Decibel Magazine 8 out of 10
Eleven out of 13 songs on Inhuman Grotesqueries follow the same two-word adjective-noun pattern: “Embryological Teratomas,†“Organic Machinery,†“Genital Hemangioma,†the title track and seven more! It’s cool, though; it’s like, if they had a blackboard in the studio like Metallica in Some Kind of Monster (marked up with zen-koan-for-the-bloated-douchebag phrases like and “GOIN’ DEEP NOW!†and “LOOK THE WORLD IN THE EYEâ€), diversity of song titles would be low on the priorities. There’d be a big “LET HARMONICS BE RIFFS†and a picture of Gorguts taped up with a heart drawn around it and arrows pointing to it, but who gives a shit what anything’s called? Honestly, why are there even lyrics?
Speaking of Metallica, Inhuman Grotesqueries kicks off with an acoustic intro just like Ride the Lightning and—ha, they were just fucking with us! Eight seconds in, they start doing their ultra-tech-death thing and keep at it for an unrelenting half hour. Malignancy riffs do the work of five of everybody else’s riffs; seemingly random pinch harmonic squeals build up into their own riffs and countermelodies to those riffs. In the hands of guitarist Ron Kachnic, pinch harmonics are a chorus of shrieking alien monstrosities. On “Protagonist Complacence,†they threaten to take over completely. That song’s also got a weird lo-fi coda with overblown drums and Kachnic sounding eerily like Piggy from Voivod. It’s usually safe to say that this kind of thing doesn’t even need vocals, but Danny Nelson is actually capable of stretching out a little more than most brutal death bros. Check the sickly screams on “Neglected Rejection†and wind-tunnel howl on “Embryological Teratomas.†I still say it doesn’t matter what he’s saying—the painful ear-needling squeal that opens “Benign Reabsorption†says it all.
—Anthony Bartkewicz
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