Article by Corey M. Whoa that piece of shit is on the toilet lid. Someone has to wipe that down after the photo session. Reaching into toilets to fish out footlong pieces of shit that look like salamanders is what Death Metal Underground staffers do everyday. Our asses are worn out like whoever crapped that one out.

Incarnal – Hexenhammer (2015)
Late-model Immolation is probably one of the main influences for these guys, who have a cool name, cool logo, and cool cover art – a pretty convincing package on the surface. But the music comes off as closer to the work of Ulcerate, who make rhythmic death metal with deceptively simple components disguised by inverted chords with odd voicings, ringing and harmonizing awkwardly over disorienting shifting beats. It’s easy to tell that this music is 75% ornamentation by simply nodding your head along to the beat. You’ll notice that you cannot possibly lose track of the downbeat because, even when the drums switch from a groove to a blast, the chunky guitar chords still emphasize those downbeats, as if all instruments are enslaved to the rhythm. If the guitars are doing anything polyrhythmic, the vocals then make sure that you never lose that downbeat, keeping the groove constant and completely killing any sense of dynamics, despite the evidently extreme shifts on the surface of the music. Verdict: These guys no doubt really believe that they are writing death metal but have only grasped the most obvious characteristics of the genre; ugly distortion, drum techniques, growls. Just a minute of listening will reveal how hollow, lacking in spirit, the music is though. This is metal made by guys who think metal is cool and want to be metal like the cool metal people they know. Horns up, bro. Also, the track “Children of Pestilence” features a segment that is repeated twice, made up of chugging power chords beneath a simple four-note guitar harmony and it sounds awesome, so it had to be an accident that these guys came up with it. It’s that same law that applies to the chimps banging on typewriters, eventually writing the entire works of Shakespeare.

Heretique – De Non Existentia Dei (2016)
On paper, this is death metal. It’s as if someone mixed together all the ingredients for a cake, but just let the mix sit untouched for days rather than baking it. The riffs are not really random but are indeed pointless and clearly constructed to cycle ad nauseum; a perfect example of the retarded state of modern death metal. The guitarist(s) know that their progressions need to at least make a modicum of sense when placed end-to-end so they pick the easiest method of achieving coherency and select a “spooky” interval (almost always a 4th or 7th) and throw in some random chromatic chords in between for that “brutal” effect, then shift back and forth until it’s time for a comically lazy amelodic solo (with the exception of the lead near the middle of “Sweet Stench of Rotting Flesh”, which is actually well-executed). If you thought Aeon were a laughably shitty Deicide rip-off, you are in for a harsh lesson in misplaced optimism. All that aside, these guys might be pleased to know that their impotent raging against Christianity is validated; this kind of music would not exist in a world under the sovereignty of a just and caring god.

Tags: death metal, Heretique, Incarnal, sadistic metal reviews, stinking shit