When Suffocation released their groundbreaking debut Effigy of the Forgotten in 1991, everyone wanted to jump on the brutal death metal bandwagon. Some of these early bands would go on to do great things, such as Deeds of Flesh and Dying Fetus. Other bands would pollute our ears with ill-conceived crap such as Mortician and Internal Bleeding. And then there are some bands that are so bad you might wonder how the metal gods even permitted them to exist. One such band is Splattered Cadaver. They formed in 1991 and proceeded to bum around for a decade before releasing their only full-length, Merciless Butchery, on United Guttural Records, a label notorious for reveling in mediocrity. Out of all the lousy albums that label released, this on is easily the worst.
Let's start off with the worst part of this affair: the drums. The snare is poorly produced and sounds hollow, but poor production is the least of his problems. His performance is utterly nonsensical. He just randomly flails at his kit like a baboon. The blast beats are clumsy, the double bass sounds like a soft tapping, the time shifts are awkward and haphazard, and he never seems to know where he wants to go. I'd rather listen to Mortician's drum machine. At least that thing plays in a predictable and straightforward manner. It's quite obvious that John Lecher had no fucking idea what he was doing behind the kit.
The guitars? Oh fucking hell. They just consist of mindless chugging that relentlessly rips off Cannibal Corpse. This blatant plagiarism can best be seen on the last song. I can barely even hear all this mindless chugging because it's all hidden within an amorphous blob of muddled production. It's all monotonous and migraine-inducing. As for the vocals, they consist of a weak guttural that sounds utterly half-assed. Ryan Robb tries desperately to imitate the vocal style of Frank Mullen, yet he's unable to replicate the soul. He cannot comprehend the intricacies of Frank Mullen's style or why he growls in such a way. Instead, this guy's only focused on being super “brutal”.
I hate this album. I hate this album so much. I hate the soulless gutturals, I hate the mindless chugging, and I especially hate those fucking drums. This album embodies everything that was wrong with most brutal death metal bands back in the late 90s, which can best be summed up in three words: style over substance. They were more focused on being “brutal” than they were on making good music. What's even worse is that I heard Sevared Records is going to re-release this album. Don't buy it. Don't even pirate it. Stay as far away as you can from this album, because listening to this shit is the musical equivalent of eating rancid meat covered in cat puke and dog diarrhea.
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