by William York

When you're dealing with an Exhumed CD, you can safely expect several things: a disgusting album cover, humorously tasteless song titles, ridiculous guitar solos, and plenty of no-frills, Carcass-inspired death metal riffing. Slaughtercult comes through on all counts. There's a tendency among bands with such a patented approach to stagnate or become predictable, but while Exhumed doesn't throw any real curveballs here, they still deliver the goods. That's because songs here are well written (it may take a few listens, though, to figure out exactly what's going on) and the performances are just plain savage. Miescko Talarczyk's (Nasum) production only ups the ante, putting the guitars way up front, burying the vocals, and giving the whole record an in-the-red, in-your-face sound. There are no intros, outros, or interludes, and scarcely any pauses between songs. As a result, many listeners will find this record to be an indistinguishable blur. However, if you're a fan of gory, grinding death metal (and you probably know who you are by now), then you are likely to enjoy this album.