Sermon to the Lambs – Sermon to the Lambs Review By Alekhines Gun

What’s your favorite slam album and why? Do you value catchiness in your big bruutz? Clear production? Melodic presence? My favorite slam alternates with my mood between Devourment’s Obscene Majesty and Analepsy’s Quiescence; the former for the excellent execution of such a narrow sound, and the latter for the colors and beauty imbued into the otherwise bone-shattering grooves. Though given a bad rap for its easy-to-emulate smoothbrain caveman stereotypes, slam has shown much evolution in recent years as bands continue to push and redefine the limits of extremity. Hailing from Chile, new outfit Sermon to the Lambs have arrived with their self-titled debut, coming with the usual aggrandizing promises of maximum aural violence and assurances of a downright traumatizing listen for anyone who has ears to hear; will this sermon find the hearts of true believers or leave the congregation cold and unmoved?

Well, at least they know their way around a riff. Periodic snapshots show Sermon to the Lambs at their proselytizing best, with the occasional moment raising itself to headbangable proportions (“Crowned King of the Worms”, “God Spat and the Man was Done”) with a high octane assault. Slam styles range from the chunkier chromatic walks of Maggot Colony or Condemned, to moodier setpieces near the end of “Clergy’s Malevolence” for tonal shift and a sense of climax to round out the release. Melodies are almost completely excised in favor of a full steam ahead barrage, which rarely tinkers with tempo changes or distinguishing features, placing Sermon to the Lambs as students of the class of professors Disgorge and Gorgasm with regard to their commitment to bludgeoning the listener to death.

Sermon to the Lambs by SERMON TO THE LAMBS

Unfortunately, those highlights are few and far between and only serve to exacerbate how unbelievably bland this album is. Vocalist Richard Aguayo falls prey to the maddening trend of not knowing how to let his vocals support the music, choosing instead to slather almost the entire album with belches and brees which possess little sense of diction or phrasing. His gutturals are excellent, but the frustrating insistence on double-tracking them with his more shrill screams is not, and the mix has him pushed so far forward that he frequently drowns out whatever interesting musicality might be hiding underneath. Songs stop and go on a dime, and frequently I’d be surprised to see I was several tracks deeper into a listen than I thought I was, thanks to song conclusions and kick-offs blurring together in composition. Any random 30 seconds chosen to play would certainly unleash an attack filled with energy and enthusiasm, but Sermon to the Lambs is utterly devoid of truly head-spinning moments or anything to warrant repeat listens.

What is the biggest culprit for this? The mix is no help, with all the knobs on the board shoved all the way up to 11, leaving instrument and vocals fighting for attention while the bass’s body is buried in the backyard and forgotten. For the most part, the riffs are no help, a hodgepodge of expected staccato presentations and a beige haze of blasts. The drumming is no help; while skillfully delivered, there are certainly no fills to catch the listener’s attention. Other than the aforementioned moments of semi-memorability in the bookending tracks, there’s definitely no run of riffs to raise horns and toss beer at innocent passerby. Sermon to the Lambs lacks any dose of menace or cinema, though the band definitely tries, taking a page from the book of Brodequin and injecting some Gregorian chant into an intro (“Maximum Apostasy”) before that too devolves into paint-drying and bird watching. The closing track makes a valiant effort to get some real atmosphere with its tempo shifts, and Sermon to the Lambs wisely err on the side of brevity with the releases 30 minute runtime. But ultimately, this is an opaque, textureless, flavorless album, so focused on the brutalizing that it never manages to get out of first gear and approach anything with replayability.

