disciplined brutalists: for others, it's easily dispensable. You might as well listen to the debut album. As for Devourment and their style, let's say they are certainly good musicians, otherwise, they couldn’t even conceive certain stuff, and a decent underground band; but going from here to calling them an original group or even the founders of a new sub-genre, which distinguishes itself from canonical brutal death as pitch-black differentiates from night-black, is a stretch. With all due respect to the reviewers who hold them in high regard.