Saturday, October 15, 2016

Mass Burial – Vomitory, Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize




Five albums in, I think it’s safe to make some general statements on the career of the band. Vomitory plays death metal. Vomitory plays death metal very, very well. They have the brutality of the American scene and the melody and guitar work of their native Sweden. Lyrically, they cover a lot of the standard death metal bases of gore, violence and murder, and killing and demons, and war, not content to stick to one content approach like many other bands do. Truly, Vomitory is a smorgasbord of death metal, with something for everyone because everyone likes something.


Coming in to Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize the band was on something of a hot streak, with the previous three albums all being very strong death metal experiences, and all three of them having a stable vocalist after having different ones on each of their first three albums. The band wasn’t really going through any sort of identify crisis or anything, seemingly having arrived on the scene fully formed and possessed of their artistic vision. Rather than need time and records to find their voice, Vomitory showed up growling and spitting and killing, and apparently never found much of a need to reevaluate or rethink their approach. Even the single outlier of an album, 1999’s Redemption, was not an alteration or departure from the Vomitory sound, and so to list consistency as a strength of the band would be totally accurate.

The biggest difference of this record is opening hot and never relenting as opposed to taking the traditional Vomitory approach of needing two songs to get itself going. Opener “Eternal Trail of Corpses” and the title track in the third position do a great job of setting the tempo right away, while fourth track “The Burning Black” slows things down and is possibly the standout track of the album. “Whispers of the Dead” would probably be the closest contender for that honor, containing a pretty interesting chorus. “Flesh Passion” is a really good deep cut. The rest of the album does blend together a little bit, and while that is usually a bad thing, Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize at least keeps it interesting and entertaining enough that I don’t want to check out of the experience. This is apparently the album where other people start checking out, giving Vomitory that horrible label of "Band that always does the same thing," and this is the point at which it becomes stale for a lot of them. I don't think so. This album is fun and engaging right away; from the first notes I was jamming along in the car, really enjoying the experience. All songs here are catchy and solid. I was into this album right from the get go, much like the previous two, and I think that the Blood Rapture, Primal Massacre, Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize sequence may be the best part of the bands’ eight record run.


Again, five albums in, certain blanket statements can be made on a band like this that isn’t trying new things with each successive album. Vomitory lived and died as a band without much acclaim or recognition, and it’s not easy to understand why. This was a solid band that turned out album after album of respectable, listenable and exciting death metal music. One of the biggest sins this kind of music can commit is that it is boring, and Vomitory is never boring. Bands with similar career trajectories are far more known than this one: bands like Bolt Thrower, Deicide and Cannibal Corpse, all excellent death metal bands, among others have made careers of writing the same record again and again, and are some of the most well-known bands in the genre. While those bands are not without their detractors, they have amassed legions of fans because of their stability and reliability from album to album. So why not Vomitory? If there was ever a Swedish death metal band that could have made it with the more brutal American death metal audience, it would have been them. For reasons unknown, they just never did, which is a shame. This is the kind of band that every metal fan should have in their repertoire: the old faithful, the old reliable. The guys that never reinvent the wheel, but never let you down either.

But there is probably the biggest issue for Vomitory. As steady and consistent as they are, they lack those more memorable elements of those other bands. As catchy as their riffs may be, I don’t find any of them getting caught in my head the way a Deicide or Bolt Thrower or Corpse song does. With every listen to an album, I recognize songs right away, and they are memorable for the duration of the listening; but then, when the record stops, I’m left with memories of a satisfying experience but little else. They just lack that “It” thing that it takes to break into that upper strata of death metal bands.

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