I’ve wrestled for a while on why this is. Objectively, there’s nothing executed that’s “poor” in the literal sense. Instruments are played well, throats are wildly abused, and snares blow out the treble in your speakers with savage glee. One might argue that this was the very vision, and if such monotonous brutality is your jam, you’ll probably find lots more to like here. But slam is capable of its own artistic merit and is more than malleable to compositional adventures, and Sermon to the Lambs is lacking heavily in both artistic vision (beyond “kill”) and compositional adventures. If straightforward jackhammer thrashings are your parish, you’ll find plenty of good word here, but this lion lamb will be attending services elsewhere.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 41 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Comatose Music
Website: Album Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: March 6th, 2025

Show 1 footnote

Frankly I was shocked it wasn’t lower. ↩

#20 #2026 #Analepsy #Brodequin #BrutalDeathMetal #ChileanMetal #ComatoseMusic #Condemned #Devourment #Disgorge #Gorgasm #MaggotColony #Mar26 #Review #Reviews #SermonToTheLambs

Cytolysis – Surge of Cruelty Review

By Owlswald

Embracing the brutal death metal staples of extreme violence, mutilation, and gore, Cytolysis is the solo project of drummer Darren Cesca (ex-Arsis, ex-Deeds of Flesh). Temporarily breaking from his duties in Goratory and Eschaton, Cesca uses Cytolysis as an outlet to write, perform, and produce his own horror-filled material. His first offering, Portraits of Malevolence, tipped the scales firmly towards deathcore and was a competent yet unremarkable slab of sonic torture. After a five-year hiatus, Cesca emerges from the depths once more with Surge of Cruelty, hoping to follow Cytolysis’ run-of-the-mill debut with something far more malicious. But as it turns out, not much has changed.

Cytolysis remains deathcore through and through. Driven by its strong rhythmic core, the name of the game on Surge of Cruelty is consistency and groove, with songwriting that largely relies on devastating Acacia Strain-esque breakdowns, mid-tempo plods, and half-time slams. Down-tuned guitars deliver a one-dimensional backdrop of bludgeoning power chords and devilish chugs, while Cesca’s blast beats, swift kick patterns, and tight grooves twist and turn with technical precision and a mechanical pulse. His Pyrexian vocals feature an abundance of unvaried pig squeals and guttural, vomit-flavored growls that often recede into the highly compressed mix. Guest vocals—like those from Brian Forgue (Syphilic) on “A Blood Soaked Offering,” or Mac Smith (Eschaton, Apogean) on “Devout Sacrifice”1—offer a welcome contrast to Cesca’s conventional delivery, injecting much-needed dynamism through their soiled, vulgar-sounding roars. Still, even with its technically sound components, Cesca assembles Surge of Cruelty into a predictable and ultimately monotonous eleven tracks.

Surge of Cruelty suffers from a structural monotony that makes its forty-four minutes feel sluggish and overlong. Cytolysis’ over-reliance on a limited playbook of chunky breakdowns and trudging grooves ultimately bleeds the album of its energy. Rather than building or evolving, the record’s flow feels like Cesca stitched similar-sounding tracks together. This predictability is immediately evident on opener “Your Slow Demise.” Embodying a run-of-the-mill brutality, the track builds on a foundation of lumbering mid-tempo chuggery and grinding slowdowns amidst Cesca’s squeals. Attempts at variation—like the choo-choo whistling guitar bends or the spells of dissonant guitars—lack supremacy and fall flat. Elsewhere, tracks like “Mark of the Demons,” “Surge of Cruelty,” and “Tribal Savagery” are packed with formulaic rhythms, low-end chugs, and tired-sounding riffs. Thankfully, the instrumental “Ritual Carnage” provides a moment of separation with its buzzing bass, pounding drums, and throat singing, but its effect is short-lived, as Cesca quickly pushes Surge of Cruelty right back into its old patterns. While the album’s shorter songs (“Innocence is Raped,” “A Blood Soaked Offering,” and “Consenting Brood”) fare better, too many tracks feel uninspired and aimless, lacking the quality material to justify their duration.

