Burly and perverse death/grind from Germany, with the most obscenely low, gargling, garbled vocals I've ever heard in my life. Not surprisingly I've never heard this band before because I have no real desire to listen to a band called Cock and Ball Torture unless they're really good, and nothing I've read or been told about this group has made me feel that what they're doing is essential. And honestly? It's not. This is a good disc. I can enjoy it. But it's nothing special. The vast majority of the riffs are moderately paced or on the slow side, and the vocals are completely indecipherable, not unlike what your stomach would sound like if you were starving to death and put a mic up to your gut. The best thing about the record is the guitar tone, because it's heavy as fuck and perfectly controlled, so some of the moshier riffs are really fucking forceful. But as with most of this stuff the vocals are a little out front and incredibly distracting, the distorted bass is almost inaudible, and the drums are rigid and unnatural - cutting through the mix like a knife through already melting butter. It does sound alright, the strength of the guitars carries it, but it's missing a few things. Warmer drums, more bass guitar, dropping the vocals back... such steps would help. They also need more tempo changes. I mean, this fucking record is over 40 minutes long, and I was honestly expecting it to be around 20 - 25 minutes tops. The songs all drag and sound the same after about 10 minutes of the disc goes by. More of the fast areas would be a welcome change, and could keep the songs shorter as well. Porno samples are of course to be expected here, but they're still fairly lame (especially when they run for more than two minutes - see "Instant Onanizer"), as are song titles like "Where Girls Learn to Piss on Command" and "Faggot Filter", among others. But hey, I guess that's their shtick. The packaging is minimal but excellent from a design standpoint. The vast majority of the layout is blank white space with a few bright red blood splatters, and then there's nothing but crisp, clean text and some small photos of people (I assume the band members) wrapped in black plastic from head to toe. Not bad at all. Not something I'm interested in, but visually the aesthetic works great. If you like this kind of stuff, you might be into this. I think it's alright, but it's boring. And I'm not into this kind of subject matter at all, so the music would have to be great for me to really bother with this. If it was faster and shorter, I think it would be pretty damn good. I'll leave it at that.
[The Spew]
Running time - 40:49, Tracks: 15
[Notable tracks: Aphrodisianus, Kamikaze Incest, Cellulite Convoy]
The Spew Records - http://www.thespew.org
