Mass Burial – Vomitory, Raped in Their Own Blood

The first ever Child Sized Coffin discography project is dedicated to Swedish death metal band Vomitory. I have a little bit of familiarity with the band, having heard two of their albums a number of years ago,

Vomitory’s first album, 1996’s Raped in Their Own Blood, is a solid piece of mid-90s death metal. Everything about this album says ‘solid death metal’: the cover art is some fairly generic murder scene photo, the kind of thing that in 1996 would have been extreme and all, but looks pretty cheesy today. Ten songs of brutal, straightforward death metal, with the standard titles as well.

Something about this kind of cover photo always takes me back to a time when everything about death metal was much more dangerous and ‘real’ than it is now. I don’t want this to turn into a lamentation on the days of yore, but metal music always existed in a strange sidestep from the regular world, where bands were polished and production values were high. Metal records generally carried an air of grime and lower production value: not to say they were bad or poorly constructed, but the DIY nature of metal was a quality that really set it apart from the more polished and shiny presentation of mainstream music. This may nowhere be better exemplified than in the death and black metal scenes of much of the 1990s. Following the overly manufactured appearance of the glam scene and the carefully maintained grit of a band like Pantera, coupled with the apparent softening of stalwarts like Slayer and the spiraling of Metallica and Megadeth into more and more studio creations, an image like the one gracing this record carry something real. There is a danger to a record like this, and I know that from personal experiences as a teenager during that era. It was the time where the PMRC sticker was on everything in the CD sections at Best Buy; but, just down the street at a different record store, or at that strange one in the rough neighborhood, no albums carried that sticker, and what they were promoting was far more graphic than anything Pantera was doing. Those records never carried that sticker because the world that revered that sticker didn’t know those records existed.  

Maybe one of the real problems for Vomitory is their standard nature. There’s nothing on this album that is really stand out material. This is not to say that the album is bad or forgettable, but only that it begins Vomitory’s career as ‘another’ death metal band, at a time when death metal was really gaining steam as a genre, but was not yet seriously trying to reach beyond itself stylistically. The usual suspects are all present in terms of bands who Vomitory resembles, so Cannibal Corpse and Dismember are the obvious touchstones. I also hear a lot of similarities to Grave. Like Grave, Vomitory begins life as more of an American death metal band in terms of musical style. Not an average Swe-death group, Vomitory spends the entirety of “Raped in Their Own Blood” going for the brutal, grinding heaviness that is more a feature of the American bands.

But I don’t want to give the idea that this is a bad record, not at all. This is a real good listen, and the band is a very competent one at this stage of their career. Songs are fast and grinding, combining the buzzy guitar sound of Swedeath and the vocal growling of US death metal. The production is good, I think, and instruments are clear with the exception of the bass, which is a pretty standard sound issue for death metal. The vocals are also a little back in the mix, and you have to listen for them a little bit, but the delivery is clear and forceful. The vocals have an echo on them, which is a bit strange to listen to because the echo is very apparent at the end of lines. The guitar solos also sound a bit weird, almost like they’re detached from the rest of the song, but really, this is a characteristic of a lot of early/mid 90’s death metal, and it’s not a distraction or detraction on this album at all; it’s just something that you notice occasionally, and other times not at all.

Songs are generally fast tunes, but they do slow things down on occasion during a song for some extra heaviness. “Dark Grey Epoch” contains a section of slowed tempo that, even though it’s very brief, offers an interesting moment. The opener “Nervegasclouds” includes an introductory soundbite, air raid sirens and bomber engines that often winds up being a separate track on an album, that does a pretty good job of setting an atmosphere for the album to come, the way an introduction is supposed to. But, since the sword battle/machine gun fire/horses galloping/sirens blaring/screaming/whatever disaster sound has become such a typical introduction, it’s easy to dismiss it. It works for this album though, so, there’s a plus. The title track is nothing really special or noteworthy, but it is a good, fun death metal song. Halfway through the album is “Inferno,” and this is maybe the truly great song on the album. By the end of the preceding song, that death metal record fatigue starts to set in: the feeling that, while you’ve been enjoying everything so far, the album has reached the halfway point, and usually this means the second half will be more of the same as the first, but the feeling of having heard this before starts to creep in. “Inferno” is a real ripping song, with a shout-along kind of chorus, and a second or two of distorted bass front and center that I think nowadays everyone would be rushing to label as a breakdown, but the song rests the counter on the album. Sure, what will follow it will be four more songs basically like what you’ve already heard, but “Inferno” gives the listener a little bit of a recharge by doing something different and grabbing your attention again. The follow up track “Sad Fog Over Sinister Ruins” gets slow and ominous in its last two minutes, another change of pace and restorer of interest. “Into Winter Through Shadows” begins with a halting, stuttering blasting before settling in to the death metal more representative of the album in total. But by this point, you’re ready to resume the voyage.

Ultimately, Raped in Their Own Blood is a good death metal record, and certainly a good first record for the band. This is an old school death metal record that delivers all the things that you probably already love about the genre, and the band has all of the characteristics that other, bigger bands you already love have. There is nothing really special or exciting about this album, but there is nothing wrong with it either. Good, enjoyable, brutal death metal.