Moments of technical flair provide Surge of Cruelty’s most engaging passages, as Cytolysis explores the boundaries of its deathcore mold. Cesca’s quick double bass bursts in “Mark of the Demons” or the accented ride pattern in the title track provide subtle dynamics and a brief sense of variation. “Devout Sacrifice” stands out as one of the album’s strongest tracks, thanks to its numerous twists and turns and its tight, punishing groove that holds my attention despite its whistling guitar bends. Other notable material includes the syncopated intro riff of “Innocence is Raped” and the refreshingly fast tempo and dark atmosphere of “Hung from the Rafters”—a welcome change of pace that unfortunately arrives far too late. Making matters worse, the album’s production—which is compressed to hell—magnifies Surge of Cruelty’s homogeneity, stripping the material of any life and hindering Cytolysis’ moments of creativity.

My time with Surge of Cruelty began with hope but ended in disappointment. Cesca’s ability to single-handedly write, perform, and produce Cytolysis’ material is undoubtedly impressive, but Surge of Cruelty buckles under the weight of its own monotony and its sterile mix. While guest vocalists inject some much-needed dynamism and moments of technicality provide creative sparks, they are too infrequent to save an album that ultimately leaves little to hold onto after its best moments pass. Surge of Cruelty is a missed opportunity, but Cesca certainly has the talent to produce something far more compelling in the future.

Rating: Disappointing
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Comatose Music
Websites: darrencesca.weebly.com | facebook.com/darren.cesca
Releases Worldwide: August 8th, 2025

#20 #2025 #AcaciaStrain #AmericanMetal #Apogean #Arsis #Aug25 #ComatoseMusic #Cytolysis #DeathMetal #Deathcore #DeedsOfFlesh #Eschaton #Goratory #Pyrexia #Review #Reviews #SurgeOfCruelty #Syphilic

Kill Everything – Headless Cum Dumpster Review

By Saunders

In terms of subtlety and nuance, brutal death represents an oil vs water scenario. Illustrating the point, Texan purveyors of repugnant, stupidly heavy slam-infected brutal death, Kill Everything, return with the charmingly titled Headless Cum Dumpster, the long-gestating follow-up to their well-received 2018 debut, Scorched Earth. Time passed has brought in changes to the band’s line-up since their thumping debut, with ex-Devourment gurgler Mike Majewski leaving the fold, bassist Mike Leach joining, and former bassist Brett Wilson switching to second guitar, teaming up with another ex-Devourment member in guitarist Brian Wynn. Scorched Earth offered solidly satisfying slams and cement-smashing riffs, featuring a clean, heavy production job and suitably gut-wrenching vocal eruptions to chunky effect. The time away has found the band devolving into a darker, danker, uglier beast, while retaining the overwhelmingly punishing aural onslaught and face-smashing slams they detonated with such impact on their debut. Seven years is an eternity in the underground realms of brutal death. Can the rejinked Kill Everything cash in on their promise on the second go around?

Kill Everything favor brevity, probably to the album’s benefit, lock, loading and firing off a whirlwind eight song beatdown, clocking-in a brisk twenty-six minutes plus change. As indicated earlier, Headless Cum Dumpster strips away the more polished sonic elements from the debut, smearing layers of grime and a rancid mass of unidentified bodily fluids across the album’s dense, gritty construction. The resulting change in production tact creates an endearingly rugged, unvarnished edge to an already feral bout of guttural extremities. “Fermented Drippings” lays out the album’s formula in unsubtly head-caving terms, riding shotgun with rugged mid-paced batterings, chunky grooves, and forceful vocal emissions. The song makes an impactful explosion to begin the album; however, it lacks a genuine hook or lasting impression, a recurring theme across the album.

