The 2015 Arsies: January 30, 2015

January 30, 2015 arse

Rise and shine, metalheads! What better alarm clock than the swan song from Rigor Mortis? Slaves To The Grave is the band's greatest opportunity to showcase the talents of its members, including the late Mike Scaccia. It's also more apparent than ever exactly how much of his guitar talent worked his way into Ministry over the past 2 decades. As such, Slaves To The Grave often comes across as the raw material for B-sides from Psalm 69. This is both good and bad, because Rigor Mortis has always shown a curious contempt for even halfway decent production values. This gets really distracting when the sloppiness calls attention to basic things like timing drift during the guitar tracking (most egregiously at the end of solo on Rain Of Ruin). So, it's an energetic old school album, but it definitely has some flaws.
Now, the Aborted album may have its weaknesses, but production ain't one of them. The Necrotic Manifesto is finely crafted to deliver its message, which apparently is nothing short of a primer on modern grindcore. Now, while the songwriting may not be blazing new trails... and let's be honest: it most certainly isn't, opting instead to produce a collection of songs that sound like Slipknot, Machine Head, Decapitated, and above all Carcass. But that's the whole fun of the album, because the aping is enthusiastic and lively. The impersonations are a little on the nose for my taste -- even the bonus cover of Sepultura's Arise is quite literally note-for-note faithful, with the only change being that it's detuned. And yet, Aborted deliver the goods more solidly and consistently than the veteran Texan thrashers.
Later tonight, we've got Hark vs Miasmal. I'm feelin' those lighters....

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