Despite the genre's name, there's more to brutal death metal than just being brutal. If you want to stand out from the crowd and hold the listener's interest, you need to add a bit of nuance. You can't play slam riffs just to play slam riffs, you gotta add a healthy amount of groove to them. You can't play in a technical fashion just to show off how skilled you are, you gotta write memorable riffs. You can't just blast as fast as you can, you gotta offer up sweet headbanging rhythms. In other words, brutal death metal is just like all other forms of metal in that the main goal should be to make great music that people will enjoy for years to come.
Nobody bothered to tell any of this to Enmity! Instead, their only goal was to be the most brutal band in existence. They accomplished this by sacrificing any and all genuine musicianship and talent for brutality and speed. The end result of their foolish endeavor was Illuminations Of Vile Engorgement, the worst brutal death metal album to ever plague mankind.
I'll start off with the drums because they piss me off the most. Simply put, they're fucking abysmal. It seemed like the drummer had no idea how to play anything more complex than blast beats, so he decided to play almost nothing but blast beats. Okay, quick advice: filling up your album with nothing but blazing fast blast beats does not make you look brutal, it makes you look lazy. So lazy, in fact, that I thought the drums were programmed at first, but then I checked the liner notes and learned that they really were performed by an actual person. You know you're a terrible drummer when even Mortician's drum machine can play better than you. A less-enlightened person would admire the drummer's endurance, but I'm here to tell you that anyone can blast until the cows come home in the same way that anyone can record themselves playing Amnesia or Happy Wheels.
Once in a blue moon, he'll stop blasting and play some mid-paced rhythms. They suck just as hard as the blast beats. They are replete with double bass that sounds like an incessant clicking. They were so focused on being brutal that they didn't even bother to make sure that their double bass didn't sound like shit. Not only that, but during these slow parts, he seems to hit the snare in a completely random fashion, showing no concern for rhythm or time signature. That's just fucking sloppy. When even Me'ex and his Rock Band drum kit can play better than you, it's time to retire.
The vocals? Fucking atrocious. They consist of a low-pitched gurgle that has no force or vibrancy behind it. These are seriously the most half-assed brutal vocals I've ever heard. It's like the guy just recorded some weak growls and then pitch-shifted them as low as they could go. Not only that, but he never shuts up, which means they'll get on your nerves real fast. I know most people like to joke about how brutal death metal growls sound like the grunting of a pig, but I think that description definitely applies to this guy's vocal performance. I bet you that if I replaced the growls with actual pig grunts halfway through the album, you would never tell the difference.
Now we come to the riffs. Well, they aren't really riffs so much as they are the random strumming of the first three strings on the guitar. In their vain pursuit of absolute brutality, they tuned their guitars to an ungodly low range like Drop X or something. Yes, I know there's no such thing as Drop X, but the guitars on this album are tuned so ridiculously low, that's seriously what it sounds like. What the band fails to realize is that a brutal guitar tone means nothing without great riffs to back it up. These assholes can't write great riffs even if their lives depended on it. All they do is play a bunch of random notes. They play them fast during the blasting parts and they play them slow during the slam parts. Because Enmity is so hopelessly inept at writing riffs, all the songs sound exactly the same. I'm not kidding when I say that. Don't believe me? Pick a song. Any song. That song will sound exactly the same as all the other songs on the album.
The only two tracks that seem to break this monotony are the fifth track and the last track. The fifth track is called “Intro”. Why is there a song called “Intro” in the middle of the album? Because the band members are fucking retarded, that's why. This track just consists of a bunch of random “spooky” audio clips, so there's nothing special to it. The last track is called “Severe Lacerations”. These assholes though they were so clever by putting an acoustic song on a brutal death metal album, but instead they just prove how terrible they are at playing their instruments. It sounds like they just bought a cheap-ass acoustic guitar from Wal-Mart and played a whole bunch of random strings. You're not impressing anyone, assholes.
I'd like to apologize to Sectorian, Antisma, and all the other atrocious death metal bands I've reviewed in the past. I thought they were the bottom of the barrel, but then I discovered I could dig deeper. Illuminations Of Vile Engorgement doesn't deserve to be called music. I don't even want to call it noise, as that would be an insult to noise bands like Merzbow and Whitehouse. This is shit. No, this is worse than shit. This is shit taking a shit. This is the lowest depths of diarrhea hell. This was a dumb album recorded by dumb people and I feel dumber just by listening to it. If you believe this album is good, you are wrong. You are demonstrably wrong. And quite possibly even a bad person.
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