While never sluggish, Kill Everything prefer to operate in murky, mid-paced terrain, aside from more chaotic, speedier numbers or urgent rhythmic shift (“Maggot Frenzy,” “Infatuated with Homicide”). Although there are standout moments, riffs, and the obnoxiously addictive power of the almighty slam at play, Headless Cum Dumpster tends to blur by in all its unsophisticated, bone-headed glory. The ingredients and performances nail the aesthetics and key points to please brutal death and slam aficionados, complete with incomprehensibly heaving, guttural vox, and classic snare tone. And when this shit is on, there is fun to be had. For instance, “Headless Cum Dumpster” mashes busy drumming and chaotic riffage with satisfyingly explosive slams, while “No Lives Matter” rumbles drunkenly along like a deranged bog monster, off-kilter rhythms and sewer-dwelling grooves erupting in a headbangable frenzy.

In the moment, Headless Cum Dumpster provides momentary enjoyment, courtesy of the band’s tight performances, emphasis on swaggering, meaty grooves, repugnant slams, and chaotically brutal attack. Several songs create a decent impact, yet despite the album’s efficiency and Kill Everything’s dedication to their craft, the writing fails to consistently rise to the occasion. The loss of Majewski is significant. Vocals in brutal death can often function as a secondary rhythmic instrument, playing second fiddle to the instrumental base. They are not often the standout feature, nor should they negatively diminish or overwhelm the dense assault. Johnny Abila’s (Mortifying Deformity, Rotting Plague) uber-deep, guttural burps lend the album a brutal punch; however, the monotonously one-dimensional performance becomes an unwelcome distraction, lacking the character and variety of his predecessor. Coupled with songwriting that is missing the immediacy, dynamics, and infectiousness of the debut, Headless Cum Dumpster falls short as a long-awaited follow-up.

Overall, Headless Cum Dumpster ticks the boxes for a rollicking good time for avid listeners of underground brutal death, with a particularly slammy profile. However, the album’s bruising underground charms, unrelenting attack, and gut-busting slams cannot substantially paper over the songwriting deficiencies, shortage of genuinely engaging moments, and subpar vocals, diminishing an otherwise solid slab of nasty underground brutality.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Comatose Music
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: July 25th, 2025

#25 #2025 #AmericanMetal #BrutalDeath #ComatoseMusic #DeathMetal #Devourment #HeadlessCumDumpster #KillEverything #MortifyingDeformity #Review #Reviews #RottingPlague #Slam

The sole album by Cerebral Hemorrhage, Exempting Reality, gets a newly remastered re-release. Review at FFR, https://flyingfiddlesticks.com/2025/01/16/cerebral-hemorrhage-exempting-reality-comatose-2025/ #metal #heavymetal #rock #hardrock #deathmetal #brutaldeathmetal #CerebralHemorrhage #ComatoseMusic #NewYork

Corpsefucking Art – Tomatized Review

By Dear Hollow

There are albums that choose you, and Corpsefucking Art chose me. Even for a band known for their comedy, Tomatized surprised me. There are certain subjects you cover for a brutal death/slam/goregrind band, with plenty of gore and torment populating its lyric sheets – even if the pig-squealed “EEEEEEEE” is the only thing you hear. Tomatized has all that and a Lovecraftian vibe: “Earth shall be ruled by a new breed of sentient beings!” the promo proudly proclaims. Okay, sentient beings dethroning humanity isn’t too odd for death metal. “Behold the kingdom of cyclopic tomatoes!” Wait, what?

Italy’s Corpsefucking Art has been around in some form or another since 1993. While earlier works were run-of-the-bloody-mill gorefests of grimy brutal death, it wasn’t until 2003’s Splatter Deluxe that they cut out the gravy and derailed into goofy territory.1 Likewise, the idea of sentient “tomators” overthrowing humanity dates back to the song “Voracious Tomatoes” from 2014’s Quel Cimitero Accanto Alla Villa. So really, I shouldn’t have been surprised by Tomatized, but don’t let tomatoes distract you from the fact that Corpsefucking Art hits with a sloppy megaton groove that’ll get your head bobbing sometimes. Bottom-scraping growls, downtuned riffs, plodding drumming – it sure is there. And nothing else.

