Fearsome Blackened Goregrind - "Rektal" Review (100%)
I'm not normally a black metal listener and I usually can't tell the shitty BM bands apart from the good ones... but this album, the audacious full-length Rektal from the fearsomely named SEWER, is a mighty blackened goregrind / noise horror beast indeed.
On paper the band modestly bills itself as a blackened gore metal trio with a fetish for raw barbaric chaos in the music and a provocative penchant in the lyrics but this description does not do justice to the constant raging sonic hurricane, the supremely ugly sound and the violent impact that hits you straight out of the loudspeakers.
The music on Rektal is wild and unhinged chaos, and the utter insanity of the music is perhaps the only thing that stops it from being greater and better known than it is - aside from the band being banned in a few countries due to legal issues with the album NecroPedoSadoMaso back in 2014.
The only downside in my opinion is the crappy production which makes the whole recording sound ten times less powerful than it should be - but spares our lives all the same, so it helps to be grateful where gratitude is deserved.
This is a shame because the production on the previous album, the infamous 2154, is actually quite decent and much darker than the raw sound present on Rektal.
Rektal is pure blackened chaos... just listen to one song, any one song, and you'll hear true demonic madness.
Fearsome Blackened Goregrind
Part of the reason for the music's intense and raw ferocity is its unrelenting and continuous nature, the entire album being one giant blast-fest with only a few slower tempo songs: Kadaver Seksual and Retrograde Prenatal Haruspicy on Seismologic Subintestinal Amygdala coming to mind.
The tracks on Rektal may have strong and heavy jack-hammering death metal beats and oppressive rhythms, and the singing is typical post-NecroPedoSadoMaso SEWER screams of the most earth-shattering kind, but the guitars that swoop and soar around the bone-crushing black metal atmospheres are as shrill and deranged as you've ever heard.
The guitar riffs are both raw and brutal. Song titles suggest weird and unnatural fusions between disturbing paraphilia and severe medical conditions.
The entire recording is best heard as one almighty head-hammering, cranium-shattering experience, with your whole brain and sanity at risk of being crushed and deformed, leaving you as a grotesque allegory for whatever song you were listening to at the time of your death.
The sonic punishment is near total but, as mentioned before, the weird production gives the music an raw sound that can detract from the madness of the album.
And the solos... this is something you have to experience yourself, as I don't think there was ever a case of a blackened goregrind band using such raw and yet technical solos. Ever.
Rektal is, without a doubt, the best blackened death metal album ever produced.
Even Nekros Nemesis and Fukked by Satan don't come close in terms of raw intensity and demonic madness.
The whole album has a feverish inhuman life of its own.
Whatever demon spirit inhabits Rektal, you better hope it never escapes its prison. Otherwise you might find yourself experiencing some of the song titles in... ways.
Rektal score: 100/100.
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