Corpsefucking Art’s breed of goregrind/brutal death metal is about as bare bones as you get. There’s no technicality, no variation to the commanding roar – all in favor of the groove. Tracks like “Hell of the Living Dead,” “Phantasm” and “The Book of the Dead” all feature curb-stomping riffs with a hint of slam that recall the reasons you started listening to Carcass or Cannibal Corpse, while more blazing tremolo populates “Alien vs. Tomator” and “A Nightmare on Tomato Street.” For better or for worse, Tomatized is a remarkably straightforward, knuckle-dragging goregrind affair that offers no technicality or variation. While offering absolutely nothing to the most seasoned listeners and brutal death newcomers alike, something is refreshing about its dumb simplicity.2 The shifty rhythm in “The Book of the Dead” and layered harmony of “Escape from Alpha City” add a brief jolt of energy, while the ambient interlude spoken word and horror audio segment in “Dead Sushi” is a reprieve, if not a cringeworthy one.

Even for its brief thirty-minute runtime, Corpsefucking Art starts sounding ridiculously tired early on. While it features dummy thicc guitar, that’s about all it’s got. Every track features some variation of the same three Carcass riffs and chord progressions with death growls exclusively dominating the proceedings, lacking variety or charisma. The guitars, despite their proclamation of slimy, still feel sterile and over-produced. I also never thought I would say that I wished Tomatized had pong, but here we are, because the dull “thunk” of the snare gets lost immediately in the sea of tomato-infested booty riffs. It feels like a joke; it’s a fun sound you can trap your friend into listening to an album about sentient tomatoes, but the novelty wears off almost immediately. Tracks sound identical thanks to its monotonal palette, leaning too much on the tomato-themed theme and robbing Corpsefucking Art of the opportunity to prove their versatility after over thirty years of experience.

Tomatized is the audio equivalent of mixing tomato paste and water and calling it marinara.3 Corpsefucking Art sure is brutal and they can groove, but repeated spins poke holes in the sound. It’s about as exciting as early Abominable Putridity, Fatuous Rump, or Devangelic: flaunting that knuckle-dragging groove but lacking the technicality, variation, or songwriting chops to support it. The comedy is a nice change-up from the semi-serious barbarity of the style, but that doesn’t mean much. Tomatized is about tomatoes that dethrone mankind, but Corpsefucking Art ain’t dethroning goregrind, brutal death, or slam royalty anytime soon.

Rating: 1.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Comatose Music
Website: facebook.com/corpseeffingart
Releases Worldwide: October 4th, 2024

#10 #2024 #AbominablePutridity #BrutalDeathMetal #CannibalCorpse #Carcass #ComatoseMusic #CorpsefuckingArt #DeathMetal #Devangelic #FatuousRump #Goregrind #ItalianMetal #Oct24 #Review #Reviews #SlamDeathMetal #Tomatized

Carnivore Diprosopus – Rise of the Insurrection Review

By Kenstrosity

Ah, brutal death metal. A singularly punishing corner of the extreme metalverse, brutal death commands your every orifice for consumption and then ruination. Or sometimes the other way around. Brutal death metal isn’t picky. Neither am I. Despite my cuddly, terminally delightful disposition in real life, I love this stuff for its cave-brained approach to extreme music, its penchant for irresistible groove unmatched by other styles, and its promise of outlandish compositional WIOLENCE. These are the things Colombian/Spanish brutal death quintet Carnivore Diprosopus pledge with fourth onslaught Rise of the Insurrection.

Beginning life in 2002, Carnivore Diprosopus wrote about what every early 2000s brutal band wrote about: shocking acts of violence, generalized perversion, and lots of gore. The usual suspects. With their third installment, Condemned by the Alliance, however, Carnivore Diprosopus shifted gears slightly. Still integrating the expected extremities, Condemned by the Alliance and now Rise of the Insurrection feel more conceptual and story-driven, detailing what appears to be tales of fictional great wars involving much invasion, destruction, death, and what I’m sure would be considered outright violations of the Geneva Convention. Using compositional blueprints spearheaded by acts like Brodequin, Devourment, and Pathology, Carnivore Diprosopus’ fourth salvo carries their recounts on the backs of crushing riffs, pummeling rhythms and blasts, and subterranean gurgles—just the way I expect and desire to hear it. Bonus points to the band for an unexpectedly rich, warm, and roomy production that proves once and for all that music like this can easily beat me to a pulp without disrespectful compression or excessive loudness.

Rise of the Insurrection is a quintessential example of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The riffs contained in city-leveling monstrosities like “Begin Redemption,” “Dhamaneon,” album highlight “The Onslaught—Cyborg Tank Division,” “Khristov’s Seventh Eagle Legion,” and “Psycho Mincer Assault Corps” sound suspiciously like a million other band’s best—albeit with a bit more focus on infectious groove than single-minded destruction. For me, none of that is a bad thing. A touch of slam in many of Carnivore Diprosopus’ rhythmic patterns and a tasteful reliance on tightly grouped triplets helps reinforce that sense of swagger to great effect as well, making this album extremely dangerous for my neck (“The Battle of Saicasm (Ariel Predator)”). At a shredded thirty-one minutes, Rise of the Insurrection flies by in a flash, making revisits an effortless and thoroughly rewarding affair. With each new spin, I discover little moments throughout that give any given song another point of interest to keep me invested (notably, the fun cymbal clinks that most densely populate the album midsection).

It’s difficult to offer more than nitpicks when critiquing Rise of the Insurrection, but those nitpicks add up quickly. For Carnivore Diprosopus, my biggest nitpick is the complete lack of originality or novelty in their songwriting. This record in particular borrows an array of notes from Unbirth’s Fleshformed Columns of Deceit and Brodequin’s discography at large. That’s great company to keep, but I worry that Carnivore Diprosopus play too close to their influences here, which could deter fans from checking them out as easily as it might initially attract them. An additional side effect of this condition, many of Rise of the Insurrection’s less immediate moments fall victim to the void almost instantly after passing (the second half of “Dhamaneon,” for example), calling the record’s overall memorability into question. In other areas, Carnivore Diprosopus deserve credit for their unusually roomy production. Warm and rich guitar and vocal tones, combined with what feels like acres of space on the soundstage, provide every element plenty of room to play and interact with each other, affording the record an organic sense of dynamics. However, the snare sometimes feels wooden and a little sharp for this style, negatively impacting measures involving intense blast beats the most. Crash and ride cymbals similarly lack body in spots, evoking a somewhat glassy quality that can make rapid-fire strikes and extended washes occasionally unpleasant.

While I found a variety of little opportunities for improvement, Rise of the Insurrection is as rock-solid a record as they come. Endless cavalcades of killer riffs, brutal grooves, and slammy swagger guarantee a great time and ensure that repeat investment garners considerable returns in enjoyment. Carnivore Diprosopus may not be the most innovative name in the game, but brutal death metal doesn’t need innovation to be fun and engaging. Rise of the Insurrection is, if nothing else, proof positive of that fact.

Rating: Good!
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Comatose Music
Website: facebook.com/CarnivoreDiprosopus
Releases Worldwide: August 9th, 2024

#2024 #30 #Aug24 #Brodequin #BrutalDeathMetal #CarnivoreDiprosopus #ColombianMetal #ComatoseMusic #DeathMetal #Devourment #Pathology #Review #Reviews #RiseOfTheInsurrection #Slam #SpanishMetal #Unbirth

The second full-length album from brutal death metal band Sijjeel is Affiliation Of Horrid Containment. Review at FFMB, https://flyingfiddlesticks.com/2024/07/03/sijjeel-affiliation-of-horrid-containment-comatose-2024/ #metal #heavymetal #rock #hardrock #ComatoseMusic #deathmetal #Sijjeel #brutaldeathmetal